Nicole Brice
Jun 13, 2025
Who On Earth is blending a classic rock vibe with modern twists and turns.
Who On Earth? My sentiments exactly when I first discovered this band – a badass group that carries the torch for those who came before, that’s who. Blending a classic rock vibe with modern twists and turns, Who On Earth features epic solos and some of the cleanest-sounding guitars I've ever heard, not to mention those heavy basslines I love. This band is poised to dominate in the coming days with their hard rock and heavy metal straight from New Jersey. So, who is Who On Earth?
The lineup includes Coosh (vocals), Pete Rizzi (bass), Johnny James Barone (guitar), Jimmy Kocha (guitar), and Howie Fallon (drums). With a larger-than-life stage presence and a bellowing voice full of range, Coosh embodies the quintessential badass frontman. There is so much soul in every note he sings, and Who On Earth is actively bringing rock back. As I dove into their discography, I found that not a single song is lacking. Every track is fantastic and feels like a rocket waiting to launch. Yes, it's that good.
Since 2022, Who On Earth has released numerous songs, the latest being 'Yesterday's Future' on April 29, 2025. With a visually stunning lyric video to accompany it, 'Yesterday's Future' is a thought-provoking piece of music with a powerful message, and I urge you to check it out after reading this article.
Who On Earth’s music transcends typical compositions; it narrates stories. These poignant tales require your attention to the lyrics, which create vivid images of landscapes and scenarios, some rooted in folklore and others not.
This busy band is ready to perform and expand its empire, and if you love classic Iron Maiden with heartfelt storytelling, this band is for you. If you're into crushing guitar riffs and head-nodding grooves, you'll also love them. They even have an amazing cover of Toto's 'Hold the Line' that showcases their love for the greats of yesteryear. Full of personality and charisma with a message, Who On Earth is prepared to dominate a new era of rock with their desire, drive, and ambition to propel the band forward.
Read on to learn more.
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MaM: First question – who designs your album and single covers? They are phenomenal!
Pete: So, we’re big on artwork because we grew up looking at the art on the album covers, and because of all the songs put out every day, you want to stand out, and we want those strong covers that have meaning to them. For example, Smoke & Mirrors, Blame, and some of the singles on Blame, we had Ken Adams, who does all of Lamb of God’s artwork; he did the artwork for that. We love Ken and love working with him. Smoke & Mirrors is all Ken, and it’s always Coosh and I getting on the phone with him discussing a new concept, and he’s just like ‘Oh, I love it!’, so we have an excellent synergistic working relationship with Ken. A lot of the others are AI-generated, where I’ve done a few, and my son is a graphic design artist, and he does a bunch, too. He’ll take an image based on a concept, and he’ll tweak it and get it how he wants, so it’s been a combination of things.
MaM: So, next question – the logo. Who designed it? It’s powerful and stands out.
Coosh: He put out a contest on the internet or something. I’m not sure of all the details.
Pete: So, there was a contest, and I can’t remember the website, but me and Coosh started the band, and we didn’t even have a guitarist yet or anything, but we did a logo, and made it on one of these online logo makers, but somehow, they made it a competition. People could put in their suggestions for us. We could put ‘these are the colors we want’, ‘it’s heavy metal and rock’, ya know, and we got back some crazy suggestions.Â
(laughter)
Pete: Some people didn’t realize we were a band and thought we were a lawn company or something.
(laughter)
This one guy was from Indonesia, and that logo you see was his creation. We didn’t even have the album yet, but we had the logo. That was it! We were so psyched. That’s been the logo ever since.
MaM: So, I went down the rabbit hole and checked out your entire discography. Man, not a single bad song. Not a one. You could put all your songs on a playlist and not have to skip a single one. No lie.
Pete and Coosh:Â Thank you.
MaM: Seriously, though, you are so tight as a band, and you can tell you are seasoned musicians, and that you are on a mission to bring this type of music back to the forefront. Your sound is what is missing today in music, which leads me to ask: what inspires your creativity, and what do you each bring to the mix with that?
Pete: Well, for one, we would never put something on that we didn’t love, and so how we approach each song is that they have to be different from each other, so most of the music comes from me. I’ll write it, put it together, pre-produce it, and then it goes to Coosh. He’s the melody guy. We both work on lyrics. We’re very focused on lyrics. What we’re saying, how we’re saying it … we want to say it … but we don’t want to give it all away. We want it to remain open to interpretation. We want to tell a story and stimulate you to think about what the song and lyrics mean to you, but it starts with the music, and the music has to have groove.
Sometimes, I’ll have a melody idea, but Coosh usually takes my melody and makes it ten times better, or eliminates it, and comes up with his own. He gets a feel from the music and a working title, and that’s how it starts. It’s got to have groove and melody, though. If there’s no melody, there’s no groove, and there’s no dynamic. That’s what we try to create.
MaM: Coosh, what inspires your lyrics with these songs?
Coosh: So, like Pete says, he’s the one who creates the music, but before he hands it off to me, he has the essence of the song planned out. He’ll go, ‘I hear a couple fighting with this,’ or something to that nature, and he gets this moment with the music where he relays the information to me, and I want to be able to put out his feelings, too, so I take that initial form and then go from there.Â
MaM: Now, Coosh, let’s talk about your voice. The range, soul, and depth! Is there anything you do to keep your voice in shape?
Coosh: I didn’t use to do anything, but now I do these scales and humming. I’m no spring chicken anymore, so I have to do maintenance these days. A lot of the songs are hard for me to sing, so sometimes, I prefer doing a cover because it’s easier for me to sing than anything we’ve done in the studio.Â
(laughter)
MaM: Yeah, man, when I first heard a few songs, I thought it had a very Bruce Dickinson vibe from Iron Maiden, and just the vocal range, I’m like ‘Dude!’ You have got some pipes on you. You don’t sound like anybody out there right now. So, a new EP came out in March, and now a new single, ‘Yesterday’s Future’, was released in April. However, I noticed that you have been steadily releasing singles as a lead-up to the EP, but you are still releasing singles after it. How did the EP come together, and what made you decide to release it instead of just the singles?
Pete: In the old days, you’d put out an album, and then bands would just put out more albums every year or every few years, and we could do that. We have the five original songs on the EP, but then we also have five in our back pocket. We did five, but we have ten. We didn’t want to release the whole album because if you do, you might get a review or something, and then people move on to the next thing.
The best method we’ve found is to spoon-feed it out. Give as many songs as a highlight, a video, and their artwork. It’s like a slow release of all your music. Additionally, you have to play the Spotify game, and Spotify is particularly friendly to bands like us who are doing that. We’re finding it’s also more content for us, social media-wise, and so we can remain relevant all year long. We’re staying ahead of the game. We have those five more songs, so they’ll be more content, more artwork, and pretty soon we’ll be working on new material that you’ll see sometime next year, so it’s just constant content from Who On Earth. Whereas I waited 13 years for a new Tool album.
(laughter)
MaM: Have you found that all your numbers reflect one thing, but then people are just not coming to the shows?
Pete: Yeah, oh yeah. Coosh and I have seen it. Yeah, we have great numbers, but to get people to get off their ass and come out, yeah. They’ll see the tribute bands, the cover bands, who cost more to see, and we’re only charging $10 to get in. We’re not making any money on this.
(laughter)
And it used to be, again, when we were younger, you would go out to hang out, and there would be bands playing, and it was part of your life. Now, it’s hard. People will stay in because of rain, and we had venues close because of COVID, so if you’re a bar band or a tribute band, you’re killing it.
MaM:Â Same here
Pete: If you’re an original band or even a line-up of three or four original bands, it’s tough.Â
MaM: We’re finding the same here, too. So, I wanted to talk about this ‘Hold the Line’ cover. I’m a HUGE fan of Toto, especially this song, and ‘Africa’ is my jam. If I’m in the supermarket, and it comes on, I will stop what I am doing, and it’s my moment.
(laughter)
MaM: So, this cover … doesn’t even sound anything like the original song at all. It’s reimagined. Take me through how you decided to go with this song.Â
Coosh: We had a handful of songs we were looking at, and how do you pick the perfect cover song to do? We’re going back and forth, throwing around ideas, and ‘Hold the Line’ came into play. I was around the house, staying at Pete’s house, and all of a sudden, I started singing this thing, and the part where he goes ‘TiiiiIIMMEE’, I was like, ‘That’s IT!!’ Look no further!
(laughter)
Pete: (sings) Love isn’t always on ‘TIME!’
