We've put together what might be the longest studio video ever. It contains a lot of masks and some more footage from the show with Joy Wants Eternity and Wanli:



I don't think that I really need to say that it was an incredible show. Both Wanli and Joy Wants Eternity are great bands in completely different ways and we completely love all of them as dudes and we really dug how it all came together. A big thanks to everyone who came out, hanged hard, and got really sweaty and gross with us. We love you all and can't wait to do it again.

Speaking of, the Andrew WK show in November is now 18+ to get in and 21+ to drink, which hopefully means that everyone who wants to come can get in legally. We really hate playing shows with age restrictions at all, but were doing our best to make this work for everyone. It's going to be our biggest Harrisonburg show yet, and probably this towns most ridiculous one in a while and for some time to come, so make sure to be there. Get up with us for information about tickets or check out: http://www.blameitonthetrain.org/

And we will party hard.

On a completely different note, Temporary Residence will be releasing a split record featuring Thursday and Envy soon. It has already leaked to the interweb. I believe that its both great musically and of great importance because it shows Thursday doing what they really want to do and not what Victory Records wants. Why? Because they're no longer on that label. Because fuck big labels, mass distribution and advertising and a tour bus are not worth the vitality and honesty of that which you pour your soul into.

Thursday, along most notably with Thrice, with whom they released a split back when we were in high school or something, are both carrying the torch for this, the post-screamo generation who is fed up with empty screamed cliches and begs for something more. By eschewing the major label rockstar in favor of the artist who maintains his integrity they have both produced something positive and meaningful for listeners, giving something back to those who have afforded them a life where they can survive by making music.

Or at least that's how I see it.

There are those who care about you by virtue of the fact that you are a human being, that you are conscious, that you ARE. They create what they create so that you may find meaning in it greater than that which they could ever conceive, so that you may move forward, upward, in any direction so long as it feels like progress to you, and they do so lovingly. They create ART.

And there are those who care about you as a member of a target market, a demographic, a statistic, something to sell to. They know what you like and "write" "music" so that you will buy it or pay some absurd amount of money to watch them lie to you live and in person. So that you will pay another absurd amount of money for a shitty t-shirt that you wont even wear in a few years because you will be embarrassed to have ever liked the band. Future generations will remember them as we look back on hair metal of the 80's: as an example of the ridiculous heights of style at a given time, as an example of how stupid people will act all caught up in the movements of the mob mentality that dictates what is "cool."

They will be mocked on VH1 (or whatever channel takes its place) by relevant comedians of the time.

And these ones, they will wonder what the fuck they were thinking as they transition from rehab into a career in washed up celebrity reality television.

You can be more than a potential sale. You can get more out of music, out of movies, out of books, out of everything you perceive, than the television and the radio and mainstream print media will ever give you.

So download music. Rip it. Burn it. Whatever. With the internet as it is the debate has been raging as to whether or not music should be free or not, but it's ultimately an irrelevant argument. Whether it "should" be free or not, it IS, so listen to it. It may be a crime, but there's no such thing as a legal revolution.

The bands that care about you want you to hear their music, even if it means that they don't make any money off of it. If they bitch about downloading, take a second to think about what they really care about.

Find something you love online and support it by spreading the word or by seeing them live in a basement somewhere, buy merch and give them a place to stay, feed them, tell them you believe in what they're doing, hang out with them, anything. Support need not be merely monetary.


Current Reading-

The Problem With Music
Leaves of Grass
Self Reliance

Current Listening-

Refused- The Shape of Punk to Come
The Rise- Reclamation Process
Mr. Bungle- California
Pedro the Lion- Control

Ho_wlon//ghavey_oub//eenslee_pinga//tthebo_ttomo_fthes//ea?



So_arupth//rough_thed//epths_andswi//mupt_othes//tars

re_sur//face

So I went to Boston last weekend and it was pretty incredible. Brandon and I saw Sigur Ros and some friends from Caspian and Irepress and we heard some awesome accents. I also got some great books at a used bookstore in Allston for cheap because the woman seemed to like how excited I was about them.

