Black Coffee
Wired on caffeine and dressed to thrill, these Ohio rockers are your wake-up call.
Ehab Omran is a raging drug addict. Fortunately, that drug is caffeine – not only his band’s daily rocket fuel, but also the inspiration behind their name and best songs. “You get up in the morning and you’re all nice and soft,” says the frontman/bassist. “Then you take a sip of that black coffee and – pow! – away you go. We chose the name after we were all confined to the house one day on a very cold February. We drank coffee and jammed the entire night. That’s how Hurricane was written – it’s a very fast, jumpy song. From what I’ve heard, there are worse drugs for bands to take.”
Black Coffee’s meteoric rise suggests they don’t bother much with sleep. They’ve only been together a year but already look like the last gang in town, with Omran and guitarist Justin Young bunched round a single microphone like a hirsute Lennon and McCartney, while drummer Tommy McCullough is a hair-tossing presence at the back. “So many bands have an image crisis,” says Omran. “When we walk into any local place, people know who we are. It’s like, long hair and bell-bottoms means something.”
In their short time together, Black Coffee have already ticked off the rites of passage. “We’ve recorded our first album,” says Omran. “We’ve already been kicked off a festival. We’d set up the drums, warmed up the amps, then they tell us: ‘You gotta tear everything down, you guys are kicked off.’ It turned out some drunken buffoon had pissed off the owner’s wife… and told them he was there to see Black Coffee!”
Debut album Take One should bring them more fans. It begins with the hushed acoustic Creamer, before Omran delivers his shriek and launches a track-listing that references peak Van Halen (Hurricane), prime AC/DC (Born To Lie) and folk-mode Zeppelin (The Traveler). “I Barely Know Her is about someone you love who talks shit behind your back,” explains the singer. “Monica is about where society is at the moment. People are blinded by social media. They don’t know what’s going on in the world. Racism is still a thing. Sexism is still a thing.”
The trio might be flexible on genre and subject matter, but they’re militant about production. “Take One is raw, unfiltered rock,” states Omran. “No click track, no pitch correction, no copyand-paste. We went in there and played every song at most three times, and ended up using the first or second take. Whatever your fingers do, whatever your body does, you should go with it. I’m ecstatic with the way the album turned out. It blew all our minds.”
Perhaps it’s time for a celebratory drink – and no prizes for guessing Omran’s poison. “Jack and Coke is good,” he says.
“But black coffee is a great rock’n’roll drink, to get it going and for the morning after. We’re gonna have to start selling espresso machines at our merch booth.” HY