Airbourne

Brothers, Ryan and Joel O’Keeffe, came together to form a band in 2003 and recruited David Roads and Adam Jacobson. They worked at the Hotel Warrnambool and would bring their instruments to work so that after their shifts they could jam out song ideas. They went on to win a competition, called Push-On in Melbourne. It was their self-funded eight track EP entitled “Ready to Rock” that appeared in July 2004, that fell into the hands of Capitol Records whom they signed a five album record deal with.

It was a journey to the US for the band to work on their debut studio album, “Runnin’ Wild” with Bob Marlette who had produced albums with Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper. The album was released in Australia on June 23rd 2007, and they released three singles from the album; “Runnin’ Wild”, “Too Much Too Young Too Fast” which featured on Guitar Hero; World Tour and “Diamond in the Rough”. The album made it to the top 30 of the ARIA Albums Chart in Australia, and even managed to chart in Austria, Switzerland and France. Nearing the end of 2007, they supported Kid Rock and Korn and at the start of 2008, they moved permanently to the US. Their album by this point had charted on the UK Albums Chart, and on the Billboard 200.

At the beginning of 2009, Airbourne headed back into the studio to record their sophomore album “No Guts. No Glory”. It was later released on March 8th 2010. The song “Born to Kill” was played on BBC Radio 1’s Rock Show. It reached the top 20 on the ARIA Albums Chart, and also in five other countries. They were fortunate enough to support Iron Maiden on their Final Frontier World Tour from July 20th to August 1st 2011. The band announced in November 2011 that they had been working on a new album. That album would be called “Black Dog Barking” and would go on to reach to top forty of ten countries.

The quartet, featuring 'Michael Starr' (Ralph Saenz, vocals), 'Stix Zadinia' (Darren Leader, drums), 'Lexxi Foxx' (Travis Haley, bass) and 'Satchel' (Russ Parrish), began performing on the Sunset Strip under the name of Metal Shop, gradually gaining popularity and notoriety. They performed at weekly nights, playing covers of hair metal classics, making fun of the 80s lifestyle and image of bands like Van Halen. The band released their first album, "Hole Patrol" in 2003 independently, which gained some interest, with songs featured on TV shows.

In 2008, the band changed their name to Steel Panther, joining major label Republic Records (owned by Universal). In 2009 their major debut was released, titled "Feel the Steel" breaking into the Billboard charts and achieving Steel Panther significant success. Their album went to number one in the Billboard Comedy Charts and number 98 on the US charts, It included the singles "Death For All But Metal" and "Community Property" which became cult hits. Corey Taylor, Justin Hawkins and M. Shadows featured on the album.

Their second release, "Balls Out" was released in 2011, featuring guest appearances from comedian Dane Cook and Nickleback's Chad Kroeger, amongst others. The album surpassed Megadeth's "TH1RT3EN" and Lou Reed and Metallica's "Lulu" to reach number one in the UK ITunes Rock chart and number 40 on the US Billboard 200 chart, with frost week sales of 12,000 copies in the US.

Their success led to several tours which included a main stage slot at UK's Download Festival in 2012, playing to a crowd of over 100,000 people. They have also toured with Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard.