DE Arts & Entertainment Editor

Watching guitar-oriented bands does not usually require much from the crowd besides participatory cheers between songs, bobbing of the head to the steady bass beat or clenched fists thrown toward the stage. But the rock band Full On the Mouth wanted to see a little more action from crowds so they merged more danceable beats into its rock mix for a common ground between guitar heavy pop and industrial rock.

We got tired of having to go into a new venue, a new town and play to people who just stood there and watched, guitarist Grant Mohrman said. We wanted to incorporate the electronic element as a common denominator so that someone could just walk in, and never heard our music and still get into it without having to know the music.

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If there’s one thing you can do, you can walk into any dance club and whether you know the music or not you can dance to it.

Full On the Mouth will bring more than eight years of experience to the Copper Dragon Brewing Co. stage, 700 E. Grand Ave., Thursday night. Sharing the stage that night will be Burnt McMelba Toast.

Adding a digital sound to Full On the Mouth’s steady flow of rock n’ roll has created an interesting potpourri of amplified dance beats driven by flaming guitar work. The band’s strengths lie within this expanded clash of sound on its aptly titled debut album Collide, and the combination is best heard on songs such as Rainbow and the world’s first digital-video-disc single People Mover.

The Flint, Mich. natives were helped into the danceable digital realm by Blumpy, Collide producer. Blumpy has programmed and remixed tunes for such artists as Filter, Henry Rollins and My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult.

But Mohrman, who’s early session credits include the fervent guitar on Republica’s massive single Ready to Go, and Blumpy shared such conflicting musical tastes that the musical transition almost never came about.

Blumpy came from the opposite side of the world from me. He grew up listening to synth-pop music, Mohrman said. If you had told me when I initially met him that we were going to work so well together, I would have said, You’re high.’

But because he came from such an opposite mind set, he opened my mind up to a lot of things that might have been clich or overdone, so that was very beneficial to us.

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Though teaming up with Blumpy turned into a wise decision, the process of finding the right sound took the musicians more than an extended stay in the studio. Full On the Mouth worked and worked on the tunes until they eventually came up with the material that what would eventually end up on Collide.

And the album works on different levels, most importantly its industrial dance angle that takes nothing away from the basic rock elements. But the songs survive past just a few listens because they are catchy whether lively or sullen and show the band was unafraid to take risks or look for help to shape up and improve the music.

I think a lot of bands, well maybe just musicians, tend to be overprotective of their music, Mohrman said. It’s their passion. The thing we learned a long time ago is that if you open yourself up and you allow professionals like Blumpy to work with you on your music it opens so many more doors.

FACTOID:Full On the Mouth will begin the two-band showcase about 10 p.m. Thursday. There is no cover.

For information, call 549-2319.