the lions are at the door

epicartsentertainment:

To celebrate the release of their latest album, ‘Sainthood’, Tegan and Sara announced a European tour, the oh so imaginatively named Sainthood tour. On the 14th November, the two girls along with their band and their crew, and a very strange supporting act that went by the name Astronautalis, rolled into Manchester. The line outside (I’ve heard) began at some point around midday. I hope you all remember the times where you’d queue for hours to see your favourite bands, because the girls at the front of this queue weren’t your typical 14 year olds with nothing better to do than wait for hours to see their favourite band, they battled through the atrocious rain that seemed to appear every time Tegan and Sara step foot in Manchester, and kept their place at the front of the queue (while some of us were smart enough to go find somewhere warm, for an all you can eat chinese buffet).

Now the thing I’ve noticed when it comes to Tegan and Sara’s support acts, is that you never really know what you’re going to find when the first ‘band’ hits the stage. Last year, on their spring tour, we were graced with Northern State, and on their one off London and Glasgow shows, you had An Horse. This time, a white guy, in a shirt and tie that looked nothing more than a sound check guy strolled onto the stage with his macbook in hand and began to rap, advising people to steal from their friends and to drop out of college, only to later inform them that everything he had said onstage up until that point was a lie. Though his degree in ‘lighting design’ had thus far gotten him nowhere, after all, he was stood infront of several hundred girls, and a few guys, rapping his way through his set and reminiscing about his friendship with Tupac Shakur. This guys name was ‘Astronautalis’ whom you can check out here. I can probably say that 99% of the room, those of us that weren’t at the London show the night before, were stood, jaws dropped at the sight of this guy putting his heart and soul into something so ridiculous and entertaining, and being so humbled to be on tour with Tegan and Sara.

Tegan and Sara, the two sisters who can put on more than a show, they took the stage next. And I’m pretty sure that their show is so obscenely long purely so that they can fill it with their unprepared banter and chats with the crowd. They came on to the sounds of Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows, bursting straight into the Con. Two competely contrasting styles of music, but with these girls, they can get away with murder. I won’t say much about their set, considering it was made up of oldies and new songs that were a delight to everybodies ears because, the way they perform is something magic. But the real treat when you go to a Tegan and Sara show is how completely entertaining they are, and how personal they make it. With a drunk girl screaming ‘you wot you wot’ up to the stage, and Sara taking this as an opportunity to engage with the crowd and mock the girl completely harmlessly, you can’t help but love them. Little anecdotes between songs, that usually come from Tegan have the crowd laughing ridiculously, especially when we hear all about Tegan’s fear of bees and how this resulted in a broken window in one of her first apartments. Hint: girlfriend, shoe, Tegan screaming. Sara’s own attempt at giving some sort of background story behind one of their new songs meant the crowd twisted her words, embarrassing her, Tegan saying she wasn’t being embarrassed, that the hairflip was because she was being slutty, “this isn’t even about Christina, it’s about her mom!” Out of all of the times that I’ve seen these girls, I can say that in a smaller venue they shine more than ever, and I can promise you, if you go to a Tegan and Sara show, you’ll have a hard time not laughing.

See more photos from the show here, keep up with their tour goings on here, and see their upcoming shows in Europe, Canada and the states here.

this took too long to write, thanks firefox for eating my posts and making me start all over again.

epicartsentertainment:

Reading Festival opened it’s gates on Wednesday 26th evening to thousands of happy campers completely stoked on three days of pure live music and partying in fields, that for the most part of the year act as a livestock farm but for these few days they serve as camping grounds an a place to get fucked up and have an all round good time for those lucky enough to get their hands on a weekend ticket for this festival. However, I’d be here all year if I was going to attempt to write about every band that played (plus it wasn’t physically possible to watch all of the bands on the line-up) so instead, you get a review of a select few of the bands that I actually paid attention to.

