Nicole Brice
Mar 28, 2025
Boiler Room are on a mission to make a significant impact in the world of metal.
I was a teenager in the late 90s / early 2000s, a time when nu metal, a subgenre of alternative metal, dominated the airwaves. Bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, and Deftones were everywhere, and because of the mediums we had back then to bring us new music, only certain bands were filtered my way. Here I am in 2025, and I was recently introduced to Chris Lino, vocalist for the New York City-based nu metal band Boiler Room, thanks to my good friend and photographer, Jeff Crespi. Unbeknownst to me, Boiler Room had a very successful career for a while from 1996-2001, sharing the stage with Type O Negative, King’s X, Clutch, Orgy, Life of Agony, and Static-X. Still, after changes at their label, they walked away from forging their legacy, so why are they back now, and what has been going on all these years?
Gritty, raw guitar riffs and an aggressive yet melodic style, Boiler Room, were part of the broader DIY movement until they were discovered and signed. Chris Lino’s vocals are thick, raspy, and full of soul. With a unique combination of sounds and clean screams, he can go from sweet to sour in only a few seconds. Truly, this man's voice is amazing. It’s remarkable how music machines work. Oodles and oodles of bands come out yearly, but it’s up to the geniuses who market these bands to make them stand out, so how and why did Boiler Room get lost amongst the shuffle?
With their recent resurgence, Boiler Room is on a mission to make a significant impact in the music world. Their blend of rock and metalcore is a force to be reckoned with, and they're not holding back. They released the single, ‘No Patience,’ in 2024, followed by ‘Changes’ in 2025. The band's focus on live shows in the days ahead is a testament to their determination to share their music with audiences everywhere.
Boiler Room’s past labels include Roadrunner and Tommy Boy Records, two significant players in the music industry. After years out of the spotlight, they are currently looking for a new home, a move that could potentially reshape their musical journey.
Boiler Room’s current line-up is Chris Lino (vocals), Nick Seditious (guitar), Tommy Spano (drums), and Peter Rizzi (bass). A humble, charismatic, and talented human, I truly enjoyed my recent conversation with Chris Lino. We delved into the band's past, current journey, and future plans. Please take a moment to dive into our conversation below and then listen to their latest ‘Changes’, which is out now on all streaming platforms.
MaM: Thank you for joining me today. I had to go down the Wikipedia rabbit hole to learn more about you guys, but you started as a thrash metal band in 1996, correct?
Chris: Actually, we started in 1992, and we were called Bible Black. In 1993, we were selected to play the Foundations Forum alongside Accept, Kiss, I Mother Earth, Quicksand, and Rob Halford, who was working with his new band Fight at the time. We had a demo with the song ‘Judgment Day’ that passed the board with Concrete Marketing, so they voted us in, and we were selected for the show. I don’t know if they still host the Foundations Forum, but it used to feature signed bands, established bands with new material, bands that had just been signed, and then there was us – we were an unsigned band looking for a deal. We ended up playing, and it was awesome. Life of Agony was there, too. We knew them from Brooklyn. Rob Halford was actually at the side of the stage, and when we completed our set, his manager said, “Mr. Halford would like to meet you guys.”
MaM: Wow, that’s awesome. Hell yeah.
Chris: He was the nicest guy, and he gave us some simple yet great advice. “Just keep writing”, he says in his British accent to us, and he was thinking about managing us at that time. He was looking to start a label and had a management company. We ended up touring with Type O Negative and Life of Agony. We had Ken Kriete, their manager, who was helping to manage us at the time. That relationship fizzled out, and our original guitar player ended up leaving, so we put an ad out in The Village Voice – back in the day, that’s how it was done.
MaM: Man, back in the day, that was the only way you could advertise for anything—no social media. Remember paper flyers for shows, too?
Chris: Oh yeah. So, we ended up putting the ad out there, and we had to go through approximately 128 demo tapes. We were very popular in the tri-state area and on the verge of something significant. At the time, we were also in talks with some labels. We eventually went through all the demos until we came upon Rob Caggiano’s demo, and it was different because he wasn’t just shredding on it and playing. He remade a Misfits’ song, sang on it, and created a versatile demo that stood out. He could sing backing, but he never did in the band. Man, so he pulls up and right away, he just had this swag and this attitude out of the gate.
