American Steel Exclusive Interview Part 2

WWR: In terms of record labels, do you think they are necessary any more?

Rory: I don't think they are necessary but it all depends on what your trying to do, we've discussed not dealing with labels any more, but we haven't had that time where we want to deal with all the stuff, for us its sort of laziness or convenience you know

John: its sort of just a nice home base for us now, record sales are going down every year, your on a label to make records and to make them available your not always on there to sell records any more some people still do, but it can serve as a nice home base where if someone wants to interview your band they can contact your label, and the label can then contact you its just a nice hub of communications, otherwise we'd have to take many many hours out of our personal lives but some bands do it, like the do-nots from Germany run their own label and do everything themselves, and the band is kind of all they do but we have always valued our sort of other stuff going on.

WWR: sure, also 'normal' people think that a band on fat wreck chords could stand to make a lot of money but don't realise you need to have normal jobs also..

John: Yes, but the only people who understand that are people in other bands or people who do shows, you know we don't just go home and go on vacation in Mexico, we go home and go back to work

Rory: Even the bands who do make a living doing it, the perception is so inflated because the bands who do make a living from it make such a modest living they might as well be school teachers

John: unless your like green day
Rory: yea unless you have a top 40 song your lucky to make a living off of it, so yea we have always worked.

WWR: Some of your lyrics seem very personal, is this the way you feel you can send your message out to other bands and so forth by listening to the records as opposed to bitching on the internet on some forum or blog?

Rory: definitely
John: sure I can see what your getting at, we are one of the more private bands that I can think of. A lot of bands are every other day blog update or video update and all over the internet and reveal every detail of their personal lives and we have a layer of...it sounds hard to say but I think we let our music speak for ourselves and let the music be what we are saying. We reluctantly do the self promotion thing, a lot of bands love it they cant wait to update their Myspace page and that's fine that's great and maybe it would be to our benefit to do that more but none us really enjoy that. We don't set out to be private but we just are a lot more private people than people generally are.

WWR: Are there any songs from the last two albums which have a favourite subject?

Rory: not a favourite subject necessarily but for me its sort of it comes out whether its political or personal I don't really sit and think I am going to write a song about this or this album should be like this I just let it come out, for me my favourite songs on our record are the ones we are playing at the moment because its fun to perform those songs, once they're written they get passed to the venting process before I bring them in to show the band, you know I feel on the newest record that the lyrics are simplistic and sometimes a little too tongue in cheek but im not afraid of being almost silly since I feel we have such a large catalogue that its neither here or there so its never representative of our work in one way we can get away with a little low brow.

WWR: anything in terms of future releases?

Rory: I think FAT are releasing some demo's aren't they?
John: who?
Rory: FAT

John : ow cool, laughs* ha I usually find out what we are doing from the internet, nothing major we haven't done much U.S touring on this record. There might be a few digital releases of old 7 inches that weren't available and maybe an under the influence split with the gaslight anthem where we both cover songs we like.

Huge thanks to American Steel, Ed the Duck & Wiebke at FAT for the interview
American Steel – 'Dear friends and gentle hearts' is Available now on fatwreckchords

Hostage life - Free Album! but yet just broke up.. :(

So the Canadian punk rockers Hostage Life have called it a day but they left a nice free album for download behind you can get that here
and read about why its free below...


CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
............
You can download our new album, Centre of the Universe, for FREE on September 30th at 12am. You can get it right here on our MySpace page.* Why are we giving the album away for free? Several reasons:
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1. I steal music. You steal music. We all steal music. That’s how things work these days. Providing you with a free digital download prevents this from happening.
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2. Pressing CDs hasn’t really helped us financially. We sold quite a few CD copies of Walking Papers but are still in debt to our old record label. The current structure of the music industry is not artist friendly, and we have all but abandoned the notion that we could subsist as a band on album sales alone. Some artists and groups are able to do it, but Hostage Life is not one of them. As a result, it makes more sense to just give the shit away and hope that people will like it enough to come see us live and help us out that way.
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3. Let’s not bullshit ourselves…any CD we press is eventually going to end up in a landfill where it will take decades, if not centuries to biodegrade (if it ever does). The last thing this planet needs is more disposable Hostage Life merchandise that nobody wants.
....
Considering the above statements, however, it does seem kind of fucked that we will also be offering Centre of the Universe as a 12 inch record. The vinyl version will NOT be available on September 30th, but on that day you will be able to pre-order it from juiceboxdotcom.com. It can be purchased in November. To sweeten the deal, the vinyl version of the album will contain a bonus 7inch which will include 2 previously unreleased tracks – a song called Armageddon Jane, and our cover of Tappa Zukie’s M.P.L.A.
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Our first scheduled show after the digital release will be in Gainesville, Florida as part of The Fest 8 (Oct.30th – Nov.1st). Stay tuned for our set date, time and venue. Very exciting.
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I’ll be launching a blog when the album is made available which will contain essays pertaining to each song. Those of you that have a distaste for pseudo-intellectual wanking may wish to avoid it. But while we’re on the topic of pretentious lyricists, I’ll explain the concept behind the album. A couple years ago I was reading the 16th issue of Chris Ware’s brilliant comic, The Acme Novelty Library. In it, the semi-autobiographical character of Mr. Ware explains to the story’s protagonist W.K. Brown (loosely based on the sci-fi writer of the same name) that his depression and sense of disconnection is a result of the westerner’s predilection towards viewing himself as the protagonist. In short, we feel so dissatisfied with our lives because we feel that we are the entire reason that everything around is occurring. If life is one big story, we’re supposed to be the heroes. It’s a pretty arrogant worldview, but one that is indicative of our species as a whole. From Ptolemy’s 2000 year-old geocentric model of the universe** to the three most popular and successful religions of our day, we tend to see ourselves as the centre of everything. We think that we are made in the image of gods, and are thus part of some kind of divine lineage; somehow more than just hominids that learned to spell, drive, and write shitty poetry; somehow separate and superior to the rest of the natural world. We believe, or rather, a great deal of us believe that we are immortal and will be whisked off to paradise when our last synapse fires and our bowels empty into our pants. It is the oldest con we know. We have bought into it for as long as we have been asking questions about ourselves and our world and accepting easy answers. But enough about that. I have rambled for too long.
Sept. 30th.
Have our album.
It is our pleasure.
....
xo
Colin

The Lawrence Arms - Buttsweat and Tears (Fat Wreck 2009) - Released October 26th

It’s been three years since The Lawrence Arms last fave us some fresh material and after 10 years as a band rumours/fears began to emerge that “Oh! Calcutta!” may well be the bands last release. Thankfully we we’re wrong. Recorded in three says, limited to vinyl and digital download the EP boasts artwork and title that the band original planned for an their debut 7”.
Buttsweat and Tears is probably the release of the year for me. As record it flows perfectly, every song as good as the last, a quality rarely seen in an EP. I had fears that this would sound very similar to The Falcon, and wouldn’t have that certain something that previously Lawrence Arms releases do. Again, I was wrong.

The EP kicks off with “Spin Shining Shit”, a song that more or less defines the band, gruff fast paced punk rock with a clean break down towards the end. Next up is “The Slowest Drink In The Saddest Bar On The Snowiest Day In The Greatest City”, a song sung solely by Chris which came as a nice surprise as the alternating songs formula was abandoned on their last CD for duel vocals throughout. As all of Chris’ songs this track walks you through a story and is probably the best song on the record.
Side two kicks off with “Them Angels Been Talkin’” which is a wonderful example of how both the singers voices work perfectly together awesomely wrote verses strung together with a fists-in-the-air chorus leaves me thinking that this record couldn’t get any better. The vinyl ends with my favourite track. “The Redness in The West” shows us a new style of song writing that the Lawrence Arms hadn’t really approached before. The song starts off as a folky number with a surprise bar of distortion, and ends as a beautiful slice of Punk Rock.