Friday kicked off to the sounds of Manchester Orchestra on the Radio 1/NME stage and from the point of view of somebody who saw them play a 200 capacity venue two and a half years ago, to see them play to a few thousand people was pretty damn wonderful, especially since Andy Hull in true form with his giant beard was pouring his heart and soul into the performance, though they didn’t really play any old songs, or well, none that I recognised from I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child, the band’s debut album (though being fair, they had only played the festival two years before and possibly covered all of that back then) but you could tell they were genuinely enjoying themselves, especially the moment the broke out into I’ve Got Friends. You couldn’t possibly pick flaws from their set, especially given that they’re a band that aren’t quite so well known in the UK and their set time was 12:45pm, and really, that was probably when people were starting to roll out of their tents.

Next up were Funeral For a Friend gracing the mainstage and though their set was plagued with problems, they made the very most of it. Basically, a few songs into their set and the rain wasn’t letting up (not that it was severe, but apparently Britain can’t deal with a few drops) and the power cut out. So much to the bands despair they hung around the stage for a little while trying to figure out what the fuck was going, and walked off leaving the drummer to keep the crowd entertained with some drumfills while they sorted out whatever problems had arisen. And though they had to cut their set a few songs short, it was almost godlike when the sun began to shine again for the band and the equipment all finally began to work. Though to be honest, Matt’s hick mustache and mullet hair is starting to worry me.

Taking the mainstage right after Funeral For a Friend were Fall Out Boy and if I’m completely honest, I was peaking drunk point at this moment in time, but I enjoyed it all the same. Even though they had to deal with all of the problems regarding Patrick Stump’s arrest and what have you, the proceeded to make a joke out of it, not even skirting around the subject when Patrick Stump piped up with “I went to jail!” and Pete refering to Stump’s experience as his “dream come true.” They had the crowd laughing, even those that were waiting for the next band on stage, and even those that were ripping into people that were waiting to watch Fall Out Boy. Overall, they were impressive, and honestly, after seeing their performance I can’t really dislike Wentz much anymore, even if he acts more like a chimp in person than on screen.

After this it was a trundle over to the Lock Up stage where you could catch Anti Flag doing their bit. And honestly, this was one of the highlights of the weekend for me, but that might have just been because I’d been waiting years to see them after having vivid memories of being a preteen and playing playstation to the sounds of this band. And even if on my way into the tent I heard shouts of “let Billy Talent on already” it just started to amuse me of the fact that people can’t appreciate a good punk band every now and then. But it was nice to see a band so humbled to be on a stage following bands like Leftover Crack and The Bouncing Souls who were there from the beginning, dispelling all of the “sexism, racism, and homophobic bullshit”. Still they joked around with the crowd, making jokes out of people on the front row with their hat turned to the side by saying things as “I’m sorry sir but I feel that if you can’t put your hat on the right way I don’t feel like you can count to four. So we gotta practice it.” Knowing full well that he’d be wrong and offering him a “kiss on the mouth” for an apology.

Friday was meant to be wrapped up watching Kings of Leon, but apparently, Reading Festival and Kings of Leon were something that was not going to get along well. A band that are known for their volatile relationship and a lead singer that likes a good drink every now and then but stops himself on stage to avoid from puking went back on their word. Caleb was out of his tree and drinking on stage and the band were completely cold and rude towards the audience. One big problem I’ve gained over the past few days is the way in which Kings of Leon behaved, it’s easy to expect that if you release two absolutely huge songs that people are going to want to hear them (especially when all you could hear in the campsites on the build up to their sets was people singing Sex on Fire), and you can’t exactly fill your set with album tracks when you’re a headlining act to a crowd of potentially tens of thousands of people and Followill lashed out to the crowd shouting things like “We know you’re sick of Kings of Leon. We’re fucking sick of Kings of Leon too. But we get up here every night and I thank God for everything I’ve had. So for all those who don’t give a fuck about us, I understand. But we’ve worked hard to be here. We’re the goddamn Kings of Leon, so fuck you.” And come on, you’re the last band on the bill, every single person in your crowd was there to see nobody but you. And leaving the stage after smashing your guitars and flipping the bird to all of those that actually bothered to stay after you blazed them, you can expect that to be damage that won’t be repaired. And really when you saw market stalls with signs on them with ‘without the uk public you’d be fucking cows in deserts’ following their set, you can tell just how annoyed people were with them.

