Does Earache sign One Man bands?

Question: Dear Earache Records,
Do you sign one man bands? In the vein of Burzum and Nine Inch Nails? Recording, I play, write and record all of the music, but I have a band that I tour with, on occasion. On all recordings, it\'s only me playing and writing the music, but on stage, there are five of us playing my music. Do you sign bands of this nature? If not, would you? From: the.true.deathcrush@hotmail.com

Answer: yes we do, there are quite a few examples of bands we have signed who are just one person...like Mortiis, The berzerker, ultraviolence- in fact many of the hardcore techno/industrial acts we signed are one person acts,the main thing all these bands have in common is they are mostly computer/programming/sampling type acts, or rather used to be.We sign bands based on their originality and quality of music, not how many members are in the line up.The problems arise when you have to go on tour..(burzum doesnt have this probem- ;-))

To be honest most bands have a leader, or a person who dictates the direction and music of the band, and its more and more common for those people to declare themselves as "the band", and treat the other musicians as hired hands for on the road work.Sounds like you are one of those?

I personally dont agree with it..it might work fine for a time, but as your band gets bigger and tours more, because their is no commitment for the hired hands, you get a revolving line up on stage that changes from tour to tour.


I dont think fans appreciate getting a suprise line up - often unfamiliar faces-on stage each time.

Earache bands in the Guinness book?

Question: I\'m sure I remember hearing that Brutal Truth were/are in the Guiness Book of Records for the shortest promo video or something similar.
Is this true, and are any more Earache artists featured in the pages? From: Evil__Jeff@Hotmail.com



Answer: Earache has had two bands featured in the famous book of world records.Napalm Death's 7 inch single from 1989 was the worlds shortest single- clocking in a 1.5 seconds.In recent years we had Brutal truth included in the book for the record of worlds shortest pop promo video clip.For Collateral Damage clip, clocking in at 2 seconds.Beat that!

demo bands- Fatal Taunt & FUBAR

Question: Hello, my name is Sean Howells. I am management for SB promotions and am contacting you as i feel that i have two of my bands ready for singning. Please forgive me for being short but i shall get straight to the point.

If you could PLEASE check out my top 2 bands webpages which has demo\'s on both and contact me if you have any interest. If you have no interest, some hints and tips for them, feedback would be VERY appreciated. The bands are named Fatal Taunt and FUBAR. Their site addresses are :

http://www.fataltaunt.com

http://www.wearefubar.com

Thank you for your time and effort in reading this. If for any reason you would like to contact me my details are :

Sean Howells
SB promotions management
tel : 07983548448

Hope to hear from you soon. From: sbpromotions@ntlworld.com

Answer: hi Sean, well you are certainly in the right place as it seems Wales is a hot-bed of talent at the moment- has been for years actually..dunno whats in the water, but there seems to be a production line of bands coming thru- and many labels' A&R activity is centred on South Wales, thats a fact.The link you sent for FUBAR didnt work- D'oh! you fell at the first hurdle dood! BUT- i searched around and found them on myspace instead- and i'm glad i did, i enjoyed their music more than Fatal Taunt to be honest.We have no interest to sign either band, because they both are not what we are signing, and seem to have no ready made scene to slot into..but the singer of FUBAR has a good voice and thier songs are stronger than most new bands...the drummer of Fatal lets them down imho..its kinda out of time in places which rules them out right away.I thought it was cool that the FUBAR singer wears a cardiff city football team shirt- an individual touch -as many rock bands do not ever wear such team clothes, to not alienate fans from other cities...so, I wish you the best with them.

No Sabbat on Earache in 80's?

Question: Digby-why are you thanked on certain sabbat albums, but earache never signed the band did you help set them up with gigs or somthing when they first started or are you just friends with them. Also did you ever consider signing them when they were first around considering they were one of the bigger bands from nottingham at the time. Also i was talking to a staff member at a games workshop store and they said that GW at one point tried to set up a label to release \"gaming music\" with earache\'s help is this true? From:


