Why no Trap Them on Earache ?

Question from () :

here's one ive always wondered why is it Trap Them never ended up on earache? surely with Brian being in december wolves who at that time were still signed to earache and their sound a hardcore punk/grindcore mix. They would have been a prime choice for the label?

from

Answer: Yes I agree, it sounds a perfectly logical match-up on paper, but it's all about timing, gut feeling and impression dude, I'll try to outline the various reasons why we didn't get involved in Trap Them after the demise of December Wolves.

Brian's band DECEMBER WOLVES were signed to Wicked World/Earache from 97-2003 or so, releasing 2 albums. Both discs were undoubtedly office faves round here because of their full-on, blasting, twisted and hateful brand of black metal. It was unique at the time, we thought the band were brilliant and success would be a cinch. Unfortunately the band did not tour, so the music failed to catch on with fans, hence did not sell in any meaningful numbers.

At the time we suspected the reason for poor sales was because they were regular T-shirt and jeans guys, and failed to fit into either the corpse-painted, spiked, Kult BM scene and of course were a million miles away from the coming more cerebral ambient-BM scene which was about to hit. No fault of the band, but they just didn't fit in to what the fans wanted.

DECEMBER WOLVES- To Kill Without Emotion.


After two underperforming albums, Earache decided to not continue with December Wolves, and from memory Brian announced at the same time the closure of the band. He also said he was going to pursue other musical projects for a while, and would keep in touch.

A while later we received a demo of Trap Them & Kill Them - I remember it well as you rightly point out, punky/grindy stuff is in our blood, and I did like it a bit. But the key consideration is that Earache had moved on by that point, we were signing acts like Ephel Duath and working with acts like Cult of Luna by that point, and so the punky/grindy mix of TT&KT just wasn't to our liking, so we passed. Its also worth mentioning that because of the failure of December Wolves to sell, Brian's output was slightly tarnished from our viewpoint, sadly.

Our loss was Prosthetic records gain, they were the label (after a couple of 7inchers on Deathwish Inch) who snapped up Trap Them and they've been very successful ever since. We wish them and Brian all the best.


Here's Trap Them: