Round-up for 2008/Looking forward to 2009

2008 was a great year for live gigs, CD & DVD releases and all sorts of other Rock & Metal news.  We catch up with some of the artists we all know and love to find out what 2008 meant to them, and also what plans and aspirations they have for 2009.  Here's what they told us ...

We had a weird 2008, spent most of it fruitlessly searching for a new drummer, only for our most recently departed drummer to come back all "prodigal-son" like to the fold a year to the day after he left!  In the meantime we still managed to play some awesome shows, the highlight of the year being Bloodstock Open Air Festival which was headlined on the day we played by the mighty Opeth!  We've spent a lot of time writing in 08 and the new stuff is sounding great, we're developing our sound, experimenting a little more, some of the new songs may surprise fans, hopefully everyone will be along for the ride with us, we're feeling very creative and excited about making music at the moment. 

2009 in Preview

In 2009 we're going to continue writing for the first part and then we plan to release our debut full length album on our own label, getting it in the shops for the first time, it's ambitious but it feels right for us, we've always been DIY and so far haven't met anyone in the industry who we feel understands where we're coming from, or where we're going, so we're gonna keep it independent.  We're really excited about the doors this new release will open for us and we have our sights on playing shows overseas as much as possible this year as well as continuing to play our asses off for our hardcore supporters here in the UK.  It's gonna be a white-knuckle year!

Vicious Cabaret's album 'The Next Utopia Will Be Better' came out about this time last year, and we schlepped our arses around the UK to promote that. Not long after, Jack decided service station food was bad for his constitution, so he handed in his notice, and Pete and I took some time out.

Rather than try to reheat yesterday's dinner, we decided to put something new together. It's taken us a while to find the right people, but we've been jamming with a couple of cats these past few months. In the interim, I've been playing bass in International Trust. We did a few festivals last summer, a UK tour at the end of the year, and released a Xmas single..! It was a close run thing, but in the end we were pipped to the top by the X Factor marketing behemoth...

2009 in Preview

And Lee (Wray) and I have been talking about remixing some unreleased Johnny Zhivago tracks, with a view to putting them out in some form this year. I'll let you know more about that as soon as I do...

All the best,

Steve

In 2008 we have been quite busy. We have had two successful tours: the Paganfest Tour and the Finnish Fire Tour. We recorded and released our fifth album Korven Kuningas. In the whole we played over 80 gigs, that means about one gig in every four days. We had a lot of fun, met many old friends and made new ones. So, this has been a pretty good year for us.

2009 in Preview

2009 promises to become even better; a long cherished dream of us becomes fulfilled: we will tour the USA and Canada in Paganfest 2! We are invited for Wacken Open Air on their 20th anniversary festival, and many more gigs are in the works. In February we will enter the studio again, to record a brand new album.

These last days of 2008, we will make a small tour with In Extremo in Germany, and end the year in Nosturi, Helsinki, on a new year's celebration concert with our friends from Moonsorrow and Kiuas.

We wish you all a happy new year and hope to see you around somewhere.

Greetings,
Jonne

Another year has passed and we have released another 29 titles (of which 8 are reissues/compilation s) and many of these are probably our best releases to date. We have had the pleasure of signing artists such as Jennifer Batten as well as seen artists such as Seventh Wonder and Tomorrow's Eve reach a new level with their latest efforts. Marco Sfogli's debut album " There's Hope" and Seventh Wonder's third opus "Mercy Falls" have been received very well amongst music fans worldwide. 

2009 in Preview

The music business is going through it's most difficult time ever, many companies are going down and the current economic worldwide recession is not exactly helping but we do want to carry on the flame also in 2009. As long as there are enough honest music fans out there interested in what we do we do not see a reason why we should not continue. 

We are proud to be able to bring you new releases from Miosis, George Bellas, Tony Hernando, astra, Ashent, Strings 24, Joe Stump, Master Castle, Iron Mask, Sun Caged and many more in 2009.

Lars Eric Mattsson, Lion Music President

2008 was a big year for TTB. It was also a pivotal one. We started out in January with a gig at the Knitting Factory on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Definitely the place to be for a Hard Rock Band. We continued on in April by playing 8 shows in Germany, one show Switzerland and winding things up with Vienna Austria, Budapest Hungary and finally Prague in the Czech Republic. Those last 3 shows especially were a great experience, the European Hard Rock fans are incredible. The Prague show was captured on the venues in house 4 camera set up. We had noticed a fair number of bootleg DVDs circulating the web of various shows from our tour. Most of them shot with small hand held cameras from the first or second row of the venue....our video whilst not up to usual 'concert DVD' quality was way superior to these so we offered it from our web site for a nominal fee. Definitely nice to be able to document that era of the band.

