A typical day at Earache?

Question: How many hours a week do you spend on Earache related business? Is there such a thing as a 'typical day'? From:

Answer:Working hours? I have no concept what that means because this job is 24/7 dude. In the era of iPhone and BlackBerry you can be in contact with people all of the time, and I'm the type of person who is impatient to know whats going on. So I'm jacked into the net and email pretty much constantly, weekends included. Its not really that big of a deal, as I have a passion for doing this anyway.

I'm lucky that Earache has a dedicated staff who bear most of the heavy workload leaving me to do the bits I enjoy, which is dealing with new bands and planning their albums or my speciality- crazy projects.Most of the staff here are music-lovers, we are a music company after all.

Strictly speaking, I'm self-employed, running my own business means it comes with a certain amount of burden of responsibility aswell. If you were to ask anyone who is self-employed how they spend their time, they would invariably answer- running the business or thinking about it most of the time.Its pretty normal in fact.

Mostly I'd describe my day as listening to new bands for consideration,checking out the mp3s of our own bands direct from the studio, trouble-shooting the daily problems which crop up, and strategising the future of this label, especially the mp3/downloading/streaming future of music, which I take a massive interest in.

Typical day? Here's Monday 12 October 2009:

7am- Roadworks on the road outside my house are being carried out at night, they are noisy and wake me up. Damn.I'm an early riser anyway, but 7am is friggin early.Its barely daylight.

7.01am- Grab laptop and check emails- approx 100 come overnight from USA timezone, including radio reports and USA staff progress reports from the end of last week.I'll surf the net, checking websites, twitter, tumblr, RSS feeds-I have about 25 metal and news sites feeds on the go, and tech sites.Decide I want a Kindle.Maybe start answering an Ask Earache question.

8.20am- Put Sky Sports News on TV and down my first Diet Coca-Cola of the day. I'll drink easily 6 of them before mid-day. I should be sponsored by Coke as I cant operate without caffeine.I dunno why I'm not a coffee drinker - the taste has just never appealed.

Before even leaving to work, I'll check out a few demo bands or new bands myspaces, especially if I have read good reviews about them. Nothing excites me more than hearing new bands. I honestly look forward to being blown away each time I hear a new band for the first time. I always remain optimistic that I could be discovering a brilliant new metal band - but sadly 99% of the time I'm disappointed, so move onto the next one.I play maybe 7 bands this way before breakfast,I never get bored with hearing new bands.

I research our own bands' happenings online too. Its quicker to just read their myspace blogs and tumblr streams than call em up. I hate phones anyway, preferring face-to-face meetings if possible. Today I wanted to see what folks were saying about Insect Warfare, and Cauldron, both on tour in UK. I discovered IW have a few haters back in Houston, which was news to me.Three days ago the band played Nottingham with a stand in singer, and we found em to be mega cool guys.I headed home after the gig, but find out that 2 Earache label guys were hanging and boozing with Dobber and Beau until 7.30am at the promoters house!.Earache staffers know how to party hard!

Our London based PR girl Talita returned from her holiday in Tibet and Nepal, so exchange a few early morning emails with her to explain the events she missed while away.Vice magazine has a TV channel and Talita appears in their latest online TV programme talking about Earache - Heavy Metal Roadshow.

10am Set off for office- by public transport.After a 10 minute walk then its a bus. 30 minutes later I'm in the city centre of Nottingham, settling into my office awaiting the first of daily dramas to unfold.Our start time is 10am ,so the rest of the staff are already in before me.

I'm 'hands-on' at work- office life revolves around a series of ad-hoc meetings with the label management dudes.We'll crowd round the desk and discuss subjects ranging from internet connection troubles to promo strategies to royalty calculations.This time of year its royalty time and many bands are due to receive their statements, which our system sends out by email as .pdfs.Its noticed that for some bands their digital sales out-earn the royalty from CDs. The music industry is changing dramatically, and the evidence is right before our eyes.

The unexpected, tragic news of Mike Alexander's (bassist of Evile) death still dominates our thoughts.It happened a week ago while he was on tour in Sweden, but his body is still in Sweden awaiting bringing back to UK. Its so sad. We arrange to visit Huddersfield and meet up with the Evile guys the next day, to see how they are coping with all this. The absolute deluge of condolence emails from so many big names in the scene gives them a lot of comfort.

Gama Bomb are in the studio halfway through recording of 'Tales From The Grave in Space' but a minor drama develops when they declare they cannot record the album and the extra bonus songs, because they simply won't have enough time.We tell them to work faster and get it done,because its already mega-late.We are expecting it on November 4th and have already announced it will be online as a free dowmload on Nov 5th.We can't miss this deadline.

On lunch break I grab a sandwich, more Coca-cola, and drop into HMV to buy some CDs.Being in the biz its a simple matter to blag a freebie of most music that comes out, but sometimes its easier to just buy it.In the store, I'm mostly just seeing whats new out- I buy Paramore and Hatebreed and a Lady Gaga single.Sometimes I get CDs just to hear the production on them, we are constantly on the look out for hot new producers who can make great-sounding metal albums on an Indie budget.

Spotify is a huge time-sink these days, I'm hooked on finding old albums to listen to to, Spotify has so much choice for free streaming its mindblowing.I'm streaming Rainbow and Van Halen a lot nowadays.One thing Spotify does lack though is NWOBHM.

A Japanese company is negotiating to release the labels music as ringtones in Japan- this is a first time deal for us, so its brand new ground.We sold a few ringtones in the UK before, but they are hot news again because the newly launched iTunes 9 makes ringtones for iPhones easier. I make the last few contract changes and send them off by email - here's hoping the other side will agree and a deal can be done.

A long standing prominent veteran Thrash band is up for a record deal, and Earache is close to securing the rights, but its never a done deal until its signed.We are told other labels are chasing them aswell.So myself and Dan the label manager have a quick discussion to think about it some more- is our offer attractive enough? Time will tell.

