Drive (band)

Drive was a five-piece progressive metal, power metal, heavy metal, and hard rock band formed in Houston, Texas, United States by Rick Chavez. They released two albums, Characters in Time (1988) and Diablero (1992).

Contents

• Members
• Discography
• Songs
• References

Drive formed in Houston, Texas, in the mid-1980s when its members were barely out of high school, but the band soon moved to Los Angeles, which had become the center of the hard rock scene. After winning a radio contest with their song “I Need The Nights”, Drive landed on the Best of the West compilation released by Rampage Records, the hard rock division of Rhino Records. Rampage signed the band, and in July 1988 Drive released their debut LP, Characters in Time. The album received good reviews from the industry’s hard rock press, including the coveted 5 “K” rating from Kerrang! Magazine. The album also received airplay from hard rock stations around the country, including the KNAC in Los Angeles.

At the beginning of the next decade the band left Rampage and signed with Zoo Records, a new BMG label that would later become famous for the band Tool. In 1992 the band released Diablero to rave reviews from the metal underground.

A shake-up at the label along with the dawn of the metal-killing “grunge” scene left the album without much of a push, and the band’s recording career was put on hold as the band members moved back to Texas.

According to a review of Characters in Time, “Vocalist David Taylor gives off an incredibly awesome performance” and “the next driving force behind this release outside of the powerful vocals is definitely the guitar work of Chavez” which goes “ catchy rockin’ rhythms to rippingly fast riffs”

On June 25, 2009, while driving along a San Antonio interstate, lead singer David Taylor lost control of his vehicle due to a tire malfunction, and crashed. He was airlifted to an area hospital where he died of his injuries five days later. He was 44.”