After the European Tour we returned to San Diego and began to write material for the new album. Graham Bonnet returned to his new Alcatrazz project and our keyboardist and bass player also moved on.  In September myself and Drummer Val Trainor entered the studio and layed down 11 new tracks, bass playing duties being covered by myself.  Deep Purple Keyboardist and one of my all time musical heroes, Don Airey played some beautiful piano and strings on the sole instrumental track and we went in search of a new vocalist.

Enter Keith Slack! This guy is one incredible rock vocalist and a great find for TTB! Keith is just finishing up the last few vocal tracks as I write this in mid January. The album will be available on Escape Music in April.

2009 in Preview

Our hopes and plans for 2009 are to get out and play as many shows as possible and reach as many people as possible with our music.

Taz

Bombay Black

2008 has be a pretty stressful year for EVIDENCE ONE.  Lots of line up changes and business difficulties.  But I guess, we've sorted out things meanwhile.  We're currently recording album number four, so watch out for the new EVIDENCE ONE CD in late Summer this year.

As for me personally, I had the very fortunate to release a few pretty satisfying albums, eg. IAIN ASHLEY HERSEY's "Nomad" CD, in 2008, and there's a couple more to come in 2009!

All the best
Carsten

At the beginning of 2008 we had only played one gig which was with fellow melodic metallers Season’s End and we thank them for giving us a push in the right direction. That was it, I was bitten by the bug and determined to do more gigs but we decided that we needed a fuller sound and after an extensive search welcomed our keyboard player Scot in February. 

Since then we have been continuing to flesh out our live set and played a succession of gigs, the highlights being the Agincourt Rock Club supporting alternative rock band Senser and The Dames of Darkness Festival in Birmingham which we enjoyed immensely. 

We received a fantastic reception and made a lot of new friends. During the summer we saved up and recorded our first demos ‘The Rapture’ and ‘My Nemesis’. We are very self-critical band and are continually trying to better ourselves, we learned a lot from the experience and know that will make a huge difference next time we go into the studio.

2009 in Preview

We really need to step up our game this year and increase the pace. During 2009 we are looking forward to playing many more gigs, recording more demos (although probably home cooked recordings rather than professionally done due to the cost) and hoping to recruit a 2^nd guitarist within the next few months. We’ve got loads of guys lined up; we just need to find the time to audition them.

 We may also consider management if the right person shows up. We’ve just entered The Surface Unsigned competition so it will be interesting to see how that turns out – not really enjoyed previous competitions that much but it’s good to have the incentive to pull out all the stops and put on an amazing show. We’ll also be playing our first London gig on March 1^st along with Apnia at The Legendary Bridgehouse 2, Canning Town. We’re also booked to play Weyfest which will be our first outdoor gig so we’re really looking forward to that one in particular.

Trissy x  

www.taintedgrace.co.uk

Sooooo, another year ticks over and it's time to think about what we're going to do with these next twelve months. I'll get to that in a moment. 

Last year was incredible for us. Incredibly frustrating at times, but incredible none-the-less.

On the incredible side of things we finally got our début album released.  I'm still amazed when I see the beast sat on shelves in an actual store, it's awesome!

It got excellent reviews too, even in the 'big' mags! OK, I admit some of the lazy journalism pissed me off (comparing us to Motley Crue...) but obviously it's better than saying it's shit so maybe it's just me being a sensitive, oh-so serious artiste. I'm kidding. Probably.

Excuse the cliché, but all that was a dream come true. It honestly was. 

Theeeeeen stuff got a bit fucked up. As is the Disarm way... 

There's too much stuff and I'm not pointing fingers but the main problem was every tour we tried booking to support the launch of the album went fucking tits-up and it was nothing to do with us. We did have some awesome gigs, but no big, fuck-off tour. Everything we tried just didn't work. Like pissing in the wind. The years of hard work to get an album out, get it on shelves, and then we couldn't do a thing about it.

Meh, enough whining. We're four poor boys from Yorkshire and we can take it. We eat whippets for breakfast, breathe smoke, and shit coal.

2009 in Preview

Right. This year. The plan? Firstly, we've already been writing album number two. The heavier bits are heavier. The melodies are insane. We're pissed off, don't give a shit, and writing whatever we want. But I swear you'll love it!