The night before we left Andrew and I spent some serious time working on a song that was previously just going to be an interlude type of thing. We've been working on it for a long time and it really came together, like it grew up or something. It was an awkward teen of an interlude for so long but now its really come into its own and its very exciting. You can hear some of it in the most recent studio video:

..


...but I'm not going to tell you which one it is.

In other news, we have some awesome shows coming up in Harrisonburg. This weekend well be playing with Joy Wants Eternity and Wanli at the Bangkok house and on November 20th well be playing at the Pub with Andrew WK. Not even kidding. Thats right, this guy:



Get pumped, because I dont think anything like this will ever happen again.

We have some more exciting news about the new record, but were going to keep it to ourselves for a bit. word? word.

nate

listening-
United Nations- United Nations
Neurosis- A Sun That Never Sets
Jimmy Eat World- Futures
eating-
JIF extra crunchy peanut butter
reading-
Jack Kerouac- Book of Blues
William Everson- Dionysus and the Beat Generation

So we've posted another little moviefilmtype thing for you folks in which you can get a glimpse in to the harrowing and entirely serious universe of our recording process. What do you do when you don't have no gert'damn mallets and you want a cymbal roll and it sounds shitty when you do it with your hands because you really have no idea what you're doing? you put some socks on some sticks dummy! for your recording technology!



(sock-sticks patent pending)

All jokes aside, though, the songs really are coming along and we are enjoying being able to use more than the two microphones we've recorded everything else with and being able to record and mix without constant fear of a total system meltdown. its nice.

We still have a lot to do, retracking and adding new instruments and all, before we really settle down to mix this beast once and for all, but we're definitely on the home stretch, approaching the third trimester. I feel like we've been pregnant with this 8 (9?) headed child for so long that people have started to think that were just faking it in order to get attention and maybe a little child support and time off work. but its not true I say! we have the ultrasounds right here! hes just been in there for a bit too long and now hes clawing at the walls and hes going to come out fully grown and probably looking something like Steven Seagal with a rooster on his back.

Annnnnnnnnd thats all folks, more next week and maybe even more than that.

-Nate

play/reading list:
Intronaut- Prehistoricisms
My America is Watching Tigers Die- Stone Age
Electric Wizard- Dopethrone
A Day In Black and White- My Heroes Have Always Killed Cowboys
The Good Life- Album of the Year
Weezer- Pinkerton

Beat: Down To Your Soul- Ed. Ann Charters
Notes of a Dirty Old Man- Bukowski
Split Horizons- Thomas Lux

Thats right, we went on an entire tour and didn't write one single blog entry about it. I guess we were just too damned busy doing things to find a portal to the internet and tell you about them, whoever you are. We might post some stories retroactively, but for the most part this blog will now focus on the recording process of our new full length, seeing as how we will be sitting at computers in a confined space anyways.

What to say about this new album. Well, its going to be the first thing we release that will actually have seen an actual recording studio and not just my laptop, which is very exciting. Andrew made a little short film to mark the beginning of this process:



We do not have a name yet, or at least one that we are one hundred percent set on, but we have had the music done for quite some time now. And by done, I mean mostly written and planned out. We played all but two of them this summer, and you can find some videos of them on the youtube as well. for those of you too lazy to go look, heres a little preview from our show with moving mountains, burbis, and overseas in beautiful washington pennsylvania shot by our main man Brandon Marcey:



And that's quite enough of that. In other news, school is back in session, which means we will not be playing out all that often for the next couple months at least. Bummer. That just means that were going to make the most of what shows we do play, and right now the only one we have scheduled is going to be nuts. Well be playing the Bangcock house again, right next to Taste of Thai on High St. in Harrisonburg, with Seattle's amazing Joy Wants Eternity and likely another band to be announced. Its going to rule, so come out. Be blinded by Wade's new lights and have a beverage or a several dozen. It'll be like that movie that just came out called "college" except real and way fucking sweeter.

I've rambled on for far too long, so I leave you some words that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately:

You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely around yourself;
Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, forever and ever!
-Whitman

Think about it, or about anything. Just think.
-Nate