So ‘Fuck the Kings of Leon’ was one of the chants that could be heard from the Lock Up stage whilst Billy Talent had taken the stage, and though they were shaky at the beginning of the set (though its unsurprising when a vocalist can sound so much like a screaming girl on disc) it took a while for them to warm up, and one thing I learned during this set was Rusted From The Rain is a much more intense track live than it is on the album, but the highlight of this set for me was the moment Anti Flag’s Justin Sane joined the stage for Turn Your Back. Even Kowalewicz pointed out the difference between the States and Britain when it comes to live music, and how much more the British public enjoy it. Really this night set the tone for the weekend, every single band on the bill enjoyed their time on stage (except for Kings of Leon but obviously, that’s a whole other story).

Saturday had to be my favourite day of them all, three of my favourite bands, who by the way, are all British, graced the stages, though it seemed to be a very British orientated day on the mainstage, with the only real exception being Mariachi El Bronx (also known as The Bronx, for those of you who didn’t know). Plus, that mustache on the stage while Mariachi El Bronx were playing, was pretty astounding.

For a band that had so much trouble cracking the UK public to actually pay attention to them, Fightstar proved themselves. No longer being showered with bottles because ‘that’s one of the dudes from Busted’ (that obnoxious boppy teen popband that the Jonas Brothers seem to adore so much) and no longer joked about, they had their slot on the mainstage at 12:45 and made the most of it. Getting one of the biggest pits of the whole weekend, even if you weren’t near the circle pit you knew it was going on, with the way people were kicking up dust and how completely mental people were going, it was awesome, especially how they ended on Deathcar (one of those songs that you don’t want to be anywhere near the pit for in case of actually sustaining a serious injury). Though I will say, if you want to go to a Fightstar show, make sure it’s in a smaller venue, that way you get the full effect and every single person is involved.

Enter Shikari had to be the highlight of the weekend. Honestly, if you have the chance to see this band, it isn’t something you miss out on. Those that were lucky enough to have charge in their phone and look at twitter that morning were those that were lucky enough to know about the “intimate” secret acoustic show they were doing at 2:00pm on the BBC introducing stage. With an acoustic performance of Juggernauts and No Sleep Tonight, it was interesting to see how such a loud and rowdy band can strip their songs down to be played to a small audience in an acoustic way. And the highlight of this set, especially for me, was how the band finished on Adieu, the song that brings Take To The Skies back down to earth. Their mainstage performance was however, slightly less tame, and I’m pretty sure they were as loud as humanly fucking possible. With pits breaking out left right and centre and the arena jam packed, you’d never see a band quite so happy to be right where they were, playing classic crowd pleasers like No Sssweat and the not so tame versions of No Sleep Tonight and finishing on Juggernauts, which was complete mayhem, especially when Chris piped up asking the crowd to “break the record for the most number of people crowdsurfing over the barriers”. And I’m pretty sure that the stewards had not worked that hard in all of their life, with half of the people with their feet in the air and half of the crowd throwing them towards the barriers, you can just see how ridiculous it was if you search for the video on youtube. They are, completely and truly, a band that you do not miss live.

The Blackout are one of my favourite bands to see live, mainly because they don’t care who they offend, with Sean Smith telling everybody to “get inside the tent you big gays” and dedicating a song “to everybody in the tent with a vagina”, if you can’t take a joke and you’re easily offended by shit like that, then they’re probably not the band for you, but for a band that came out of a tiny little village in Wales that once upon a time nobody had ever heard of, Methyr Tydfil, they’re loud and they’re obnoxious but that is honest to God why we love them. Especially with the way they’d mock their friends bands referring to Lostprophets as old men and claiming that their backs were starting to go, and shouting and raving about how Josh Franchesci of You Me at Six thought he was just too good to go and join them on stage for one song and grace that little crowd jammed in the Festival Republic tent. Sean Smith and Gavin Butler make a pretty astounding duo when they take to that stage, taking it in turns to mock the crowd and get the crowd to do stupid shit like crouch onto the floor as low as possible and jump after the building up to a chorus, which is slightly easier in a venue setting I will admit. But they ended the night on “I’m a Riot, You’re a Fucking Riot.” Which was true facts, everybody in that tent was a fucking riot.