(laughter)
He showed up, though, and had all the right equipment and everything. We had asked him to learn four of our songs from our recently released indie album, and he nailed two of them. However, he didn’t put in the work for the other two. The drummer and bass player were kind of “eh” at first, but then I told him to show us a couple of his riffs and stuff he was working on. He busted out some riffs that just blew me away, and I was inspired immediately. I was like, “Do that again!”
(laughter)
That was one of our singles, too, ‘Do It Again’, no pun intended, but once he busted out this riff, I immediately started adding vocals to it, and that was it. He and I hit it off immediately, and we wrote all of what turned out to be the first Boiler Room record. We wrote about 80% of it. We had a creative connection. It was around this time that our music also began to be played on KROQ.
MaM: KROQ was the place to be heard back in the day.
Chris: Yeah, they had a metal show on Sunday, and we were one of the first unsigned metal bands to be played on it, and we had a couple of shows in the area. One was at Irving Plaza where we opened up for Machine Head, and then another time it was Orgy, and when we opened up for Orgy, it was insane. We have a video of it on our Facebook page. We just blew it up that night, and we had another manager give us his card while saying, “I’ve never had a local band blow my signed band away.”
(laughter)
After that, the phone calls started coming in, and we initially signed with Roadrunner. We went out to L.A. and recorded the whole album out there. ‘Do It Again’ ended up being released on MTV’s “The Return of the Rock” CD Volume 1, alongside many other heavy hitters. It was Kid Rock, Korn, P.O.D., Papa Roach, Sevendust, us, and a plethora of other great bands. We were off to a good start, but we ultimately hit a brick wall with some of the politics in the music industry. It had nothing to do with us, but there was a change in leadership, and the original CEO who had signed us ended up leaving the label, and the new person showed no interest in us. They kept pushing our release date back, so we knew we needed to get off the label. We ended up getting off the label eventually and signed with Tommy Boy/Warner Bros. They were trying to get into the nu metal scene at the time because you had bands like Limp Bizkit blowing up. We were off to the races after that.
We went on tour with Disturbed and Kittie. Kittie was the headliner back then. So, Disturbed started taking off with their first album and ultimately left the tour. We decided we needed to get back on a tour with them, and we ended up touring the tri-state area with them. It was great. Then, we toured with Mudvayne to promote the release of their first album, and from there, we embarked on a club tour in Europe, which also went very well. Came back from Europe, and the label dropped us because we weren’t selling enough records in the States. They owed us for another album, though, so we settled that and then decided we needed to regroup. Rob, though, had already agreed to join Anthrax, so we knew that conversation was coming. Everyone just ended up going their separate ways until I hooked up with Mike Orlando from Adrenaline Mob. He suggested that we redo the Boiler Room record because he’s a producer and engineer and has a studio in Staten Island, and he thought we had a sort of legacy going with Boiler Room. I decided to select the choice songs that Rob Caggiano and I wrote, which I felt did not receive their fair share of recognition. So, we re-recorded them with new production, and we pumped them up. We did four songs from the Boiler Room record, and everything else is new material. One song, ‘Rectify,’ on which Ron Thal played an insane, ripping solo, but we had to edit it for radio, so we have two versions of that song.
MaM: Who all did you bring into the mix for recording this go-round?
Chris: So, Mike Orlando hooked me up with Peter, and we found Nick, the guitarist, and Tommy Spano on drums. That got the line-up back together, but I started recording the album before I met Pete. We had Jason Bittner from Shadows Fall and Overkill play the drums, and then Pete came in to record the bass. Mike Orlando did the guitars. Nick did a bunch of leads on it, but the album had already been recorded when we hooked up with them. We then released the single ‘No Patience’, which was initially titled ‘Patience’, as the song has nothing to do with actual patience. Additionally, Guns N' Roses already had a song called ‘Patience’, so we reworked it and released it as a single. We have a video on YouTube that is performing well, with over 400,000 views.
MaM: Then you have ‘Changes’, so tell us a little more about that one.