After work its quite common a bunch of us will go to local metal and punk gigs, our office is within a few blocks of Nottingham's main metal clubs & pubs. In a typical week at least 2-3 maybe 4 gigs are attended by me and/or staffers, either in Nottingham or London.

No decent gig was on tonight so I'll trek home. To chill out from work I'll catch some TV, mainly news channels or football games or Discovery channel.Movies bore me, I'm more into factual stuff. Later on I'll chill out by reading- not novels, mostly its factual stuff, again. I love reading about science or stuff about space exploration.Currently I'm reading Andrew Marr's excellent A History of Modern Britain.

Naturally some music will be on in the background aswell, probably Scorn.

Does anyone make a living playing grindcore?

Question: This question is based on an interview i read with pig destroyer, in which they said that the main reason why they dont tour much is because of the style of music they play pig destroyer doesnt pay the bills, so therefore they have to have day jobs. Im just curious as to how when one of the bigger bands of the grindcore scene struggles balancing the band and also a personal life. how labels can demand that they spend all their time on the road surely its a catch 22 situation? surely by keeping bands out on the road they are actually encouraging and accelerating that band splitting up being as bandmembers being frustrated with having a lack of money is one of the main reasons for band break ups? From:


Answer: Regular readers of this blog will know I constantly bang on about how only those bands which heavily dedicate their time, energy and money into touring, are the ones who eventually will succeed in making a living from the metal industry. It's not an opinion, its a cast iron fact, but its a statement which is usually met with the "look at Darkthrone or Burzum" retort- I tried to answer that one here, and i'm still waiting for you blogonauts to give me names of any other examples of bands who made it without touring.There are none.

Pig Destroyer are a classic case of a band that has other options in life, and chose them over touring their music- I believe mainman Scott Hull holds down a lucrative job as a computer programmer at the Pentagon, or some government department in Washington, D.C. Playing in a band is secondary to that, which is fair enough,I'm not going to criticise his choice.The end result is I suppose Pig Destroyer could be described as the worlds most well-known grindcore hobby band.I've never seen them play live for instance, which is odd.

It's true that grindcore is not a massive selling genre, I'm fairly sure that the only grindcore band making a living from their music is Napalm Death, they have been lucky enough to be living off the band for at least two decades now and the reason they have done it is by a constant, gruelling touring schedule. Shane Embury once told me that he spent over 250 days in one calendar year on the road, that is considered a normal touring cycle for a top level metal band with a newly released album on sale. In other 'off years' it might be around 100 shows, never less than 60.

I have dealt with quite a few bands whose members simply had no other life-options, you'd be suprised how many of the biggest metal stars grew up in very poor family situations, bordering on poverty. Their skill was their chosen instrument and their motivation to succeed was to simply break out of the poverty trap life dealt them. Getting in the van and criss-crossing Australia was no hardship for AC/DC members because the alternative of staying at home was far worse. Read Ozzy's autobiography if you want further evidence.

Metal bands differ greatly in their earning powers. At the top end of the scale, only 5 metal bands are considered of a huge enough stature and reliable ticket-selling power to build festivals around them: Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Kiss, Metallica, and lately I beleive Iron Maiden joined this illustrious club. Being just a handful of acts means they can command enormous sums to perform, over $500,000 per gig is common, but its not all profit as the bands bring an enormous crew and stage set with them. Lately these stellar names in metal make sure the whole festival is in their control, and it is often arranged around the headliner- examples are Ozzfest or Sonisphere -It's so that the lucrative festival sponsorships, branding, and tie-ins can be profited from by the main act aswell.

Bands from the next level of metal's heirarchy- Slipknot, System of a Down, etc take advantage of the lucrative EU festival circuit to play to as many people as possible in a series of weekends over the summer. Metal festivals in the 90s numbered about 5, most were on and off events, nowadays there are over 40 important metal festivals in EU alone, not to mention more in Australia and Japan. Those promoters are arguably the most important people in the metal industry at present.

Bands which put in the best performances in front of the huge festival crowds can now play maybe 25 EU festivals in one summer over 12 weekends,sometimes bands will play Friday at one festival and Saturday at another. The irony is of course that those 'festival fave' bands only got to be that way due to the constant touring during the early days.

Earache fought in the techno wars 93-96.

Question: How does Earache feel about the Techno releases you did back in the nineties.Now that bands like Pendulum are big, and dub step is played on Radio 1 and is popular in clubs?
From: Kevingkeegan666@gmail.com

Answer:Substitute Pitch Shifter for Pendulum and Scorn for Dub Step and you have pretty much what we were doing in the mid-90s. There is this misunderstanding that Earache in the mid-90s completely turned its back on Metal and Grind, with a wholesale shedding of all the "good" bands, to start releasing exclusively crappy "Dance/techno" records instead.This is a gross exaggeration of what did happen, albeit on a small scale.

People are quick to forget that Earache actually did release tons of quality extreme metal during that era as usual, Morbid Angel, Napalm Death, Anal Cunt, Carcass, Cathedral Iron Monkey and more, but sadly these were overshadowed in the fans eyes by the - probably a dozen,tops - of the extreme techno records that were also released.

It seriously divided opinion among fans of the label, and in hindsight it WAS a serious mistake. A sub-label for techno, not the main label, was the proper place for such wild experimentation. Looking back its remarkable how immune I was to the anger it caused to some die-hard fans.We did have a side label for this stuff, but it was closed down, the last release being early Drum N bass act Fenetik (sleeve pictured above). See that story here.

Someone who definately was angry was Brutal Truth's Kevin Sharp- during the period in 1995 or so, when they had been let go from the label (at their request I might add) he took to mercilessly bashing Earache in interviews, and especially our artist Ultraviolence, which was one of the new hardcore techno projects I'd started working with since 1993.