Answer;I guess it does seem a little odd that Earache did'nt sign one of Nottingham's leading Metal bands in the late 80's era.The reasons are twofold really- 1) I saw them play really early on as Hydra at a pub in Nottingham but the spandex pants they wore were cringeworthy-in truth, my head was more into extreme hardcore punk bands who sang about political lyrics, such as Napalm Death & Heresy at that time plus 2) I had'nt actually got my label set up properly before Sabbat broke through- i had barely released 2 or maybe 3 records, it was still a bedroom operation.Seemingly,In the course of a few weeks,Sabbat went from budding local hopefuls to Kerrang cover stars-due to the founding editor of kerrang- Geoff Barton- taking an immediate liking to their unique style.A lucky break which propelled them to a deal with the well-established Noise records in Germany.I dont remember them thanking me on any albums, but Nottingham has always had a small tight scene, so our paths used to cross a bit, espcecially as members of Earache band Lawnmower Deth were friendly with Sabbat, coming from the same North Nottingham villages.
What was weird was that much later, when Return To The Sabbat formed, in 2001 or so, Earache declined to sign them.


As for Games Workshop- we did work with them in 1989 licensing the cover art for our Bolt Thrower album.This was prompted by the band themselves, because their name is taken from a GW game, personally I didnt know what Games Workshop was-it was a blast to work with such a hive of creative talent-GW were a local small independent fantasy wargaming firm at the time, not the corporate behemoth they are nowadays, so such a deal was easy to do.My recollection is that Bolt Throwers album actually sold quite well thru the GW stores, which prompted the marketing guy there to try their hand at doing a GW themed record label, with the first and i believe only signing of hard rockers D-Rok, who had a short lived career.

What do we look for when signng a band?

Question: In signing a new band, if the task were ever to strike you, what typically would you look for?Recording skill? Musicianship? An active band who tours regularily? Please respond and feel free to add any other qualities or guidelines that you would wish for. Thank you.
Yours Truly,

ORB DECAY.

Answer: Man, we get asked this question maybe 5 times per day, its all you guys think about!!..if I wrote a book called "How to get your band signed to a Record label" it would be a bestseller, I think.Having signed maybe 100+ bands in the extreme metal genre its hard to analyse what factors got them signed, to pass on the info to you, but i'll try...y'know, In this era of myspace and social networking sites and mp3 downloads its kinda arguable that bands dont actually need to be signed to a label anymore.The ultimate aim is to gain fans- which if you do it well enough, will make the labels come running to you.

Its a given that your band must be tight, proficient musicians, team players, hard working-and you must tour- bedroom bands are destined for obscurity. What bands often dont realise is what the standard of the competition is like- its a high level out there, the competition to be signed is intense..Earache is literally bombarded with hopeful up n coming bands myspace links, demos, cds every day of the week- we worked out we maybe get 4000 approaches a year (10 a day)- and sign approx 2-3-4 bands from that, so we ae saying "no" most all the time.Most hopefuls are decent bands, but a lot are making the mistake of sending us the first recordings they've done.No band is killer within 3 months of picking up instruments..

Many labels of some long standing are very picky indeed- Earache amongst them- this is a fact many bands dont appreciate-the A&R people at labels are paid to have their fingers on the pulse of whats new and happening in the rock/metal scene, but they are incredibly sheep like, at the same time- so it helps a lot if your band is part of a current trend, or more likely the next upcoming trend.Do your homework about the labels too...if you read that a label is signing bands which are in your particular style, then approach them, rather than labels who are working other stuff.
Finally- even when you do get signed..labels still need you to work even harder than before..as the expectation level ' bar' is raised for 'signed acts'.

last bit of advice i can give is- send a 6-pack of beers in the package with your demo- i'm not kidding! it will guarantee your band a comprehensive listen at the label,plus it will show your impeccable skill in marketing/promotion of your band, which is highly prized.

So I wish you the best of luck with your band.
We drink Stella Artois.

Earache PlayStation 2 Game is OUT NOW!

Question: Hi remember reading an article about a year ago, about an Earache records video game. It was gonna be for ps2 and pc i think. I remember seeing development pictures. What happened to that? From: venturesagogo@yahoo.com


Answer: yes its finally, finally OUT..in UK and across some European territories.USA is still in the works for later in the year. After a slow start ( i guess after a year and a half of talking about it, the extra delays caused some fans to doubt it was actually real) its starting to sell well in the second week, its even in the amazon.co.uk chart for PS2 Games.The developers are currently talking to us about a Nintendo Wii version later in the year and a much more gory 18+ blood n guts version is due out in July too.Some discussions are taking place about adding Guitar Hero support into these later versions.

Sending CD demos to Earache..