(laughter)
Pete: I was like, ‘That’s it!’, and I was hooked. You know what’s great about that song is it’s popular, but it’s not like ‘Stairway to Heaven’, and we wanted to remake it, not cover it. His distinct voice, tuning it down, double bass drums, changing some lines, taking out the keyboards, and adding a different guitar. I wanted to do it because of his vocals. When we jammed it, I knew that was the one. The inflection that he used, and the balls that he sang it with. Cause it’s a yacht rock song classic, and I hate yacht rock.Â
(laughter)
MaM: Same – not a fan of yacht rock, but I do love me some Toto.
Pete: I do like some Christopher Cross songs, too, but that’s what my parents listened to.
(laughter)
MaM:Â Right!
Pete:Â Holy crap! Coosh, we did a yacht rock classic before the yacht rock tribute stuff started blowing up!Â
(laughter)
MaM: Do you have a favorite song to perform, and if so, which one?
Coosh: Just because it’s the most emotional, I’ll have to go with ‘Watch the Fires Burn’. I guess you could say it’s our environmental song, but it’s a heartfelt message of having the passion as a society to take care of the planet. All of us. Pete did this when he was like 18 or 19 years old, and it’s excellent, and I didn’t know what to do with it when he first handed it to me, but it has this great dynamic and has so much emotion.
Pete: Yeah, that song I wrote when I was in my very early 20s, and it was called ‘Matter of Life and Death’, and I wrote it about abortion. That’s a topic; at the time, and it was from the perspective of the unborn child. Like, ‘Hey, what about me?’ I didn’t want to go there with it in this day and age, so I was thinking, what’s a great and important topic? I’m sitting here watching the Amazon burning, and I’m like, ah, watch the fires burn. Not so much about hey, stop burning our trees, but we’re all just sitting back here watching this. Somebody has got to do something about it, and nobody is doing anything about it. To Coosh’s point, you can take that and broaden it to a lot of topics. It’s just about sitting back and watching things go to waste. But the song itself, its ups and downs … it’s a six-minute song, and some songs need to be six minutes. As long as you’re doing something different in it, and then, man, it’s heavy … it’s got groove. It’s got funk.
MaM: Yes, lots of tempo changes.
Pete:Â Tempo changes, which our producer always makes fun of me for, but I love tempo changes.Â
MaM: I do, too. It keeps the song interesting.
Pete:Â Playing it live is really fun.
MaM: Which song do you feel is the crowd favorite and gets people most engaged?
Pete: I’m gonna say ‘Black Swan’.
MaM: I made a note on my notes about that song, actually.
Pete: Coosh may disagree, but he does a great job of coaching the crowd to sing along, and it’s got this chorus that allows everyone to get involved.
MaM: So, Coosh, your vocals, let me ask you … you have range like I haven’t heard in a long time, so obviously you’ve been doing this a while. When did you first discover you had a gift for singing with such a powerful voice to do rock music?
Coosh: I’m not a rock music guy, so that’s the crazy part. When I was in my early 20s, we would all do the karaoke thing, but I would stick to songs like ‘Suspicious Minds’, and it was all a great time. Everyone enjoyed it, but I ended up buying a karaoke company, singing, and becoming a host, until one day, a buddy came in. He mentioned he had lost the lead singer of his band, and I went up and sang ‘Drops of Jupiter’ for him by Train, and that was it. I was in.Â
MaM: What would you like to see in the next five years as far as your music and audience?
Pete: I’d love to see it all continue to grow. We understand we need to keep working hard. I like what we’re doing, too, but I want it all to gather momentum, and I want to keep playing shows. Maybe even go on a small tour, even if it’s regional. Want to get out there live. There is nothing like the impression you leave on someone after they see you perform live.
Coosh: I’d love to figure out how to get the exposure we need and get people to listen to the song more than once. Most of the time, you have to listen to a song twice and be attentive to it. We’re not a regular band. Most of our songs tell stories because they’re relatable. We have inspiration. We have devastation. We have messages about life. We have stories that people need to hear.Â
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As Who On Earth continues to grow their brand and presence, they are sure to inspire and leave a lasting impression on music fans for generations to come. Check out their music on your favorite streaming service, and if you live nearby, be sure to catch a live show. You won’t regret it—these guys deliver a powerful sound!
*cover photo provided by band
*other photos by Jeff Crespi
To learn more about Who On Earth:
Questions or comments? Reach out to mixedalternativemag@gmail.com.