Pennywise‘s experiment with free online distribution has apparently turned into a major success for the band. According to an OC Register report, the album has been downloaded more than 400,000 times and has resulted in the band’s highest charting single to date. The track, “The Western World” debuted at No. 34 on Billboard’s Hot Modern Rock Tracks.

The band commented:

The minute you give away something free, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Are we gonna sell 10 records? Are we gonna do 100,000, or 5,000, or 500,000? We don’t know. It’s never been done. But we figured, worst-case scenario, we’re gonna be able to get our music and our message out to potentially millions of people at the click of a button.

The whole time that this stock market of music has been busy spiking and plunging, we’ve just been down here cruising along. We’ve had success, but it’s come in these tiny little increments. We never wanted to be rock stars – we still don’t.

The band was equally blunt about the dissolving of their lengthy relationship with Epitaph:

No one was really excited about doing the next Pennywise record at Epitaph. You could almost sense it in the air there: ‘We love you guys, but we gotta do something new.

In regards to downloading, they noted:

Who goes to buy a new pair of pants without trying them on, you know? If you’re a band you should be so confident in your music you can say, ‘Here, try it. If you like it, buy it.’

You can find the rest of the interview here.
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In a surprising story, some anti-emo fans in Mexico have apparently taken things a little too far. According to Daniel Hernandez, who is covering the story, the spark came first in Queretaro earlier this month. An estimated 800 young people poured into the city’s Centro Historico hunting for kids sporting “emo” looks.

By the next weekend, it had spread to Mexico City, where emo kids faced off at the Glorieta de Insurgents. There have also been reports of anti-emo violence in Durango, Colima, and elsewhere. The LA Weekly music blog notes:

In Mexico, emo culture is a butt of many jokes. It is either despised intensely or generally ignored. But it’s only the despising sentiment that lately has been getting wide airplay. In the above clip, a Televisa on-air personality named Kristoff expresses a serious dose of anti-emo rhetoric and switches to English to say, on network television, “Fucking bullshit” to the emo movement. Some emos I’ve interviewed point to the Kristoff clip as a defining provocation of the current wave of anti-emo violence.

Note. The art you see to the left is by Rob Dobi.
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Lemuria have posted a live video for the song “Hours” on their MySpace page. The song is from their first collection of songs, appropriately titled The First Collection.

The Buffalo band most recently released Get Better on Asian Man Records.

Source Continue reading Lemuria: “Hours” →

Lemuria have posted a live video for the song “Hours” on their MySpace page. The song is from their first collection of songs, appropriately titled The First Collection.

The Buffalo band most recently released Get Better on Asian Man Records.

Source Continue reading Lemuria “Hours” →

Bayside have posted the latest video from The Walking Wounded.

Source Continue reading Bayside: “Carry On” →

Atreyu have posted the new video from their 2007 major label debut, Lead Sails, Paper Anchors. Plans were recently announced for a deluxe reissue of the album. The reissued record is due out April 15, 2008 and will feature three new studio recordings, video profiles of the band, behind the scenes footage from the road, a digital booklet and other content.

You can find the video for “Falling Down” right here.
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Sybris have launched a full album stream of their new full length, Into The Trees. The record is due out June 03, 2008 and is the follow-up to Sybris which was released in 2005 on Flameshovel.

You can check out the stream here.
Source Continue reading Sybris: “Into the Trees” →

Nashville-based hardcore act Mankind has posted a new track titled “Omega.” The song will appear on their forthcoming self-titled EP, which the band will self-release in late April. You can check out the track on MySpace.

Indianapolis reggae-punk act Lockstep (ex-members of Naptones and No Reason Given) has posted a new song titled “Last Time Again,” from their recently released 7″ of the same name. You can check out the song on MySpace.

Get Bent, a new band from Queens, NY featuring members of Potboiler (now defunct), Down In The Dumps and Red & Blue, has posted two songs from their new demo. Check out the songs or buy the demo here.

Source Continue reading Mankind, Lockstep, Get Bent →