Sunday was started off to Kids in Glass Houses, who had only recently finished a stint of recording their new album in Texas

I’d heard mixed opinions about Brand New’s set on the Sunday, some saying that Jesse Lacey had just taken to making animal noises down his microphone and guitar pick ups. But even if I wasn’t completely optimitic about their set I will honestly say that Brand New impressed me, though the moment they started pulling out the new songs I walked away to the bar, but continued to watch from the back on a big screen. His stage presence still isn’t up there, and Jesse Lacey ending the set by slamming his guitar down and simply saying down the microphone “thank you, we’re Brand New” is honestly, well, getting a little old. But ending on You Won’t Know will probably never ever get old. Especially when Vin Accardi hasn’t gone completely nuts being in the presence of Jesse Lacey, and can still put on a good show even if he keeps his mouth shut. Musically, they were perfect, stage presence, not so much.

It was a toss up between Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and The Gaslight Anthem and as much as I would have liked to watch Karen O dance around on stage, watching the Gaslight Anthem just seemed much more promising for a good time. And it was, with Brian Fallon running about all over the place and into the crowd to get giant foam hands and just generally making the most of playing the second biggest stage at this festival it was awesome. They started with a big track and kept the crowd engaged the entire way through the festival, even to stop to make a joke of Brand New, claiming they were nice enough guys bring them “home made cakes all the way from New York….not true but you’ll laugh anyway.” Though I’m half sure that Brian Fallon was pretty drunk through this set, not that it put a dampen on their performance, they were as lively and entertaining as ever.

Lightspeed Champion are one of those bands that are a lot more entertaining live than on CD, especially given that Dev Hynes recorded this album with Conor Oberst, but really it’s without the drugs and the drunkness that used to make Bright Eyes’ shows more appealing. However, Dev Hynes, the guitarist that was once upon a time in the oh so wonderful band Test Icicles was, also, I made my way over to the Festival Republic tent missing the tail end of Bloc Party’s set (their vocalist was pretty wasted even though their performance was astounding). But it was completely worth it, with him asking the crowd to sing along to new songs with lines such as “kill me baby, won’t you kill me” makes me more and more excited for Lightspeed Champions new album, especially when the last album included songs about being wasted and puking in your girlfriends mouth accompanied by videos of ridiculous puppets which made me incredibly uncomfortable along with Dev Hynes’ hair. But he continued to play all the songs that people would know (had they heard of Lightspeed Champion), and they were one of the highlights of my weekend.

Lostprophets were a wonderful way to wrap up the weekend. Anybody with half a braincell would have to agree. The NME tent was rammed full, side to side front to back and was spilling out in every direction from the fact that not everybody could fit in. Though after this weekend I wasn’t feeling too well I watched part from the screen outside, and you still had every ounce of the atmosphere as you did from inside the tent. Ian Watkins is a man that knows how to tame a crowd, and knows exactly what the crowd want to see, even from members of The Blackout joining them for the last couple of songs (though it seemed that Sean Smith kind of got pushed out there and stumbled right into the thick of it) not that he took that as a problem, gracing the stage with his ridiculous thick welsh accent and a “helloooooo”. They didn’t disappoint fans from any generation, from those that followed them from the off, to those that had only jumped on the wagon at Liberation Transmission, you heard songs from Liberation Transmission to Can’t Catch Tomorrow, and there was no possible way this band could go wrong by finishing the weekend to the sounds of Burn Burn, complete with members of their good friends, The Blackout.