I guess you had to be here.If you werent living in the UK during the early 90s, you cant understand the impact the techno/rave music scene had. It WAS the underground music scene here, and at least in the early days it was just as radical as the death metal or grindcore scene.Nobody could have predicted that this nascent rave scene would blow up to dominate popular culture for the next decade, of course.

Norway had Helvete, we had Warp.

This was before it became totally mainstream and superclubs like Gatecrasher or Ministry of Sound had even opened their doors.It was a truly Independent, DIY scene which utilised the primitive samplers and early affordable music software to literally invent a new music scene out of nothing. That scene evolved into the mainstream drum n bass and techno which dominated the clubs amd the charts for most of the 90s and much of this decade too.

Back then, I would sit in my flat during the early 90s and hear strangely alien yet alluringly massive bass-heavy sounds pumping out of every house and car where I lived at the time. I discovered it was on the airwaves aswell due to an illegal pirate radio station (Rave FM) operating in my area. It was hellishly underground, radical and free music.

The free parties like Castlemorton made the TV news and newspaper front pages.Being seemingly spearheaded by renegade anarcho-punkers from the 80s, like Spiral Tribe made it even more appealing. The whole scene was even declared illegal - new laws were passed in Parliament to prevent gatherings of ravers - and I became a big fan instantly.

Heres Spiral Tribe explaining what happened:



Won't be long before an NME/ hipster-led Jungle/Rave revival is on the cards surely?
Fine by me, as clubs would have to play ACEN- Trip to the Moon Part 2 (Production House, 1992)



plus Sonic Experience- everybody get crazy!

Bands- are they mates or legal partnerships?

Question: This has come to mind after the whole recent fear factory incident. Are most bands registered as independent companys? Im curious as to why when burton c bell reorginised the band to bring dino back the former members claimed to still be part of fear factory inc? are most bands registered as companies from a legal point of view? From:


Answer: Having worked with hundreds of bands for over 2 decades, I can say they are quite nebulous things, and no two acts are alike.Most bands when starting out are simply a group of mates making music for fun with vague dreams of success and stardom, so having a sit down meeting to declare and sign themselves up as a formal 4 or 5 -way partnership is one of the last things on their minds.

While outwardly appearing a united, democratic unit to the fans, behind the scenes, most bands have one member who is the driving force, the creative leader and very often its not the most visible member, the frontman.In my experience, its more often likely to be the unsung hero, like guitarist, drummer or bassist that actually plans the activities and direction of the band.

Some bands have a leader of almost tyrannical proportions and the rest of the members follow orders or get their marching orders, you can tell them by the revolving door precession of line ups on each album/tour. Most bands try to do the decent thing and when they get the first flush of success, its common for them to state in writing that the band is a partnership with equal shares all round, so that everyone is comfortable with their own positions.Sadly, the actual day to day reality of bands is that they definately do not run along 100% democratic lines,because nothing would ever get done.

As bands get bigger the monetary stakes get higher and what seemed like a decent idea at the outset doesnt seem so fair or reasonable, especially to the one doing all the work.Aswell as a leader who does the writing, liasing with record company, helping run the myspace, planning tours etc, most bands also have the opposite, a lazy member, who doesn't contribute much except playing the songs onstage, sometimes other members can -wrongly- view them as tagging along for the ride.We find the easiest way to split a band up once they have found success is to casually ask them to name in writing their share of incomes.Anything other than fair shares all round can result in deep resentment and open warfare between the less important members which can fester throughout their -too often abruptly curtailed - career.

We have noticed in recent years a lot of high profile legal cases involve ex band members squabbling in the high court with each other over their fair share of past hits and the highly lucrative naming rights for touring and merchandising purposes.
Back in the 90s it was the artists taking the labels to court for unfair recording contracts, now they sue each other instead. Sign of the times?

As for Fear Factory, I always got on great with Dino in the past and from what I am hearing I sense that he and Burton put past differences aside, and got back together to sign a lucrative deal with Candlelight Records.As it happens the new manager of the Dino/Burton FF is a business partner of a Director of Candlelight so it was a clever bit of business for both parties, only trouble is the other ex-members Raymond and Christian were'nt invited to this particular re-union party.

Even the most well run band cannot imagine the plan for the status of ex-members who want to re-form the outfit at a later date, hence the acrimonious nature of this reformation without 2 of the original members of the band.Its none of my business, but hope both parties can settle this quite quickly because no one wins when band members are seen squabbling publicly or in court.

As far as I know, the Dino/Burton FF album is recorded and even on promo right now, I guess a deal must have been done to allow it.

Film Samples on Entombed's Wolverine Blues

Question: Around about 10 years ago, after being impressed with my first listens of Entombed (thanks to Earache's reasonably priced 'Earplugged' compilations) I picked up a copy of the 'Wolverine Blues' album for a tenner from a small independent record shop in Nuneaton ('What' records, for those who are interested. Sadly no longer with us). In the years following it has enjoyed many a spin in my CD player as one of my favourite albums, however I was REALLY shocked to discover recently that MY version of the album with it's selection of movie samples is pretty rare due to your concern at a potential lawsuit coming out of Hollywood. Personally I can't imagine 'Rotten Soil' WITHOUT the the 'Flatliners' sample "Wake up you little shit, you got company!" at the beginning of each chorus.

Anyway, my question is just how many CDs were pressed WITH the vocal samples?

Cheers From: Evil__Jeff@Hotmail.com


Answer: To answer your question, I think about 3000 CDs from memory came out like that, in the UK edition, and none came out in the USA Columbia/Earache edition.It was because the album was due for a major-label release that all samples had to be removed.Sony insisted on it, and myself and the band learned a valuable lesson in the copyrights of movie dialogue.

Dealing with our bands wanting to use samples from movies on their albums seemingly takes up a sizable portion of my work time. Latest is Municipal Waste who originally recorded the new album Massive Aggressive with a dialogue sample "You think that when you die you got to heaven.You come to US!!" from Phantasm 2 as the intro to Upside Down Church. We insisted it was removed and doesn't make it into any edition.