The digital release of Buttsweat and Tears offers a bonus track that plays in-between tracks 3 & 4. “Demons” sounds more or less how I expect the entire EP to sound, like The Falcon, same vocals and guitar style we’re used to but with added ska. Lyrically this EP is perfect, every word flows and every phrase seems crucial. They don’t use words because they rhyme. All in all a very impressive release from what I consider to be one of the most original and exciting punk rock bands around, but what the fuck do I know?

Review by Paul Edwards

American Steel - Exclusive Interview Part One

AMERICAN STEEL EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – LONDON – Part 1
BY Ricky Bates

So we are here with ..

John: I play bass

Rory : I play guitar and sing

WWR: So you guys have never been to the UK as American steel only as communique why is that?

Rory: we reformed about 2 years ago and before that we never really had the opportunity and were always so busy touring the states, i don't know how much of it wasn't crossing our minds also how viable it was to us, we've been meaning to get here for a long time so when we got offered this tour with all American rejects we were like lets do it! Lets finally get over to England.

WWR: because you came to Germany round 6 months ago but only there?

John: yea it was with the German band the Donots

Rory: we thought about the logistics of definitely doing the UK then but when we broke it all down it worked out the same cost to do the UK from Germany as it would be to do it from the U.S , so lets just to it again later for proper.

WWR: so was the AAR thing planned or?

Rory: yea it came together pretty quickly about a month ago

John: they'd been planning their tour for a long time but hadn't figured who they wanted for support, they do extremely well here and most the shows are sold out before they even announce support since there under no pressure to choose support we only found out about 6 weeks ago that we could!

WWR: so have you been going down well on those shows?

John: yea we are fast and sing loud so kids were moving around a little

WWR: so based on the scene you come from is it not a controversial thing to say we going to tour with AAR?

Rory: yea well we've been on tour with major label bands before so you know,I don't think we've ever got any grief about it, we don't really give a shit about what other bands do, its not like were out killing kittens or something, however bands want to run their careers they can it comes down to personal opportunity's.

John: we wern't going to lose our chance just to come over here , sure some people are like I dont like that band so im not going to go see the support, I understand that I wouldnt usually go to a huge show just to see the support with a shorter set too, it might be harder for them to justify but at the same time we cant really come over here on our own for the first time.
Maybe now we can having done this tour, we couldn't just jump on a plane over here and hoped people showed up.

WWR: so dear friends and gentle hearts, how did this experience differ from all the other albums you've recorded, working with a producer etc?

Rory: no, well we do our own records, the last two at least, our guitar player Ryan kind of owns a recording studio back at home and he records us, so the last two records were pretty similar the way we went about it, its all pretty laid back we have time to be mellow and the songs are always pretty well worked out and things.

WWR: So you have a complete DIY set-up in terms of having complete control of everything that's going on the record, is that good thing to have?

Rory: yea that's the way we want to do it, we were joking with somebody how people misunderstand how bands work , some kid was giving us grief about not being DUI – DIY..

John: laughs

Rory: we are quite DUI my friend! No so we were like dude we record at own studio we do all the stuff ourselves and our guitarist even builds our own amplifiers! Could we do any more? Should we manufacture the CD's as well?

John: vinyl press?

WWR: so do you write before you go into record then?

Rory: yea 90 per cent

John: yea Rory really prolific not prolific in the sense ow I have some riffs but having 20 complete songs, maybe not every part of every song but complete with vocals which I think is really rare, when you see documentaries of bands in the studio there's always some guy sitting there uninspired and unable to write anything and then days stretch into weeks.. our songs are pretty much done when we go into the studio, some bands I think need a producer to get them to finish their songs, which is a completely foreign idea to us! We usually have to many songs and cut a few while were recording but with some bands all they can do is squeeze out 10 or 11 songs for a record.

Rory: Also the chemistry between us all, we've been together so long that when I come in we are just a real tight band as far as putting them together, when were in the rehearsal space before the record l show up with all the songs but its still matter of getting them all together and playing them correctly, we'll do two a day or one a hour we'll do it really fast nowadays.

