Tampa trio Use & Care plays a punishing brand of instrumental rock

It's one the best instrumental bands in Tampa Bay right now.

Use & Care plays Hooch and Hive in Tampa, Florida on March 19, 2022. - Photo by John S. Thacker
Photo by John S. Thacker
Use & Care plays Hooch and Hive in Tampa, Florida on March 19, 2022.
For those who need their instrumental music to absolutely shred, there is Use & Care.

The trio includes monsters of the Bay area rock scene—drummer Vinnie Cosentino (Palantine), guitarist Alastair St. Hill (Gentlemen, Please) and bassist Jerrad McLeod.

Together on a self-titled 2003 album, the trio pummels listeners with seven tracks of sludge-metal that could go on tour with Mastodon, Queens of the Stone Age and even Chicago’s since-disbanded Hum.

St. Hill told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that his biggest influence for Use & Care is the late Dimebag Darrell, who played one of his last shows in Ybor City at the since-shuttered Masquerade when Damageplan came to Tampa.

“I associate all the pinch harmonic Use & Care riffs with his sound,” St. Hill said.

Kudos to Danny Piechocki—a beastly instrumentalist in his own right—for mixing this record as if it were an audition for France’s Hellfest.

“I don't know if I explicitly talked to him about it, but one album that we as a band were listening to during the recording process was Terminal by Bongripper,” St. Hill added about working with Piechocki.

Use & Care doesn’t have any shows planned at the moment, but has started to work on some new material. See a list of the best Tampa Bay instrumental bands you can listen to right now.

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Ray Roa

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief in August 2019. Past work can be seen at Suburban Apologist, Tampa Bay Times, Consequence of Sound and The...
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