The reason they have to be removed is because of copyright laws, the material is not created or recorded by the band and so is basically stealing someone else's work while claiming it as their own on 'their' album. While I do enjoy listening to the songs which have great dialogue samples from movies in them, they can add a certain cool factor to any song,but I don't like the legal consequences, which can be severe and may negatively affect the bands career. In short its just not worth the aggro.

Not all samples are the equal though, dialogue from multi-million-Dollar major motion pictures are impossible to obtain clearance because it involves so many layers of agreement, the producer, the actor, the film studio, the director all have to agree, so its pretty much a non starter.

On the other hand, it can be perfectly fine if its a small independent film, and we have had success clearing stuff if the movie is a small one, often the director of a low budget movie can take a personal interest in a band using a sample, they see it as extra promotion for them.We cleared The sample from the legendary UK 70's movie Scum "we're just treated like scum, but us, were gonna fight back" for SSS's Overload track was cleared this way.Incidentally the original novel on which the SCUM movie was based was written by Roy Minton, who is the father of Pulkas singer Luke Minton,Pulkas were an Earache band of the 90's. Also 80s gore film legends Troma were actually excited for us to be using their Toxic Avenger etc footage in a recent Municpal Waste video clip for Headbanger Face Rip for instance.

Away from the regular music industry there is a thriving sub-industry in 'sample recreation' nowadays.Some companies and studios exist solely to recreate famous dialogue and music, because the originals are impossible to clear. Companies like Scorrcio will replay entire songs for a fee, and out of work voice actors can recreate any dialogue for a fee aswell.

In USA the album had a limited edition Wolverine comic cover which was an official tie-in with Marvel Comics, for extra promotion.Thats why the comic character appears in the video clip, even though the song is about an actual wild animal not the comic character.

Heres Wolverine Blues by Entombed clip:

Carcass' old rumour website circa 1995

Question: Whilst browsing the internet, I found a website which acted as a sort of unofficial fan club for Carcass back in the days of Heartwork/Swansong and was regularly updated with tidbits of information about what was happening in Carcassland as it happened. However, seeing as this was 15 years ago and the internet was not so widespread, the stuff is based mainly on word-of-mouth and small magazine snippets, so it's not the most reliable source ever. However, one thing which struck me was an entry from May '96 which said that Michael Amott had reformed Carnage. Obviously, there is no recorded output form this era, but I just wondered if you knew anything about this short-lived Reunion? Do you know if this is true, and if there was any live shows or even any rehearsals?
Also, can you vouch as to how much of the stuff on this website is true?
The Carcass website can be found here:
http://www.goddamnbastard.org/carcass/news.html From:


Answer: I know your question is about Carcass dude, but let me digress a little, because this question is pretty fascinating for me, it gave me deja-vu.You have to remember this website dates from the Jurassic period of the internet.1994-5 makes it, in internet-time, a prehistoric time capsule preserved in amber.I don't know if 'Web Archeaology' exists as a scientific discipline yet but it should do as you can unearth a lot of gems of information from the past by using Waybackmachine or internet archive.

The whole WWW was a brand new thing in 1994-5 and it was a truly wonderous time to be online, but its full life-changing power was certainly not apparent yet, mainly due to the severely slow dial-up speed of the early modems and phone lines, not to mention the outrageous price plans the telcos charged the public for internet access.Plus, when you went online back then it was a barely tolerable experience, there was no web-browser apart from the primitive Mosaic, and the scarcity of websites dealing with metal music meant it was a serious headache to unearth the slightest bit of band info from the web.

Back then, a lot of people were actually 'on the 'net' but nearly all of us non students paid to go through commercial ISPs like AOL or Prodigy, so we were restricted to text based communications - such as email, internet-relay chats (IRC's) and alt.newsgroups (primitive forerunner of message boards).

1995 was the year the web as we know it broke out of being mainly the domain of computer programmers and students on campus at universities which had free and super-fast access to the server hubs .It became a public phenomenon with the release of the first commercial graphical web browser, Netscape Navigator.

I distinctly remember loading up Netscape Navigator 1.0 and viewing my first webpages with- get this- actual images loading within the page.Amazing. After looking up footy scores, obviously, my second look up would be metal.In this early era of the 'net there was no such thing as a search-engine, Alta Vista had yet to come online, and Google could not even be imagined, so you had to navigate via the kindness other sites which would commonly provide a page of relevant links to send you on your way.Our earache.com site still has such a links page which dates back from that era.

For a laugh, the designers of Netscape coded their personal web pages into the software as an easter-egg,one of the designers Jamie Zawinski had a webpage which linked to many music/metal related pages, so this became my homepage for many years.And this page was linked a couple of clicks away, so I used to view it all the time myself at the time.

Sorry for the digression and trip down memory lane- I used to have bookmarked this very same page back in the day,it was a serious beacon of info in an otherwise dark internet, I used to refer to it all the time, seeing it again for the first time in a decade was cool.

From my perspective it dates from a time when Carcass were estranged from this label.They had recently signed to Columbia records/Sony after 4 albums on Earache so we were no longer part of their career plans.Earache dealt with the band on a daily basis for like 6 years straight, then all of as sudden we were history and shut out.

Hence, I actually viewed this very same site myself for info about their activities. It certainly was gossip/rumour-based, as all information seemed to be then,but it declares its rumour-mongering sources quite clearly at the top, so you know what you are getting.Most of it is exactly that- rumour- but I do know the comment about The JFK head is wrong- because it was Jeff Walkers idea to use it for the cover of the album made up of leftover songs from the Swansong sessions, not ours.

Googling the name of the kid who ran the page back then- Matt Holliman based out of Illinois, it appears he now works as a software engineer at Google, which is ironic.Moving on with his career, it appears he left the site in the capable hands of his protege and fellow metal-head Ryan Beasley, also based out of Illinois.