WWR: Having all the time off from American steel do you feel you had time to reflect on the music scene? Then coming back from communique was it hard to adapt being back as AS?

Rory: no I don't think it was, if anything I think we might be more oblivious now more than ever of what other bands are doing.

WWR: It does feel like that actually when you listen to the music as if you shut out everything else and just become your own band

Rory: hopefully!

WWR: Tours! How have they since you've been back? Do you think having the time off helped build up your fan base?

Rory: I think it did, I don't know what the net result was as far as like numerical value, I think we lost some along the way too but there's definitely people since we've been back saying its so great that your back I got into you a year to two after you stopped playing so there's a lot of that!
Our first tour back we were on the road with the Lawrence arms we just kind of hopped on a bus together and did it it was kind of funny because we were both at the same stage of things where we are very selective about when we tour and very deliberate about how we put our records, were not really pressured to rush by anybody.

John: and then meant we could book our own club shows around the country, that helped both our bands and bands like us, we had nice weather and enough people to justify having a bus, having four bands on one bus so it made sense and was cheaper.

Rory: we were being environmental!

John: yea we were being totally green, hanging things out the windows, HA

WWR: What do you think about the punk rock scene at the moment in terms of who's doing what? Do you think there too much hype behind certain bands which might eventually kill them off?

Rory: I don't know, I think every band should just do what they feel comfortable doing, that doesn't stop me from having my opinion about what their doing I don't really begrudge anyone for changing gears, just do whatever you want to do, I don't think any one band owes it to anyone unless they somehow made a promise to them, which has happened a few times but even then I don't think you owe it to them, people change their minds

John: its not a written promise, ha ha

John: I think if your supporting huge tours that's a lot different then headlining that huge tour, that's when bands have to really put on the brakes sometimes, when they somehow become that band that can suddenly fill a stadium and then its like what do you do? Were obviously not that band but we know a few bands that have gone from playing bars to arenas, you start getting all these different offers.. again were talking from the outside since we aren't that band, we don't have enough of a single sound that people can latch on to and be 'that' band, but a lot of bands we are friends with can fill 1 to 5 thousand person venues, such as alkaline trio or the gaslight anthem and now hot water music.

One of the best live british bands ive ever seen! The Ghost Of A Thousand!

These lads having certainly been making some waves on the punk rock scene in the last year in the UK they have a new video for their new single ' Knees, Toes, Teeth' which is set for release november 2nd! so go grab yourself a copy! You can watch the exclusive video from the guys at Sitcom Soldiers here:
Knees, Toes, Teeth


Be sure to catch them on tour soon with an epic line up at the following places!
EASTPAK ANTIDOTE LIVE DATES (w/ Alexisonfire, Anti-Flag and Four Years Strong) –

7 Oct 2009 JUNCTION: Cambridge
8 Oct 2009 UEA: Norwich
9 Oct 2009 ACADEMY: Oxford
10 Oct 2009 ROCK CITY: Nottingham
11 Oct 2009 ANSON ROOMS: Bristol
13 Oct 2009 CONCORDE 2 Brighton
14 Oct 2009 HMV FORUM: London
16 Oct 2009 ABC:Glasgow
17 Oct 2009 UNIVERSITY: Leeds
18 Oct 2009 ACADEMY: Manchester
20 Oct 2009 ACADEMY: Birmingham
21 Oct 2009 PYRAMID CENTRE:P’mouth

New videos! WTFest & The Steal last ever show!

So all the good ones break up and the shit ones stay together so the story goes..
THE STEAL one of the most energetic postive punk rock acts in the modern music world have called it a day.. i was on hand at a very special last show with none other than Paint It Black, heres some footage go buy a Steal record..


Here's a few videos from WTFEST earlier this month in Southampton, enjoy!

WTFest is over until next year!

So our 1st WTFest was a huge success id like to thank every band and single person involved in the whole event it was so much fun!

Heres a few photos from the gigs theyl be video footage to follow!