So this post only took forever to write out, especially after Firefox got pissed that I badmouthed Kings of Leon and crashed and ate half of my hardwork, but if you want to experience a real music festival, Reading is your best bet. And out of all of the bands I saw this weekend, my top five have to be Enter Shikari, Lostprophets, the Gaslight Anthem, the Blackout and Funeral for a Friend. And I’ll even admit that Fall Out Boy were up there until they got knocked right back down again by three of the bands on that list.

i am coming to you with a dilemma

http://www.readingfestival.com/lineup/index.aspx

on thursday i am leaving for this fucking awesome music festival okay and it is going to be epic HOWEVER on friday, there are quite a few clashes in regards to bands that i want to see, so you gotta help me make up my mind, and then go on the website and help me fill things out by making suggestions about who i should see :) thank you and goodnight

friday
22:40 marmaduke duke
22:30 billy talent
22:15 faith no more
22:00 kings of leon
21:10 antiflag
20:00 alexisonfire
17:55 fall out boy
17:40 jack penate
15:40 funeral for a friend
15:45 jacks mannequin
14:45 tim minchin
14:35 new found glory
12:45 manchester orchestra

saturday
22:40 the blackout THE BLACKOUT > RISE AGAINST
22:30 rise against
21:10 thursday
20:00 the bronx
19:00 maximo park
18:25 go:audio
17:50 you me at six
16:45 set your goals
15:40 enter shikari
12:45 fightstar

sunday
22:30 lostprophets
21:30 lightspeed champion
19:55 bloc party
18:45 the gaslight anthem
17:30 vampire weekend
16:20 brand new
15:45 grammatics
14:20 music video thing
13:00 noah & the whale
12:45 3OH!3
12:00 kids in glass houses

epicartsentertainment:

For those of you who don’t know, Brand New are streaming a thirty second sample of one of their latest songs on myspace, ‘At the Bottom’, the first single to be released from the album “Daisy”. Having been a fan of Brand New from the glorious days of Your Favourite Weapon, I’ve had high hopes for this album given that I’ve never seen a band progess album to album in the way that Brand New have. Deja Entendu and The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me will forever be timeless, and it’s safe to say any Brand New fan can find themself listening to this album without any realisation of how long ago it was released. However, having seen Brand New live earlier this year, equipped with new songs and not being overly impressed, the anticipation I held for this album seemed to dwindle more and more (and even moreso when they anounced the album title as “And One Head Can Never Die” and then proceeded to change it to something even more shocking in the form of “Daisy”).

Really it comes down to the fact that if I hear one more heartbroken song from Jesse Lacey over whatever the fuck happened between him and that one chick from Eisley, I’m probably going to rip my ears off. Considering lyrics like “wait, watched you throw out your bouquet / now I think about you everyday / I’m alone now in my bed / and there’s a lake / and at the bottom you’ll find all our friends /they don’t swim cause they’re all dead,” even those who pay no real attention to Brand New whatsoever could figure out what he’s rambling on about. The vocals are unimpressive and the only thing that actually managed to impress me about this song was the music, and trust me, without the vocals this would make for a pretty grand album. I personally just hope that this thirty second clip is not going to set the tone for the new album and Brand New might just pleasantly surprise us but so far, it seems like the title of this song is pretty fitting for the state of the band at the moment, especially given that Jesse Lacey has verbalised his own concerns about the band in an interview with Kerrang! magazine:

I think a lot of the record is about us trying to make decisions about how long the band should go on. When I listened back to it, I realized how many songs are about something coming to a close, or knowing when it’s time to put something away and move on.

Plus he’s not doing the hype of the new album any favours with expressing worries about the album, and not at least pretending to act completely stoked on it:

I’m a little worried [about the new album]. It’s a pretty exhausting record. It’s quite dense and I think some of the decisions we made don’t always go in the most obvious direction. We were thinking a lot more about what we’d want to play when we were up onstage rather than actually what you’d want to hear on a record.

For now though, Brand New fans can just revel in the fact that on either side of the pond, you still have chance to seen them before any form of shit hits the fan as they’ll be playing Reading and Leeds Festivals in the UK, and touring the states along side Manchester Orchestra, Thrice, and Glassjaw on selected dates.

epicartsentertainment:

Everybody loves free music, and what’s even better than free music? Legal free music. Forty bands have donated music to the fifth release of Un-Scene, and out of forty bands, I’ve only heard of one of them - Canterbury, and that’s only because I discovered them playing at Download Festival last year while I had nothing better to do than roam around the different stages and find something actually semi-decent. Without having the chance to listen to the CD through and through just yet, I’ve skipped through a few tracks and out of forty bands, I’m pretty sure there’ll be a few you enjoy even if it ends up one of the pop-punk boppy teenager tunes that you dub a guilty pleasure.

Punktastic Un-Scene is back and better than ever! Walnut Tree Records and Punktastic.com have teamed up to bring you some of the best up and coming bands from the UK and beyond.

For the fifth installment we are supporting the work of Everyman cancer campaign who aim to stamp out prostate and testicular cancer. While this release is free to download for all, we would love it if you could visit our Just Giving page and contribute towards our fundraising for this worthy cause. More than 34,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in the UK, and more than one person an hour will die from the disease. Add this to the fact that testicular cancer is the most common form of cancer among young men – and you’ll see where we’re going with this one.

Thank you to every single band who have donated their music to this release, to Pete Duffield for his awesome artwork, to Neil at The Ranch Production House for tidying up the audio and to Paul McManus for this awesome website.

Please email any comments to punktastic@walnuttreerecords.co.uk – we’d love to hear your opinions on the releases.

Tom and Paul.

Even if you haven’t heard of a single one of these bands, and even if you don’t take note of the cause that it’s for, it’s worth the download purely for the promise of the possibility of discovering something new. Head over to http://www.walnuttreerecords.co.uk/ for the guilt-free legal download and you might just find something you enjoy.

epicartsentertainment:

It’s Tuesday May 21st and Warped Tour has rolled in to Mansfield, Massachusetts and despite the (lack of) proximity, everyone will always refer to any date in Massachusetts as “Boston”. The press area consists of a maze through catering wherein photographers and journalists are told to stay out of the way of artists, not acknowledge them, get in their way, or take candid photographs. At least the first seems virtually impossible as the door to access said area is directly behind the line that forms for buffet style catering. Soaking wet from the rain pouring down outside, a number of “journalists”, mainly a bunch of young girls, cramps in to a tiny room waiting for Alex from All Time Low to snag their various interviews. Though we were told to keep it short, five minutes at most, EPIC kicked off Alex’s interview session and managed to snag some dirt from All Time Low’s (lack of) album expectations, what doesn’t constitute “cheating” for a live performance, and why the music video for Weightless can’t be played in Canada in it’s original form (hint, Jack and a chick).
—

EPICartsentertainment: Your new album Nothing Personal came out a few weeks ago. How did you arrive at the name?
Alex: The name came from us playing on the joke that nobody likes a band’s new record.
Eae: Nobody does. No, kidding.
Alex: There you go! Case and point! It was basically us in our own way saying that we’re still playing music we love. We’re still playing music we want to write and it’s nothing against them [the fans]. If you’re going to do it, do it.

Eae: Did you ever imagine you’d make it to number 4 on the charts let alone debut?
Alex: No. That’s a plain and simple answer to that one: no. We were all taking bets the day before the CD came out on what we thought we would sell the first week. Pretty much all of us were 25,000 off. Lower. It was so crazy. It speaks to our crowd and to our fans about how badass everybody is and motivated about actually going and picking up a physical copy or at least getting it on iTunes which is awesome.

Eae: What is next for All Time Low and what do you hope to accomplish?
Alex: What’s next? We’re booked through the year; I mean we’re touring for the rest of this year. It should be crazy. Radio just now started picking up Weightless, which was never even planned. KROK just called us one day and were like “we’re going to add you guys and start spinning it and see what happens and how many requests you get.” We just found out yesterday that Weightless was number 1 on KROK for requests so it’s very possible that we might get added to a lot of stations. That’s awesome. The song that’s supposed to go to radio, Damned if I do You is going in two weeks or something. We’ll see how that does. It’s weird though, because Weightless is picked up by alt-rock radio and Damned is going to top-40 and pop so it’s like…
Eae: Double penetration?
Alex: Yeah, exactly! We’re just fucking the radio industry in all holes.

