The Rods carved a nice little career for themselves in the early 80's, basically coming across as an American version of Motorhead in spirit, a loud power trio cranking out blue-collar, anthemic hard rock tunes. By 1986 they had expanded to a four-piece on Heavier Than Thou and soon closed their career with the Hollywood album, which was intended to be an entirely different project but ended up released under the Rods name. Apart from their music, they are notable since founder David Feinstein is the cousin of none other than Ronnie James Dio, and they performed together in Elf in the early 70's. Drummer Carl Canedy later became a respected record producer, and still performs as a session drummer. Feinstein left the music business in the mid-nineties but suddenly returned to the music scene in 2003, forming a new band simply called Feinstein.

At some point the original trio reunited, and so the Rods are back. A new album is planned for spring 2008.