Question: Hi,I need an address(not web)to send you my band s promo-album with a biography an a letter from me to give you all the infos,please dont ignore this,the album is really good,i think you should listen it,give us a way out from the stupids we got around,thank you all anyway,bye From: fran.martino@hotmail.it

Answer: sure-we do accept demos on CD- but a myspace link sent using our form on the contacts page is better. send CD to

Earache Records A&R
Pox Box 144
Nottingham
NG3 4GE
UK

thanks and good luck.

Skindred- formerly Dub War?

Question: Do you happen to know how to get in touch with Skindred - the band formerly known as Dub War?

-aztrid From: aztrid@gmail.com

Answer: Yeah Skindred is the new band formed by the members of Dub War (who recorded 2 albums and numerous singles on earache in mid 90's).They play a similar style of punk-ed up ragga metal, but are getting much more successful than Dub war were. As it happens only Benji the singer remains from the Dub war line up.Jeff and Ging now work as production team in South wales, and actually recorded the early Bullet For My Valentine demo(as Jeff Killed john).You can check out Skindred on myspace

Favourite Earache release?

Question: Kind of a stupid question, but I was curious. What are your favorite Earache releases? Are there any that you really dislike, or wonder what you were thinking when you released it? From: johnwalbridgeiv@yahoo.com


Answer:I've been asked this question a few times over the years- out of the 300+ titles Earache has released in 20 years, my all time favourites are Napalm's Scum and Carcass' Reek and Terrorizer's album, and i can honestly there are none or very few which i actively dislike..most bands have been carefully selected after much consideration, after all, and i personally signed their contract, so its a given, I must surely have liked them.Out of the newer bands- faves are Berzerker, Akercocke, Deicide,Ephel Duath, Municipal waste,Cult Of Luna, Biomechanical, Decapitated,Evile.

Generally, i tend to like our more out-there, more unique-sounding releases, most titles in the catalog are groundbreaking in a some way, sonically, lyrically, or in terms of the scene they represent, sometimes it might take a decade or more for the music to be accepted as such tho!!.Earache traditionally is ahead of the curve- we actively dislike to jump on anyones bandwagon, to mercilessly sign a string of bands sounding like the latest new new thing- we just dont do that.We prefer the mavericks, the outsiders, the bands unafraid to try somthing different.

Bands which i loved the most are some of Earache's least succesful..like OLD, Ewigkeit, Shortie.All unique, forward thinking and extremely talented musicians, but cruelly overlooked by fans at the time of their releases.

No Glen Benton on Deicide Euro tour?

Question: Why Glen Benton did not show in the venues in Spain and Portugal, on European\'s Deicide tour?!? From: bradifasik@hotmail.com


Answer: He is in Florida attending to a court case to do with matrimonial/custody matters- it was meant to end a week or so ago, and it was hoped- even reported- that he would fly to Paris to join the tour, but other circumstances have caused further delays to his departure date. He will join the tour at some stage,Glen is desperate to travel and play for the fans in Europe, we hold flights daily to diferent cities in case he can finally leave.Meanwhile the rest of the band decided to show their commitment to the fans and promoters on this tour by carrying on so, they recruited a new singer from Polish band Dissinter, who is doing an admirable job filling in at short notice, fans are seemingly happy to acknowledge the bands perseverance in pretty unusual circumstances.
Deicide are actually Earache's most toured band-with Glen they have played approx 200 shows in the last 2 years, travelling across the globe to places like Korea, Australia, new zealand, plus numerous USA and European tours.Sometimes personal matters infringe on the best laid plans, I'm afraid.

Lock Up & project bands

Question: Did Earache ever look into signing lock up when the band was around being that the majority of the musicans were contracted to earache anyway? From:


Answer:We did all the napalm death members projects in the early 90's- Meathook seed, Blood From The Soul, hell, even Terrorizer was classed a project- but none of them did as well as the main band.So, nah- we had no interest in Lock-up, as from memory we had just dropped Napalm death in 1999, and Tomas quit ATG in 1998 or so- we thought of shane and jesse as ex-artists at that point, and wanted to steer well clear of anything they did-So we had no actual contractual arrangements with the members as they formed lock up.Nick barker has never been signed to Earache actually- and it was Nuclear blast who snapped up Lock up instead.
If i gave ya a list of all the side projects that Earache signed artists have tried to get off the ground, while being signed or soon after being dropped, we'd be here all day.Its almost fashionable for band members to be 2-3 bands at once nowadays, but we prefer for our artists to focus on their "main" band, and advise them to do so as touring a project band can be troublesome.But we also give a lot ofour acts freedom to do other things- hence a lot of Earache artist's projects come out on other labels.right now i can think of sam from berzerker's project called Senseless, coming out on Anti-culture,after it was rejected by us.There are hundreds of other projects our artists have been involved in.