Eae: Where did the idea for the Weightless music video come from?
Alex: it was a mixed effort between us and the director, this dude Matt—who’s incredibly talented. It goes along with the theme of the record and the whole shit-talking and acknowledging everybody’s stupid little flaws. All the things that are fun to point out. So it was really just that. We tried to think of all the ways and all the things we could possibly make fun of at an All Time Low show and we just did. Including making fun of ourselves, which is probably the best part. Even some of them, like the sparrow tattoo, Zac has. We all wear v-necks.
Eae: So how often do you want to hit girls…
Alex: Almost every day. No, dude, funny story about that. They won’t play that version of the video in Canada because Jack punches a girl in the face. I was like I guess in American you’re allowed to hit girls?
[room breaks in to laughter]

Eae: Who were you most looking forward to seeing on Warped Tour?
Alex: Less Than Jake is one of my favorites. I had so much fun watching them. Hit the Lights. I’m stoked to be on tour with those guys again, I love those dudes.
Eae: Most underrated and overrated bands on the tour?
Alex: On Warped Tour? Uhm, I hate to say it but I think one of the most underrated is probably LIGHTS. I think she’s really good and people outside of Canada haven’t really given her a chance yet. And then overrated…
Eae: All Time Low?
Alex: [laughing] yeah.

Eae: Some of the bands on Warped have taken to their blogs because some acts on Warped Tour are being accused or have been “caught” lip-syncing. Does it shock you? And how do you think it reflects on a tour like warped tour?
Alex: Does it shock me that bands have been caught lip-syncing? No, not when they’re booking all kinds of bands that don’t play instruments. Like, what do you expect? You’re signing up for it. I’m surprised that kids were surprised!
Eae: And care.
Alex: Most kids probably don’t. I wouldn’t give a fuck if I’m going to see that kind of music I would expect it to be tracked anyway. I was just surprised that all the kids were like “aw that’s such bullshit!” Are you kidding me? You were really taken aback by that?
Eae: I was surprised they used a CD that skipped… who uses CD’s any more?
Alex: Yeah, right?

Eae: What are your feelings on bands that use backing tracks?
Alex: we use backing tracks. But nothing that I would consider “cheating”. We don’t use vocals and we don’t track guitar or anything. None of the instruments that we can actually play. We have in-ear monitors and we have a click-track so that we don’t fall off. We also have shit that you hear in the background like beeps and boops and keyboard. Stuff like that. Stuff that we can’t physically do because there’s only four of us. Even the harmonies, we use Matt live. We just put him hidden in the back with a microphone. We really don’t cheat much at all but we do have a few tracks, admittedly. I think it is what it is. For bands like us, bands have always done that. Greenday has done that. A lot of the time you kind of have to especially in bands that are only three or four members because it’s hard to get a really full big sound if you don’t have all these things filling in the sound underneath you. But once again, it kind of sucks that the current trend within the scene is leaning towards a bunch of manufactured… weirdness. It is what it is. I think it will die out pretty quickly.

—-
We hope, Alex. We hope.

photo taken by hollyanne from atl’s MONEY tour
for more photos from the tour click here

epicartsentertainment:

Three months early and it has already leaked, which lead to an iTunes release date being pushed forward two months in hope that people would be a little less tempted to download the watermarked leak and wait that little extra. Truthfully, I was a little skeptical from what I’d heard thusfar of Thrice’s latest effort, Beggars. My hopes were answered when the shitty cellphone recordings that had worked their way onto youtube didn’t do the new album any justice. Being completely honest though, I didn’t believe that anything would be able to top the musical maturity that emerged with the releases of the Alchemy Index Volumes I&II and III&IV, being proved wrong though, was bittersweet.

The opening track All The World Is Mad is a far cry from their older tracks such as Identity Crisis or The Artist In The Ambulance and you can tell this from the moment Dustin bellows his first line. Though you have to admit they’re right, when the chorus kicks in and we’re hearing how ‘something has gone terribly wrong with everyone; all the world is mad’. It’s a true story, though it’s probably not what Thrice were aiming for but my biggest gripe with the music industry lately is how everything has started to merge into the same shitty pop chorus and I can’t tell one band from the other; The Cab, The Main, We The Kings, I know the names but if you were to ask me to name one song by any of these bands? Trust me, I’d be slipping out my phone and google would be my best friend, I just know they’re a little fond of ginger people. Every now and then something fresh comes along and Thrice are providing that little breather that we needed from the obnoxious pop-punk with this album. What the band were actually aiming for with this track, though, they executed well through lyrics like ‘we can’t medicate man to perfection again; we can’t legislate peace in our hearts. we can’t educate sin from our souls, it’s been there from the start.’