I for one am glad it exists and serves as an archealogical fan page of a certain bygone era of one of Death Metal's most significant bands, it remains a useful reference tool as a window into how fan pages looked on the web, in the mid-90s.

How did Carcass pitch-shift the vocals live?

Question: Hey,

Back in the day, how did Carcass pitch shift their vocals in concert? I've wondered for awhile how pitch-shifted bands replicated the sound live and was watching one of the Pathologist's Report DVDs and noticed that both Bill and Jeff have second mics attached to the mic stands. Is the second mic hooked up to a peddle of some sort? I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this kind of question, but I'm curious and figure I might as well ask.

Thanks,

Dayan From: wizzbang11@gmail.com


Answer: Carcass in the very early days used to set up with 2 vocal mics for Jeff, I'm not sure on the exact tech spec but one was regular mic and the other one, about 6 inches away would run into the mixing desk as normal but have pitch-shift effect added at the desk.So many of the songs had this vocal treatment, I personally think it was overused in the studio on the debut, in hindsight. The gutteral effect was alien and sick so it added to the eerie vibe the band was trying to create on record. Consequently the band felt it necessary to replicate it live, during early gigs.

I think the band ditched the 2 vocal mics idea pretty quickly, it looked strange, and it wasn't always possible to set it up right,it just became an extra hassle at gigs.It was easier for Jeff to learn to do it more gutteral live, and as the band did more albums, fewer songs from the debut made it into the Carcass live set anyway.


Heres Carcass Reek of Putrefaction live in 1989, using the 2 vocal mic technique.

Which bands did Earache try to sign, and miss out on?

Question: Hi Dig. Over the years have there been any notable bands that you have tried to sign that got snapped up by another label or any bands that you turned down that with hindsight you now wish you had signed?
Many thanks for answering my Domination Slime Pack question, can't believe it's worth $1200. Amazing.
Cheers,
David. From: dave666hume@hotmail.com

Answer: Interesting question Dave- Earache has signed our fair share of the more interesting extreme metal bands over the years, as you can see from the A-Z drop down menu/list of Earache bands past and present on our website.

As for bands we tried to sign, and failed to get, for whatever reason, below is a list off the top of my head. Actually I can do better than that, because recently I found the folders/files I'd kept of the "bands we never got"- see the screen grab right off my computer (right).It made my eyes water seeing how close we were to signing some of the most influential metal bands of recent times. Oh well.



On many occasions these bands were virtual unknowns at the time of our interest, and we would have had various stages of face-to-face talks or in some cases actual contracts were issued. Most common reason we didn't get to work with the band in question would be because they preferred to choose another label with a more attractive offer instead. Which is fair enough. We genuinely didn't lose any sleep over them, because none were recognised big selling names or had released more than a well-received debut at the time of our interest. It's quite fun to reminisce and look back at our past failures.

One band on this list who I forgot about is Alligator Gun.This short lived early 90s Mid-West US band made the most incredible poppy-punk songs, and were at least as good as the mid 90s Californian pop-punkers like Green Day or Blink 182, but they predated the coming huge selling pop punk scene by a decade, so the breaks never went their way, sadly.

To be honest, many other labels could boast similar lists, probably waaaay more extensive than mine, because its quite usual for all the labels big and small to pick up on and approach any buzzworthy bands.

We know of some of hottest new bands nowadays can take their pick of up to 12 different label offers, so most labels do lose out on bands, most of the time.

See blue link for deeper story of Earaches involvement with each band.

Nirvana story here.
System Of A Down
Cradle of Filth
In Flames
Burzum
Opeth
Emperor
Job For A Cowboy
Suicide Silence
Between The Buried and Me
The Red Chord
Career Suicide
Panic Cell
Converge
Satyricon
Nachtmystium
Alligator Gun
Vomitory
Decadence
Sylosis

Why no Bill Steer in Carcass' 'Incarnated..' clip?

Question: Hi!, why does Bill Steer doesnt appears in the Incarnated Solvent Abuse video?
Thanks From: gael515@hotmail.com


Answer: I had'nt watched this clip in years so checked it out on Youtube.Which reminds me, I gotta have words with that fucking Smitty from Krank/Blank TV again, he uploaded tons of our clips to YT and claims them as his own to receive advertising revenue from Google.Naughty boy.

Anyway, this clip was made in 1991 and it is Carcass' first ever promo clip.The Earache grindcore bands were not known for exploring the visual medium, they more or less existed just to make extreme noise on record and on stage, anything else was deemed unimportant as MTV were certainly not going to be airing any grindcore bands clips anytime soon, or so they thought. I had to more or less hassle them into making videos, and appearing in front of cameras in general, I saw promo clips as a good promotional tool.Back then there were no digital metal TV channels or YouTube, so clips were made for VHS retail compilations and occasional plays from VHS on TVs in the corner of metal stores.

Carcass themselves came up with the concept and did the filming and editing i think. I recall being amazed at how impressive the clip looked with basically a rubber sheet for a prop. The lack of Bill Steer did not phase anyone at the time, but looking back it is odd how he doesn't appear, except I think he is just visible for a second during the 2nd solo.I hazard a guess that he didnt want to take his T-shirt off, yeah the explanation could be as mundane as that, he didnt want to be filmed bare-chested.

For various reasons this clip was controversial to those that saw it at the time, a Grindcore band playing bare chested wasn't really deemed cool.Also an inexplicable "Hitler Salute' somehow appears in the clip at 2:20, the band are certainly not racists, quite the opposite in fact, but the super-imposition of effects makes looks like Jeff is giving a Nazi salute in this clip. It caused an outrage at the time.

Bolt Thrower- why new Realm of Chaos art?