Chris: That I wrote with Mike Orlando. I didn’t get into that story, so after Boiler Room broke up, he tracked me down before he blew up. We hooked up and started writing, and did something called Out of Body, so ‘Changes’ was an Out of Body song. A lot of the songs, his songs, ended up on Adrenaline Mob's first album, which they changed the melodies and the lyrics, but ‘Changes’ was the song we wrote together, and he never used, so I was like, “Let’s re-record that one and put it on the new Boiler Room album.”
MaM: Hell yeah, man, so you just decided to dive right back in to start releasing music. Was it because you missed it, or because you felt there was something there that you just needed to express?
Chris: Both. Orlando is like, “Dude, when you gonna get back in the saddle again?”, and I’m like “Eh…” I told him I was thinking about doing something different, but he was like, “Nah, redo some of that older material. Redo the whole album.” I was like, yeah, I’ll redo some of the songs, but I’m not redoing the entire album. Like some of the songs that fell by the wayside, like ‘No Patience’, which we used to do at soundcheck when we were touring with Mudvayne, and they would stop in their tracks to listen. Imagine you’re touring with Mudvayne, and they stop to listen as you’re doing soundcheck, asking what the name of the song is and why the song isn’t in your set. That was the one song that I always wanted to redo because it never got a fair shot.
MaM: So, tell us about the new album and when it will be released?
Chris: It’s going to be nine songs with the edit of ‘Rectify’. We're looking at June for the release date. Pete and I also wrote a new song for the album called, 'Haunted'. We can't wait for everyone to hear it.
MaM: Who were some influences that shaped your sound when you were first starting out? Did the idea for the band come about in high school, or how old were you when you first decided to start a band?
Chris: I was in college when the band started. We had all the influences prevalent at the time, including Pantera, Black Sabbath, and Metallica. Then, Limp Bizkit and Korn were gaining immense popularity, which also influenced us. I don’t think there is any musician out there who a Black Sabbath riff hasn't influenced.
MaM: In fact, down here in Louisiana, most bands are always influenced by Black Sabbath and Pantera. Pantera is a southern thing, though. You can’t live in the south and not like Pantera.
Chris: We actually got to meet them when we were touring with Type O Negative because Phil is a fan of Carnivore and Peter Steele. After Type O Negative started taking off, Pantera jumped on a tour with them. We got to see them in Albany, New York, I think. Ken, Type O’s manager, was still managing us, and he invited us backstage to meet the guys. Phil was nowhere to be found, but Dime and Vinnie were awesome. They told me, though, that if I wanted to hang out with them, I needed to start drinking.
(laughter)
MaM: Oh yeah, gotta hang with them Pantera boys.
Chis: You'd better start banging some shots out now. They were really cool. Rex was somewhat standoffish and asked us who we were, but overall, it was a great experience. I met Vinnie a second time years later because, after the lead singer of Drowning Pool passed away, I tried out to be their new singer.
MaM: Wow! Did you? I had no idea.
Chris: Yeah, they called me up after a year of mourning. Boiler Room was done. I was demoing with Mike Orlando, and I was shopping again. My old A&R guy, who had my demos, knew I was trying to secure another deal. However, he informed me that he had sent my demos to Paul Bassman, Drowning Pool’s manager at the time, and that they were interested in meeting with me. They reviewed over 300 demos from around the world and narrowed it down to me and another guy. They sent me the album with no vocals so I could practice on it, and then they also sent two new songs. They asked me to write melodies and lyrics for the two new songs. I was in New York and did this, and it took me a couple of weeks. They ended up flying me down to Dallas, Texas, and the drummer was cool. Here I'm playing the entire Drowning Pool record, singing it, and it was surreal. It felt like Drowning Pool karaoke, but I had the actual band.
(laughter)
MaM: So, what ended up happening? Did you not take the gig because you would have to move?