It still has the elements that the Alchemy Indexes and Vheissu brought to the table, but it brings a lot more with it. More talent, more experimentation, more enjoyment. Considering this is a band that doesn’t record as many song as possible and chop them down until they decide which of the twenty or thirty make the ten song record, every song is equal and I can’t find a single track to label a ‘filler’, one that’s there just to make up the numbers or to build up to the next track or whatever you might be expecting, every track has it’s own identity. One thing I was worried about was how samey the tracks were going to be, and they’ve dispelled any form of doubt I might have had. In Exile shows this perfectly, the verses were a little worrying but as soon as the chorus started to kick in, all was right in the world again.

The calm verses and the rowdy chorus seems to be a pattern that Thrice have coined for this album (and the previous two, to be honest), The Weight being a pretty good example of this, they have their formula and the execute it in the best ways. That’s not to say all of the songs on the ten-song epic stick to this one formula, that’d get pretty boring pretty fast. Instead, they stray from it in songs like Circles and Wood & Wire. Even the title track, and the track that finishes off this cd wonderfully, Beggars, doesn’t fit in with the formula Thrice have coined over the past few albums Really, it’s one of those albums that can only be played loud for the full effect of the epic Teppei’s guitaring and Dustin’s vocals.

One has to wonder though, with the lack of screaming and the more refined vocals, is Dustin starting to worry about his vocal chords or something, because honestly, I enjoyed nothing more than having my ears pierced by my iPod blasting the wonderful sounds of Vheissu. But to come out with three records growing in quality with every new realease in three consecutive years is something to brag about. Anybody that claims to be a fan of this band can hardly be disappointed by their latest release. Personally, I’m in love with it.

Beggars will be released on iTunes August 11th, and hits stores October 13th.

likegallows:

epicartsentertainment:

Enter Shikari’s Common Dreads, though emblazoned with the symbol of the lion over the album’s artwork which is somewhat patriotic to the British crown, this album show’s the band in a light in which they are far from proud of their own countries actions. The album itself seems to be more of a reaction to the misdeeds of British politicians, the war mongers, and an expression of the bands own feelings about societies turmoil. Fourteen tracks in comparison to the seventeen that Take to the Skies presents us with is almost a cause for concern, though it’s lacking the interludes it makes up for it in sheer originality, creativity and complete utter face melting perfection. Though we were teased with the likes of ‘We Can Breathe In Space, They Just Don’t Want Us To Escape‘, a single that was not as well received by fans of this band as they perhaps might have hoped, they rekindled fan’s hopes with the epicness that is ’Juggernauts’. If you were to merge all of the angst, the friction, the activism of events like the G20 protests into one album, Common Dreads would be your result, and with lyrics like “sometimes I do wish apples were our currency so your hoarded millions would rot in your vaults”, from their second single from this album ’No Sleep Tonight’ accompanied by a video likening a protest towards one man, mean there is no mistaking who these messages are directed toward; Blair and Brown and those that lead the crown‘s people into illegal warfare. It’s a call to arms for the British public to band together and work as a team, as “Fanfare for the Conscious Man” claims, ‘we’ll be together against this, we’ll be forever against this’. There is humour though, found in in the sarcasm of ‘The Jester’ that is undeniably used to mock those that see fit to feed a country a ‘crock of shit’ and we’re presented in the song ‘Hectic’, a break from the previous tone of the album, with the average British teenagers life with the rawness of drinking cheap ciders under brand names of scrumpy jack and white lightening without the sugar coating because I dare you to find one teenager hailing from a city in Britain that hasn’t found a multi-storey carpark to drink obscene amounts of cheap booze. In a world full of overly redundant punk pop, we’re finally given something fresh, and all in all, this album is leaps and bounds from the seventeen track epic we were presented with early 2007, and from turning from little boys into grown men shouting at the government, there‘s no denying that they‘ve grown up a hell of a lot. And if you still need convincing, Juggernauts might do just that.