Secondly, there's (hopefully) something big coming soon, and we're also going to be getting the album released in Europe and tour there by any means necessary (hehe, see what I did there?). 

We have the worst luck in the world at times while some idiots get it on a plate but I wouldn't have it any other way. We get where we are by working hard and it makes us what we are. Four pissed-off, drunken bastards who are the best at what we do. And we're going to be even better. 

Hugs, kisses, and punches 

Brad Disarm x

http://www.disarm.info - http://www.myspace.com/disarmmusic

Last year was mixed for us. We put playing gigs to one side to concentrate on the completion of the recording of some new songs as well as a promo video which I have been working on for the last 2 years. The bad weather in 2007 messed it all up for us because the studio we used was flooded which meant when it was re-opened we had to try and get in amongst other bands which had their time cancelled to work on the recordings. That meant the video was being put off and when the music was finished for it the film company was busy working on a movie. On new years eve I finally got to see it complete.

I organised The Dames of Darkness Festival single handed and I'm pleased people enjoyed it even though one of the headline bands pulled out at the last minute because of flight problems. People saw Apparition for the first time and we got good reviews and made new friends.

2009 in Preview

This year? for the first time ever I have no plan to do anything so I don't honestly know. I will be sending out our new promo packs to people so I will see where that gets us.

I just want to wish everyone a great year and hopefully we will play a few shows and catch up with everyone.

- Dave

2008 in Review  2008 ... Puhh .. what a crazy year.  It all started with the second leg of the "Hellish Rock" Tour with Helloween & Gamma Ray where we (Axxis)  supported our latest Album "Doom Of Destiny".  I loved playing in London for the very first time.  It was very special to me and I will never forget it. The Tour ended in Spain where I suffered from a very bad cold but the Gigs where amazing anyway.  After the Tour, we started writing for the new AXXIS Album which will be released sometime this year.

In the Summer we played some big Festivals all over Europe including the huge Wacken-Open-Air here in Germany which was a big success for the Band.  After that, we did the first Axxis-Spanish Headliner Tour which was another great success.  Over all, it was a great year with some nice surprises.

2009 in Preview

2008 in Review

…. had the pleasure to co-write the songs on Sweden ’s own infamous rock group Fatal Smile for their “World Domination” album.  It was released in April of 2008 and is still kicking major ass around the globe.  An amazing band and some good friends! (Locomotive Records).  

Produced and co-wrote an album being released this Valentines day, February 14, 2009 on a super talented star, Teri Tims – This is her self titled debut album … Definitely check this one out … Has already stellar recognition from Cashbox Magazine and is charting #1 for the last 12 weeks for new indie rock artist!...WOW! ( Romulus X Records).  

Another Swedish group I had the pleasure to produce was the group “Badmouth” … Self titled.

Produced an album that is being released around April of 2009 on a band from Texas that just knocked me out! Synergy is definitely at work here, considering the bands age is between 16 & 18 years old and have the soul of Deaftone meets Nirvana … The band is “3 Weeks Play”, Album title TBA, so definitely keep an eye open for this mob! ... ( Romulus X Records).  

Finished up a production on long time friend Mark Franco “Addiction Alley” slated for a 2009 summer release.  Cool, Heavy and may be the new definition for “In Your Face” … A definite must ...  ( Romulus X Records).

2009 in Preview

Wrote a last minute song for one of the all time great bands, Vengeance “Soul Collector”.

Last minute or not … You’ll love it…It’s called “Myspace Freak”. This album is scheduled for release January 23^rd 2009 … (Metal Heaven).  

Already started production on a new but very revered band from England “Scream Arena”.

Some rockin’ off the scale bottled energy. Should pop the cork on this one in the next couple months … Label TBA.  

OK it’s my turn … Will start my new album for AOR Heaven in March … Not coming up for air til its done…So check on this late summer 2009 …  

I sang the lead off track for the “Voices of Rock II” album. “Down The Drain” … Really a great lineup of iconic singers on this one.  Scheduled for an April/May release … So definitely check it out! (A Minor Records).

I’m having my “myspace page” updated to include current and upcoming projects so drop by anytime to see what’s happening! www.myspace.com/paulsabu .  

Peace

PS

Throughout 2008 we got some wonderful reviews for our record "III".  We also recorded the video for the song "Glass Jar", which can be viewed here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w0WDfdmFXs .

2009 in Preview

This year we're looking forward to recording our new album, which we hope to begin shortly.

Take Care

Micke/Dogpound

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