Question: Hi,
How come Bolt Thrower's Realm of Chaos has a new cover? Did GW drop the rights to use it or what? John Sibbick's a killer artist, but I have to say I do prefer the original cover. Do you still have the original in stock? I noticed it in the store but I've contacted one of your guys before and he said he hadn't seen the original artwork version at all in years. Any info you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
G From: roadkill_demon@hotmail.com


Answer: This question is a cause of much consternation between Earache and Bolt Thrower.In short, you are exactly right- the original sleeve art was the property of Games Workshop, not Earache or Bolt Thrower and when the lease on its use ran out in around 2002 or so, we approached the famous Fantasy Wargaming company for a renewal which was flatly refused to us.This refusal knocked us for six.

So we faced a harsh decision to either discontinue the album, or commission new art by the same artist in a similar style and theme, but being careful to not fall foul of copyright laws. Bolt Thrower themselves were pretty unhelpful by insisting that the orginal be used in further pressings, but this was impossible as it wasn't ours or their art to use, it was Games Workshops artwork and copyrights.Luckily we had seperately commissioned the actual Bolt Thrower logo, drawn by Mark Craven, so could still use that at least!



John Sibbick drew the original artwork under commission by Games Worshop. Back in the 80s the original edition of the company's biggest fantasy wargame 'Warhammer 40,000' had this artwork adorning the box cover.Everything about it is copyrighted to the hilt, right up to the design of the weapons, and even the logos on the clothing of the Space Marines fighting in the picture.We obtained the rights to use it after an exceedingly friendly meeting with the managing Director Bryan Ansell of Games Workshop, and Andy Jones the general manager. The company was small but growing fast at the time, and being based in Nottingham's Lace Market area, it was a short walk from our office.The guys saw the sense in reaching out to the Rock/metal market which Earache and Bol Thrower offered by using their art on an actual release- and a deal was struck.It was a one page contract/bit of paper saying we had rights to use it lasting 13 years.




By the time of 2002 or so the Gsmes workshop company had become a global billion dollar corporate behemoth.When we asked for a renewal of the artwork rights, it suddenly dawned on us that this wasn't the same local company I met with 13 years beforehand.We were hit with a barrage of legal letters, cease and desist and copyright infringment claims.It was as if the company in its new corporate form had never heard of us, accusing us of theft of their highly prized copyrighted art in the first place.We avoided all contact with GW after that.



So the only solution was to try to track down the artist John Sibbick who had long since left the Wargaming art scene, his new career was as a highly respected artist drawing dinosaurs for scientific papers and research. Luckily when he heard of our dilemma he agreed to kindly redraw similar themed artwork but without any GW copyrighted elements. This is the art used on the new edition from 2004 onwards.

Rob Trujillo & Benji Webbe = Mass Mental

Question: you'll prob be able to answer this, I wonder if you can confirm or deny this scene rumour? Was Robert Trujillo now of course of metallica, really brought into dub war by benji webb as an attempt to save the band after the departure of some of the original members? From:


Answer: Yeah its true, but not quite for the reasons you stated.Benji - current vocalist of Skindred- had his first band Dub War which was on Earache for 2 albums in the mid-90s, and they did Ok, given the ragga-metal they pioneered wasn't even a genre back then. To many listeners the Newport crew's music was pretty alien, being a cross between dancehall ragga with occasional soulful sung vocals with heavy-ish rock riffs, this of course is pretty much why I signed them.

Meanwhile California's Rob Trujillo was playing in Suicidal Tendencies/Infectious Grooves and I think the two bands must have met when playing a Euro festival. Benji and Rob became good friends and made plans to do a project at some point together.

Earache released Dub War from the contract because the sales had dropped off significantly between the debut and the second album. For a short while Benji was contracted to do a solo album for Earache, but our interest faded to zero when he unveiled his desire to persue a pure Hip Hop direction instead of rock.

So Benji was without a record deal for about 2 years, during whch time he flew to LA to add vocals to the project Rob was working on. They named the band Mass Mental and the album is mostly bass-driven, funky rock with Benjis trademark ragga chatter in full effect.Its kinda like a Dub War meets Infectious Grooves album. Strangely the resulting album "How to Write Love Songs" was only released in Japan, I am guessing that Robs contractual commitments meant it couldn't be released in USA or UK, because it weird that I've never seen a copy.

From memory, the album disppeared without trace on release.

Back in Newport, Benji regrouped with his core musicians to form Skindred- ironically the band contained mostly ex-Dub war guys.Skindred signed with the Beiler brothers label, which is part of Atlantic records.

Rob meanwhile auditioned for Metallica for the vacant bass player position, and joined Metallica in 2004.

See Robs audition for Metallica here:



See Dub War Strike It clip ($10,000)

Notts Rockers X-Rays & Garage Punk scene

Question: Hello Dig, I was just wondering what you thought about the heavier end of the garage punk scene? Old bands like the Dirtys, the Revelators and the Motards, while in no way metal, were pretty fast and extreme for garage music. Do you like this sort of stuff? Also, I was wondering if you ever saw the X-Rays, they were a garage punk band for Nottingham in the 90s.Finally, any thoughts on Billy Childish? That geezers been around even longer than you have! From:


Answer: No dude, for some reason the Garage Rock scene has completely passed me by. I just checked out The Dirtys and did actually quite like em. Generally the music just sounds too retro for me. The nearest I've gotten to garage might have been The Hardons, New Bomb Turks or Hellacopters all of these bands had an Earache connection for a while.Entombed made a 7 inch single split with NBT on Earache, and Entombed's Nicke Anderson formed Hellacopters, who became very successful in the 90s.



The X-rays (pictured) come from my home town, Nottingham, so I do know them a bit.Even tho they split up ages ago, the ex-members can still be seen at various drinking holes around this city.Bassman Coop is a local hero, and frontman Gaz could be found behind the counter in local legendary record shop Selectadisc for most of the nineties. Drummer steve was in an Earache band called Heresy before X-Rays so we have a slight connection there.