Chris: That was some of it, but they had another guy they were looking at, too. It just didn’t work out, but I was honored. They were very nice guys. So, after we did our jam and everything, they took me to the strip joint in Texas that Vinnie and Dime owned. They said they wanted to “send me off”, but they hadn’t let me know yet what their decision was. I walked in, though, and met Vinnie Paul again, and he goes, “You gonna be the next singer of Drowning Pool?”, and I go, “I hope so, we’re gonna see what happens.” The rest of the night, I was hanging out with Vinnie Paul, the guys from Damageplan, and the guys from Drowning Pool, and man, they were drinking like fish, man. I fell right into it, too. They go, “We hear you don’t really drink", and I go, “Ah, man…”
(laughter)
They end up passing me a bottle of Jack, and go, “Give me a five count.”
MaM: Oh no …
(laughter)
They got me bombed, and the next thing I know, their manager goes, “You’ve got about four hours. We’re gonna drive you to the airport and drop you off.” They then let me know that they hadn’t made their decision yet, but they ended up going with the other guy. Paul Bassman tried to help me and Mike Orlando with Out of Body by getting us signed to Drowning Pool’s label, but that fell through, too. That was it for a bit, and I gave it a break until Mike Orlando tracked me down again. He kept pushing me to do something, and at the time, I was doing an acoustic thing that later evolved into a plugged-in thing. Still, the whole time, Mike is trying to push me to redo the first Boiler Room record, which led to the decision of doing the songs Rob and I wrote, but not the entire album.
MaM: That’s actually a smart way to approach it.
Chris: Yeah, so I had some new music I wanted to do as well, so I kind of just leaned on my strengths with what I do. I put the rapping thing away. My three most significant influences at the time were Chino from Deftones, Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots, and Phil from Pantera. I was becoming a hybrid of those influences. What I realized, though, is I needed to just “come with it” – that ballsy, raspy voice and forget about the rapping and the ominous whisper thing that Chino does. I veered away from that by just doing what I do best. Then, one night, I was watching a show with Steve Vai, and they asked him what he attributed his success to. He told them that you have to lean on your strengths. If you do something well, lean on it. …and here we are.
MaM: Do you feel technology has helped or hurt the music industry? What’s your take on all the technological advancements in music?
Chris: I’d have to say both. When we were growing up, you’d buy the whole album and listen to the entire CD. You’d open it up, look at the artwork, read the credits, and examine the pictures— it was a whole experience. You became a true fan. Some songs you liked. Some you didn’t, but at least you knew the entire album. Now, it’s like they’re promoting Attention Deficit Disorder. You download one or two songs. There’s no actual record sales anymore. It’s all based on streams, and that’s misleading because you don’t have real fans anymore. At that time, securing a record deal was highly challenging. You had to do it from the ground up – garage band style. Now, anyone can put up anything. It’s great because you can access the music more straightforwardly, but in a way, it’s not.
MaM: What are the plans for the rest of 2025 and beyond for Boiler Room?
Chris: Well, we’re gonna release the new album in June. My focus is this … I know everyone wants to focus on social media these days, but I’m grassroots, and the social media only goes so far … I’m all about getting people to shows. We’re looking to partner with a larger national act to secure a spot on some of these tours. I want to flood out the entire tri-state area, hit the East Coast or the South, such as Louisiana. If we could secure a good show with a national act, that would work. We’re in a rebuilding process right now, though. We’re trying to rebuild the foundation of our fanbase and replant the flag. Shows … quality shows. We’ll see where it goes.
As Chris Lino and Boiler Room move forward in the modern music scene, they stand poised to bring their powerful music to a new generation. They stand out as a band that embodies grit and substance. Their music isn’t just something you hear; it’s something you feel. I look forward to watching their journey unfold. Boiler Room is a name to remember. They’re not just playing metal—they're living it.
To learn more about Boiler Room:
Facebook: Facebook
Discogs: Boiler Room Discography: Vinyl, CDs, & More | Discogs
Wikipedia: Boiler Room (band) - Wikipedia
All Music: Boiler Room Songs, Albums, Reviews, Bio & More... | AllMusic
YouTube: BOILER ROOM - YouTube
Instagram: (@boilerroom_band) • Instagram photos and videos
*Some photos by Gessner Photography
Eric (@gessner.photography) • Instagram photos and videos
*Other photos by Jeff Crespi
Questions or comments? Reach out to us at mixedalternativemag@gmail.com.