Is There A God?

Question: is there a god
From:

answer: Wow you certainly ask some searching questions here!.Personally i beleive there is NO God. No Allah, Baal,Zeus or Wotan- all are irrational concepts distilled in weak minds.All religions are causes of conflict- imagine a world with no religious beliefs- there would be no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no crusades, no witch hunts, no Northern Ireland troubles..it would be much happier place if people could escape the trap of Religion.In my opinion, there is no God but yourself.Read the lyrics of Deicide, penned by Glen Benton, for further information.

Agnus Meat plow- The home of metal?Errr....

Question: What is it exactly is it a band has to bring to the table to get a record deal. I know a band has to bring a prospect of success and knowledge of music. However, being in a metal band is also about raw agressive attacks on humanity. So does attitude, and metal integrity have any say anymore. If so check out www.myspace/agnusmeatplow.com
the home of metal From: mearl@telus.net


Answer:Its also about giving us your correct website URL dude..this doesnt link...so we cant check out your band...i guess you blew yer chance.Oh well..

Does quality of demos matter?

Question: does quality of demo\'s on myspace affect your judgement of the songs? From: corey250@hotmail.com


Answer: no it doesnt- we are listening for originality of the music, and especially we listen out for tightness of the musicians playing together- we listen for microsecond sloppiness in the playing, and bands with great, tight, grooving drummers stand a better than average chance of being picked up.

The number of myspace plays is becoming increasinglty relevant- especially the daily plays, as many bands now have figured how to acheive 500,000+ plays...y'know It's hard to pinpoint why some bands get signed and some dont,its all about the elusive x-factor (or should it be axe-factor?), which having sold over 9 million records across 350+ releases, almost all of them exclusively of the extreme music genre,which we kickstarted, we think we have a slight clue about this stuff by now.

We make allowances for the fact that most bands cant afford a slick production, when we listen to them.We actually have bands coming to us with professionally recorded demos or full albums in some cases but it doesnt affect our interest.We recently had an unsigned band offer us an andy sneap produced album, which is sonically incredible,as he is a world class producer,sadly we're not feeling the band's vibes, so passed on it.This proves that quality of demo recording has no effect on signings.

What are ex-earache employees doing now?

Question: i remember reading that one of the heads of anti-flag\'s AF records is a former employee of earache (US) is this true?
also of the former earache employees do most of them remain working in the music industry after they have left the company and how many have started their own labels. From:

Answer:Yes- its Jorge, an esteemed ex Earache USA staffer from the mid- 90's.This is a question we think about a lot here in the office cos actually an astonishingly high percentage of staff who have left Earache over the years,do still work in the music business, at all levels.We deal with our ex-staff nearly every day in some capacity or other.Some are very famous in their chosen fields.

Given that most of the folks starting here have no music industry experience whatsoever- which is partly to do with our longstanding policy of taking on newbies, and partly because recruitment of experienced music industry professionals in Nottingham, UK is hard, as its 100 miles from London,it could be argued that Earache is a the perfect starting point for anyone trying to break into the music industry.Statistics bear it out.

Currently our alumni are working as:

A&R Vice president for Atlantic Records/Manager of Shiny Toy Guns
Press officer of Virgin Records
Press officer of Century Media Records
Press Officer- SPV records
Editor- metal maniacs magazine
Owner of PR firm - Hero Pr
Marketing manager of Jagermeister
Art director Eagle entertainment
Accountant Hot Records (eva cassidy)
label manager of Koch Records
label manager of Equal Vision records
Label manager of AF records (antiflag)
Owner of darkwave records
owner of boss tunage records
Owner of gentle electric records
Running NYC's only metal club- Precious Metal Mondays @ lit club.
guitarist and drummer in upcoming NYC band- Wetnurse

our ex-staff have also worked for Columbia & Roadrunner as Radio Promotions,Rockstar Games (grand theft auto etc),sales manager @ Doc data pressing plant,Tour booker for Fugazi, manager of Carcass & Echoboy, manager of Sixbyseven, Founder of Whitby Gothic weekend, resident DJ at Nottingham the Social..etc..basically, our staff get bloody everywhere!