As for Billy Childish, bizarrely I had no clue who he was until this question popped up on the blog.I had no pre-conceived idea of the bloke. After a bit of research, he seems a thoroughly decent, knowlegable and highly astute fella, and I quite like what he says in this Audio Interview

Why no signings of bands from obscure countries?

Question: Do you think its important for labels to look outside the usual countries in which bands are normally found ie uk, usa and australia? I mean look at the now defunct japanease deathcore band Infected Malignity obviously they came from the dying fetus/misery index school of deathcore however i feel that with a larger label pushing them they could have gone further because their sound rivaled some of the western deathcore bands. However ive heard before that there can be problems signing bands from thease non usual metal teritories as occasionally they can not be accustomed to playing live due to a lack of a scene, is this true? From:


Answer: The appeal of metal music - in all its sub-genres- is truly global and if you look closely enough at any country on this planet you can find metal or hardcore punk bands existing, and in most cases thriving, often under the most dangerous of circumstances. Maybe you have seen the story of the Iraqi metal band -Acrassicauda who were 'discovered' playing metal in Bahgdad and feature in the Vice film "Heavy Metal in Bahgdad'.They moved to Istanbul, for relative safety.



Its quite the hipster pastime to discover ever more obscure bands. There is a very great Bad Brains style rock/metal act called Orange Sky from Trinidad and Tobago, and from Botswana comes a decent Death metal band Crackdust.See Crackdust pictured right. Death metal also exists in India with Demonic Resurrection.

The reason the bigger Metal labels don't sign any bands from far flung places is pretty much because of the hassle dealing with bands who are not located in the major metal hotspots of the globe which are USA, EU and Brasil, Japan & Australia. Touring is the main problem, not just the cost of flights, its the red-tape involved in bringing musicians into the major selling markets to tour.As tourists you can travel most places but musicians are classed as temporary workers and come under a lot of laws restricting movements.

The govermments of the world restrict the movements of people and workers more than you can imagine, its not like US or EU where people can live and freely migrate to anywhere they like within its borders.

Earache found out the hard way when we signed Polands Vader about a decade before the EU included Poland, read that story here.Even in recent years Hungarian band Without Face were signed on sub-label Elitist and had a lot of restrictions, they could not enter USA for instance.The dude singer of that band now lives in Nottingham, UK. These are bands from countries now part of EU and they still have travel restrictions.

The cost of a visas for a UK band to tour USA is around $3000 which is a pretty big hurdle, its what prevents a lot of acts from outside USA from touring there.The US immigration authority also needs to see evidence of record sales and press clippings (at least 30, in English) before they will grant a foreign act a visa for a USA tour. Its tough.

On the flipside US bands can tour EU without any visa requirements or at the most it costs a mere $300 visa for entry into the UK, and is usually a formality.

These are the main reasons the bigger metal labels don't take more chances on bands from far flung countries.


Heres Trindad's Orange Sky:

Memories of Planet X club, Liverpool

Question: Hi Digg. In the 90's my friends and I used to go to a club in Liverpool called Planet X. From memory the club was about the size of a terraced house with the bands playing on the floor in what was essentially someones front room. We saw lots of earache bands there back in the day, Carcass, Entombed (on their first UK tour), Bolt Thrower, Pitchshifter, Cathedral (what I believe was their first gig - in front of about 15 people! Supporting S.O.B) and many other bands. This was a classic venue and I can find nothing on the interweb about it at all! I wondered if you ever visisted there and if you had any memories of the place as a lot of your acts played there. There was also a video about the Liverpool scene with Carcass playing there shown on Granada TV, again nothing on the net!
On a related note one of the local bands to come out of that scene was Anathema. They played there many times and back then when they where coming up there was a real hype around them and they looked set to be massive. After I dropped out of the DM scene I was shocked to find out that they turned into some massive Pink Floyd sound alike rock band! I wondered if you ever thought of signing them before they signed to Peaceville, if you rated them back then and what you think of their subsequent transformation.
Anyway great blog, great label.

Ste From: Suttuon808303@gmail.com


Answer: Cheers Ste, thanks for reminding me what great gigs took place at Planet X in Liverpool, it hosted nearly all the early UK hardcore and grindcore bands' early shows. I don't know you, but I guess we were at many of the same gigs together because I loved travelling up to Liverpool, I'd stay at friends houses like early Liverpool punk/HC scenesters Middie, Pek, Granny and also Carcass' Bill Steers parents place out in Heswall.I remember a local HC act Jailcell Recipes would open many of the shows.

The buzz around the HC/grindcore bands was special in Liverpool which made the gigs more exciting, even if it was only 15 people, they were diehards! I dunno why, Scousers are just more down to earth, and seem more intense about their music, and life in general it seems.I loved visiting the city for that reason.

The reason you can't find it on the web is because you are forgetting it was actually first and foremost a Goth club.Maybe you did'nt know that? The main clientele was the massive gothic/alernative scene of the mid-late 80s.Hundreds of em would pack the club to the rafters every weekend, grooving to the likes of Sisters Of Mercy or The Cult.The club runners had a 25th anniversary reunion night a year ago.Spot anyone you know? The club even has a Myspace and is planning more reunion nights.

Back in the late 80s, no clubs would book grindcore, it was unlistenable noise to most ears, and it had no fan-base to speak of, outside of the couple of dozen dudes who played in the bands.Planet X was the place everyone played simply because the club owners were open-minded and kind enough to allow hiring out of the the club to outsiders,so people like local HC stalwart Pete C would promote and arrange many of the early grindcore gigs there himself.


I think I even stayed for the club night once, being in no hurry to go home after the gig. I remember the club transformed itself at dusk, the stacks of TV sets at the top of the stairs would come to life and start playing horror movies, and in no time at all the club would he heaving as hundreds of goths would descend.

