David Peters, frontman of hardcore/metal act Throwdown recently sent a letter to industry watcher/guru Bob Lefsetz about the impact of downloading. Lefsetz, a former industry executive and frequent commentator has advocating massive overhauls to the way music is sold and artists are compensated. Peters explained his feelings on downloading:

We have sold around 200k records across 3 releases. We’re not ‘huge’ by any stretch but do alright and live off (and ON subsequently) the road. Fans and friends ask me all the time how I feel about “stealing music.” I just told someone yesterday “I have a hard time seeing it as stealing…when I don’t see any money from cd sales to begin with. What are they actually TAKING from me?”

If you want to squeeze an opinion on theft out of me, ask me about the dude that grabbed our tshirt off the table tonight in Detroit or better yet.. ask me about record contracts.

I encourage our fans to acquire our album however they please. The philosophy I’ve adopted is that if you’re supporting disc sales, you’re keeping the old model around longer…the one that forces dudes like me to tour 9 mos/year if they want to make ends meet with a career in music. If you wanna really support a band, “steal” their album….help bury the label….and buy a tshirt when you show up at their show and sing every word.

Throwdown celebrated their 10th anniversary this year, some of those early members went on to form Eighteen Visions and Bleeding Through.
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Influential Californian thrashers Suicidal Tendencies will hit the road on the US west coast in November alongside Richmond’s Municipal Waste. The pairing will kick things off in late November in Tucson, AZ and will wrap up in Last Vegas in early December.

Municipal Waste recently released The Art of Partying via Earache.
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A Life Once Lost have posted the latest video from their 2007 full length, Iron Gag. It is the follow-up to Hunter which was released in 2005.

Source Continue reading A Life Once Lost: “Firewater Joyride” →

According to a new Billboard article, with their new album Coheed and Cambria is aiming to produce their most accessible material to date. It also almost didn’t happen after the loss of two members last year.

Frontman/songwriter Claudio Sanchez explained:

That’s really why we named the new album ‘No Word For Tomorrow,’t has its place in the concept, but for a moment there Travis (Stever, guitarist) and myself felt that this band wasn’t going to move forward due to losing half of us. There was a moment of doubt

As for accessibility, Claudio noted:

That wasn’t a conscious decision on the band’s part, but when I listen to it, yeah, it feels that way, There was certainly a moment for me where I was a little concerned, like ‘Oh my God — this is the record we wrote?’ It kind of caught me by surprise.

The record is titled Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World For Tomorrow and is due out October 23, 2007

In related news, the band has posted another one of their “enigmatic” video previews.
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Avenged Sevenfold will be trying something a little different with their upcoming album. An “Interactive DVD” with the record, titled Avenged Sevenfold, will be simultaneously released with the traditional CD. The disc will include “Making Of” features, a studio tour, pre-encoded MP3s for each song, ringtones and a PDF booklet and various digital knick-knacks.

The pre-encoded versions of the songs may be an interesting innovation for the label, particularly since most users will “rip” songs into a version that can be loaded on an iPod or other MP3 player. Though the press release promises the pre-encoded songs, the webstore makes no mention of the pre-encoded songs.

The DVD release may also be interesting since DVDs are not easily “ripped” and thus may prove to be more “piracy proof” than traditional CDs. The band’s label, Warner Music, has frequently experimented with new formats, having previously released “DVD-A” versions of albums like Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. and is due out October 16, 2007
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These Arms Are Snakes have revealed some more details about their upcoming projects, which include the recently announced split with Pelican and cover of Nirvana‘s “Heart-Shaped Box.”

We have formed a temporary partnership with our comrades in Pelican and combined our forces into a two-song barrage due out on HydraHead before the year’s end. For those of you who happened to attend the Pelican/TAAS show at Islington Academy in London earlier this year, you know at least half of what to expect: eight dudes barreling through “Pink Mammoth”. however, no one is prepared for the inverse portion of the project: when Pelican lends their thunder to one of our songs. Hell, we don’t even know what it sounds like cuz we ain’t done with that shit yet. our guess is that it will be, if nothing else, really fucking loud.

In addition, we have agreed to take part in a tribute to Nirvana’s “In Utero” record which is slated to come out sometime before the end of the world on Robotic Empire. after missing the boat on staking claim to our number one choice (“Scentless Apprentice”), and honoring the “don’t-tread-on-yr-friend’s-ideas” rule by passing on our number two choice (Harkonen covered “Milk It” on a limited edition Portugese CDEP), we settled on “Heart Shaped Box”. part of us really wanted to go all out and try to somehow make “All Apologies” sound ragged and nasty, but we figured the Box was a little more up our alley.

After much deliberation, arguing, and experimentation, we got that shit down on tape (or rather, on a hard drive). i’m not sure what to say about our take on it. we tried slowing it down, changing the key, altering the dynamics…. all kinds of shit. but ultimately, it kinda just sounded better the way Nirvana did it. so don’t be expecting any sort of drastic reinvention of Kurt’s material. i dunno, maybe we were meant to be a grunge band…

Source Continue reading These Arms Are Snakes announce more details on split, Nirvana tribute →

Panic! At the Disco recently spoke about their decision to scrap the second attempt at a follow up to their successful debut, a href=”http://www.punknews.org/review/4484″>A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out.

Guitarist Ryan Ross gave the status update:

We’re taking a lot longer than we thought we would. It’s almost as if we were writing two records. We did almost an entire album and then started over, so at the moment we’re trying to catch up, but we’re all really happy with the songs right now and we’ll be done by February

There was definitely a vibe when we came off tour playing the same songs (from the first album) for like two years, that, when we started writing, we started doing way different stuff. Then halfway through we realised it didn’t feel like us.

The band had made their attempt at a isolated cabin studio in Nevada but have returned to their hometown of Las Vegas to work on the record.
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Wednesday night in Brooklyn, the Ergs! covered “Screaming at a Wall” in “honor” of the “passing” of a hardcore legend, as the lovable pop-punk dorks put it. It was awesome. They applied the icing when they ended the set with “Bikeage”; yeah, you’re jealous.

If you’re keeping score, Cloak/Dagger put on a great set too.

• Hot Hot Heat doles out their new album, Happiness Ltd., most likely in large quantities
• Every Time I Die unleashes their fourth full-length, The Big Dirty
• Henry Rollins brings his spoken word tour to West Palm Beach, FL
• Ramonetober continues this update with a look at 1985’s Too Tough to Die
• More at the reviews page

Source Continue reading Friday, October 5, 2007 →

Manchester Orchestra stopped by Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island last week. While not attending classes, the band did take the opportunity to drop in at the campus radio station WBRU to play some acoustic tracks and do an interview.

The interview as well as performances of ‘Wolves at Night,” “Colly Strings” and “Where Have You Been?” can be downloaded here.

The band most recently released I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child in 2006.
Source Continue reading Manchester Orchestra records acoustic songs at WBRU →

While much of the discussion about peer-to-peer concerns mainstream music, a “former music buyer” has written an open letter to the recording industry from the perspective of a underground metal fan. The letter is particularly interesting since it touches on many of the issues faced by fans of music that might not be stocked in every retail store, and the benefits of peer-to-peer for underground artists.

As the buyer explains:

Where would I have found out about [some] bands and made a decision to purchase their album online (because no record store that I have found in Canada carries either one). [..] However, I have yet to see their new album sold in any store in Canada, and I ultimately had to buy a copy from a UK website. Considering the only place I had heard about this album was having downloaded it fdo you really expect anyone to make this kind of effort to buy an album without ever having heard it?

I listen to some things that I don’t like, and consequently, I don’t buy those albums. What I do like, I buy, or at least I used to, before your decision intended to stop me from hearing new music.

It does raise some good questions, and also covers one of the more ambiguous aspects of the entire file sharing debate. Do people who download music that they like become buyers of that music or are they simply downloading to avoid paying the fair price for the album? Or, to put it another way, does downloading help or hinder independent and underground music?

You can check out the letter here.
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Pepper have announced a headlining tour featuring The Expendables and Passafire. The band continues to support their 2006 album, No Shame, as well as their recent rarities comp. To Da Max .

Source Continue reading Tours: Pepper / The Expendables →

The Militia Group act Juliette and the Licks have announced tour dates in support of their recent album Four on the Floor. Four on the Floor is the follow-up to the band’s 2005 debut You’re Speaking My Language.

Source Continue reading Tours: Juliette and the Licks →

Eyeball Records has announced plans to release a compilation benefiting To Write Love on Her Arms, a non-profit movement set to help young people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. The benefit, titled Eyeball Awareness Vol. 1, will hit stores on October 16th. It is the first of four planned releases in the series, which will be augmented with companion pieces running on EyeballRecords.com. Artwork for the series is being solicited from “community minded artists.” Eyeball GM Marc Debiak commented in the press release:

The idea of our sampler series is to raise awareness for a different cause every season. It seemed appropriate that for the fall edition of the sampler, we should look first at the people around us and take an interest in their well being. To Write Love On Her Arms delivers a beautiful and selfless message of caring for the people within your reach and we’re thrilled to provide this sampler as another vehicle for the delivery of that message.

The compilation will be debuted at this year’s CMJ Marathon where 6,000 copies will be distributed to attendees. CDs will also be included with every purchase from the label’s store with a portion of all proceeds going to the charity. The release feature the Number 12 Looks Like You, Sleep Station, Pompeii, Kiss Kiss, Jetti, New Atlantic and the new single “In Your Stead” from Eyeball’s Baumer.
Source Continue reading Eyeball Records to release benefit compilation for depression awareness →