Earache mispressings & misprints- any value?

Question: I bought a cd of napalm death\'s from enslavement to obliteration a couple of weeks ago but didnt get a chance to listen to it until now. I think that there was a mistake when the cd was made because although all of the artwork (the insert, the booklet and the priting on the cd itself) is how its suppose to be, the songs are not. The cd turned out to be a copy of entombed\'s wolverine blues instead. Not that i\'m dissapointed or anything, just a little confused. Do mistakes like this happen often, and would this cd be worth more because of it. From: berenpbj@aol.com

Answer: It's the first i've heard about this mispressing, it sounds like a weird one.As for its actual value, i think its possibly worth more as a mispressing to an avid collector than the regular CD, beleive it or not!These things are basically mistakes by the plant and are damn rare,and happen when the cd machine operator doesnt replace the art/on body at the same time as the master audio for a pressing next inline- so the next print run goes onto a different disc- until its noticed within 1-50 discs,and should be scrapped but some get through.Strangely such events are getting more common as our catalog gets larger.Recently i heard about a terrorizer cd containing opera music and years ago i think a Carcass contained Queen.try to buy them on ebay?You will need a lot of dosh!

I guess its an American pressing of the Napalm death FETO- because in USA all earche's titles are pressd at a single plant -Cinram- its an EMI owned plant,and presses all EMI catalog as well as earache's because our distro (Caroline) is an EMI owned distro.the possibilities of mispressings like the one you mention are higher than in Uk/Europe where we use about 4-5 different plants to make our cds.

We are waiting for a Napalm death CD to be pressed in small numbers containing The Beatles music..or a Beatles CD pressed with Morbid Angel's music by mistake--haha that would be priceless to Beatles collectors.

Is webstore secure?

Question: I noticed that Internet explorer does not show your site as secure. I would like to order some cds and have friends that i know would love to order, but we are hesitant to do so if we have to enter our credit card numbers on an insecure page. Can i mail order a different way? Or call in an order? Please let me know. From: theabatisofdaliana@yahoo.com


Answer: our webstore is a secure site and is encrypted, so you can order in confidence.

Nocturnus The Key out of print

Question: Do you ever intend to re-release The Key and Thresholds by Nocturnus? I know The Key is on iTunes, but I\'d rather give you my money for the actual CD than pay between $30 - $60 on Amazon.com From: oconnotron@gmail.com


Answer: The key was made available again a few years ago, for the first time in a decade, if you missed out on this Florida Death metal classic, then too bad. You are in luck with Thresholds though- its available right now from the Earache UK WEBSTORE

Early Earache bands NOT on CD

Question: Will you ever be issuing older earache tiles on CD such as Filthy Christians,Old Lady Drivers and Sore Throat. I\'ve wanted these on CD for a long time but never scene or heard of them issued on CD. From: anthonydesino@yahoo.com


Answer: beleive it or not, when Earache was a brand new fledgling label, in its early years late 80's operating outta my apartment, the CD format was a new deluxe luxury format, costing a lot of money to master and release, and sold hardly any copies compared to vinyl and casette, as most punk and metal fans did not then own a cd player.Thats why all the early Earache cds contain so many bonus tracks, even barely different mixes as was the case of the Morbid Angel debut on CD, as an incentive to shell out for this luxurious (at the time) format.

Filthy Christians was released on CD- but the other bands you mentioned did not warrant a CD release at the time, as expected sales were small.I think out of the classic run of first 21 mosh numbers, only mosh 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16,17, 18, 19, 20, 21 were debuted on CD.The rest did not, much to the annoyance of collectors later.

Napalm Death rare 7" "The Curse"

Question: i have a limited 7 \" record of napalm death with a naked kid running down a street with other kids as well trying to find info on it and finding out its worth has the songs the curse, musclehead, your achievment, dead, and morbid deceiver any help would be great From: cowlitzfan@netzero.net

Answer: this is probably the rarest Napalm death 7 inch vinyl ever made on Earache.It came out as a bonus free single with the original gatefold LP release of the second album by the band-1988's "From Enslavement To Obliteration".The curse is a slow dirgy number and is exclusive to this single, while the other 4 tracks are the extra tracks on the cd version.About 8000 from memory were made i think?The picture on the front is a classic image from Vietnam war- the kid has just been hit with a napalm bomb, and her flesh is in tatters and burning.Its a real,live napalm death.