It’s Sunday, November 25th, 2007. Welcome to Navel Gazing, your look back at this week in Punknews. It’s Grey Cup night and I know that our primarily American audience is too enthralled with the Saskatchewan / Winnipeg game to care for my silly intro, so I’ll get right to it.

The people must have something good to read on a Sunday

I can’t find much of a common theme amongst this week’s stories, but we did have some fascinating insights from a number of punk personalities. Brad Logan of Leftover Crack spoke about the cancellation of the band’s Canadian tour, putting the blame on a criminal record and some info the border authorities found on MySpace. Angels & Airwaves‘ Tom Delonge has seemingly shed his messiah complex, revealing past drug abuse to MTV and generally starting to make sense again. Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal wrote an essay on selling out, looking to see if the label is even relevant today. Fall Out Boy got into some trouble by basing their tour artwork on Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, forcing the band to change it. Radiohead continued to deflate the hype surrounding their digital release, chocking it up to a stunt thought up by management. Of course not a week goes by without more lunacy from the various industry trade groups. This week the MPAA attempted to justify tying college funding to anti-piracy initiatives.

We had the first slate of tour dates from the 2008 Fat Tour featuring NOFX, No Use For A Name and the Flatliners. BYO act A Global Threat has called it quits. We saw a trailer for One Nine Nine Four: Documenting the Birth, Growth and Explosion of Punk Rock in the 90s as well as the new video from Canadian pop-punk act Gob. We had a number of updates on new releases, including a studio video from the Loved Ones and a recording progress update from Millencolin. Pennywise also revealed an ambitious plan to curious plan to release and ad-supported album through MySpace.

We were also brought news of the death of Hawthorne Heights guitarist Casey Calvert (1981-2007). Our condolences go out to his family and friends.

This week featured one of our more interesting interview features in recent memory. Norman Brannon of Texas is the Reason and Shelter, author of The Anti-Matter Anthology: A 1990s Post-Punk & Hardcore Reader, interviews and Rob Fish of 108 in a two part feature looking back at the hardcore scene which spawned the book. You can check out part 1 and part 2. The eighteenth edition of Vinyl File featured a conversation with Steve Stevenson, better known as Stevo! from 1-2-3-4 Go! Records. Our Editors’ Picks of the week featured music from New Jersey’s Endgame. We brought you new music this week including the lead track off This Is Hell‘s new 7″ Cripplers, and six songs from NOFX‘s upcoming live album They’ve Actually Gotten Worse Live.
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Deathwish and Malfunction have posted a new label sampler. The release features songs from the most recent Deathwish/Malfunction releases. Bands featured include: Trash Talk, Trap Them, Shipwreck a.d., Pulling Teeth, Blacklisted, 108, The Great Deceiver, The Hope Conspiracy, Ceremony, Reign Supreme, Internal Affairs, Meltdown, Bitter End, and Life Long Tragedy.

You can stream the sampler here or download it here.
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Engineer have sent us a few updates for the end of the year. First off, SpeakYourHeart are heading into the studio this weekend and starting the recording work on their next This is how we communicate. Then they’ll be heading back to the UK to show off their new songs. They’ll be recording at The Mighty Atom studios in rural Wales where Funeral For A Friend.

HSD will also be the studio in Austria recording a new album in December. So are Sketch.

My So Called Life will be touring throughout the UK all through December before going into the studio early next year as well. They’ll also be releasing a “reworking” of Revenge Against the Black Hearted Fairies on a split vinyl with New Jersey’s Red Light Green Light.

Ryan Mills of Kover is also over in Europe on tour very soon and anyone wanting to book him should contact Dami at No Reason Booking.

The three-way split between Elemae, Memorial and Soon is finished. The release will feature a new “concept video” from Elemae as well as a video track from Soon.

And finally there will be new releases from Madeleine (Germany), Junior Achiever (Canada) and Piledriver (Phillipines) in the pipeline too.

The label is looking for artistic help for most of these releases, so if you’re so inclined drop them a line.
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