E-Mail This Article to a Friend Headstrong Trapt won’t give it away BY SEAN RICHARDSON

Thanks to the massive crossover success of "Bring Me to Life," Little Rock goth icons Evanescence were the obvious choice for rock rookies of the year in 2003. But what about Trapt? Like Amy Lee and company, the California angst merchants came out of nowhere and soon found themselves at the top of the charts. Their "Headstrong" followed "Bring Me to Life" into the upper echelon of the Top 40, and it won the Billboard Music Award for rock track of the year. With their 2002 album Trapt (Warner Bros.) now platinum, the band are heading out with fellow rock upstarts Smile Empty Soul and Finger Eleven on this year’s Snocore Tour, which hits the Palladium in Worcester next Saturday, March 6.

Three of the four guys in Trapt have been playing together since 1997, when they were high-school students on the outskirts of San Jose. A few years later, Incubus producer Jim Wirt almost got them a deal with Epic. Still in college at the time, they dropped out and moved to LA in pursuit of the brass ring. After switching drummers, they eventually signed with Warner Bros. and hooked up with producer GGGarth, who’s famous for his work on the first Rage Against the Machine album. Trapt was released to little fanfare, but "Headstrong" spoke for itself once it hit radio.

"Headstrong" is the rallying cry of a young band trying to fulfill their ambitions in the face of adversity, a theme that carries over to several other songs on the album. "Back off, I’ll take you on/Headstrong, to take on anyone," bellows frontman Chris Brown over punchy jock-rock guitars and drums that sound like an opponent doubling over. The song takes explicit aim at music-biz predators: "I see your fantasy, you want to make it a reality paved in gold . . . I won’t give everything away." The moody verse segues into the belligerent chorus with a whoosh, and each hook is sharper than the last.

The video for "Headstrong," a standard-issue concert montage, underlines one thing Trapt don’t have going for them: image. It’s a snoozer compared to Evanescence’s "Bring Me to Life" clip, a full-blown action short that climaxes with Lee dangling from a tall building. The album covers are no contest either: Evanescence go with a sexy head shot of Lee whereas the cover of Trapt is a grainy photo of an anonymous dad mowing the lawn in 1950s America. That’s the main difference between the two bands, and it’s a telling one: Evanescence are willing to play show-biz games, Trapt are determined to focus on music.

In the end, that choice will probably work in Trapt’s favor — at least in the commercial hard-rock world, where flamboyance has been more a liability than an asset since grunge hit. Brown will never be much of a looker, but the band did put together a striking video for the disc’s second rock chart topper, "Still Frame." It’s a soundstage clip set inside a giant cathedral, with a high-speed tunnel-vision effect that works overtime during the chorus. The song itself slams even harder than "Headstrong," with a similar pre-chorus detonation. "Believe me, I’m just as lost as you," admits Brown after the storm, as a wash of electric and acoustic guitars oozes empathy behind him.

The third single from Trapt is "Echo," a pretty power ballad that’s just now hitting the airwaves. It’s the group’s most commercial move yet: after kicking off with just voice and guitar, it dresses its romantic chorus with a fetching keyboard melody. "I’ll run away with you/By my side," croons Brown, sounding as if he’d been paying attention to all the emo bands on rock radio these days. His mates don’t waste too much time joining in, and he gets cute by simulating an echo as he sings the lines "I need to let go of this pride/Until this echo can subside." His rumored squeeze, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Eurotrip star Michelle Trachtenberg, stars in the video, but their chemistry doesn’t quite rescue it from love-song cliché.

Brown grabs an acoustic guitar and asks the rhythm section to take five on the nostalgic "Stories," the other tender standout on the disc. But Trapt aren’t ready to be the next Staind just yet: concern for dynamics aside, they’re at their best in full-on rock mode. "I don’t ever want to see/I don’t ever want to be/Like you," Brown sings on "Hollowman," a maximum-grunge rager that recalls vintage Stone Temple Pilots. On the closing "New Beginning," he wrestles with his future one last time and signs off with five minutes of inconclusive ambiance. He can ease his worried mind now, because rock dreams rarely come true the way they have for Trapt.

Trapt perform next Saturday, March 6, at the Palladium in Worcester; call (508) 797-9696.