Pictured right is HC scenester and down for lifer, Pek at the 25 yr reunion club.

Try searching Planet X Goth and you get tons of results.



Regarding Anathema, for some reason they were never on my radar.Seemingly out of nowhere they were snapped up by Peaceville early on, and along with Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride became the big 3 bands on that label, forging this brand new sound of doom-laden Gothic rock, to much acclaim, and deservedly so.

For me personally, they just weren't grindcore enough for my tastes, and I have never much followed what they were up as far as releases go. I think I've only barely met the Kavanaghs once or twice, we were in the same early 90s "death/doom/grind" scene, but moved in different circles.

Actually Earache's label manager Dan Tobin was working at Peaceville in the early 90s and he's told me about Anathema's early years, he travelled with them on their first tours abroad.That band endured a level of hardship in the early days which lesser bands surely could not stomach.A lot of bands I work with are stony broke when they are starting out but the level of poverty within that band was shocking, they had literally nothing 'cept some instruments and their own self-belief.Anathema deserves respect for breaking out of Liverpool onto the world stage through sheer hard work, and talent.

Nowadays as you say they have mutated into a biggish selling progressive rock outfit, they have a dual fanbase because they can play to huge metal festival audiences as well as to folky-art gatherings when they go acoustic.

Who was most important Metal band of 90s?

Question: Heres a general metal one for you, who do you think the most important metal band of the 90s was? Personally i thought it was TOOL simply because of the fact that their influence has been felt through death metal bands through to Alt rock bands. I personally remember talking to martin from decapitated about the contrast in their two bass players paul d'mour and justin chancellor and how tool's use of polyrhythms was an influence on decapitated. Also im sure cult of luna would sound very different if tool didnt exist, and also candiria. From:



Answer: Depends if you mean important as in musically influential or important as in biggest-selling and popular? NIRVANA popularised grunge and changed the course of music in the process, but I doubt they can be called Metal.I agree with the choice of TOOL - a great pick, but were they most important? I dunno. Now we have the benefit of hindsight, almost a decade has passed since the 90s-and my choice is KORN. I reckon KORN were the most infuential and also biggest selling of the 90s metal acts,so they score on both counts.

Korn are certainly not cited as an influence by any of the Earache label acts, I dont even count myself as a major fan either, but their achievments in popularising heavy music can't be overlooked. Within the Industry, their sales acheivements are staggering for a heavy-ish band, and they deserve a certain amount of respect for not deviating too far from the Nu-Metal formula they pretty much singlehandedly created.

It could even be argued that their sound was highly avant-garde and experimental for the time, mixing Hip Hop and angsty, raw to the nerve rock to a bass-heavy chugging riff was unheard of before Korn.The Nu Metal scene was so strange as heavy-ish music was for the first time ever marketed by all the major labels like Pop music.




Talking of Nu Metal, I was rummaging through an old box of demo cassettes the other day and found this- Limp Bizkit's original 3 song demo, on Florida Indie label Flip records.Its still sealed so I guess I never even played it!


Heres KORN with Twisted Transistor

Earache - why no Ripping Corpse in the 90s?

Question: Another rumour.... is it true that you wanted to sign Ripping Corpse but David Vincent advised against it? Im guessing its bullshit but wondering if you could put any light on it as to how it may of started, etc... From:

Answer: Short answer is - I was really into Ripping Corpse, musically they played prime Death Metal in the Morbid Angel vein, and contracts were ready to be signed when I suddenly backed out of the deal.It was the Hardcore look (short hair & baseball cap) of the singer which actually put me off signing them.

The early 90s were a golden period for Death Metal as the scene exploded. Earache was one of the leading labels signing these types of bands, and I was the one responsible for the signings, but would always listen to feedback from our already signed acts. Mick Harris, Bill Steer and David Vincent would often recommend bands to me, reporting back on bands they had just played with on the road or demos they'd picked up.We were all just rabid fans of the emerging DM scene.

Back then the label was swamped with recently formed Death Metal bands demos, arriving mainly on cassette, choosing which bands to sign and which to pass on was a huge gamble. A&R is a thankless task, because in the space of 10 minutes and during the course of 2 or 3 songs you have to try to decipher and work out the career-worthiness of a band for possible future investment.Back then, snap decisions were made on a daily basis about all the new death metal bands, the only tools available to decide the bands fate were the music itself, and if you were lucky, a photo.

From a label point of view, the A&R process involves trusting your gut instincts about a band and making the best objective judgement call you can make.Don't forget this was all happening in the pre-MySpace/YouTube/Blogger era. Nowadays A&R is so easy, literally anyone can do it, as all the info needed including playcounts and viewcounts and sales statistics are a click away.

The band photograph itself is an incredibly useful A&R tool, I don't mean for the obvious judgment call on the overall look/clothes of the band, but on a deeper level the experienced eye can tell the cohesiveness or otherwise of a band just from the members' body language.Tell-tale warning signs are a member standing in their own personal space a foot away from the rest of the group.It means he's leaving anytime soon. Likewise a frontman who is not pictured at the front of a group shot can show an underlying lack of confidence.

Subtle clues belie the true picture of the internal workings of any band.Bands that send me a press pack consisting of photographs of individual members and their individual bios are immediately ignored, you would be suprised how many 'bands' are not actually a functioning group at all.

When I heard Ripping Corpse's demo coming from New Jersey, they went straight to the top of the pile of bands to check out. Morbid Angel's manager even took me to a rehearsal in deepest Jersey where I met Erik Rutan for the first time.The band truly shredded through a few blistering songs, and i was impressed by the music, but for some reason the look of the singer bugged me, I thought it odd he was so Hardcore looking, and so i did'nt like the whole package of the band. Its quite possible David Vincent gave me his opinon, but either way i decided to pass on the band.As it happened Erik Rutan joined Morbid Angel a few years later and his band Hate Eternal recorded for Wicked World (Earache sub-label) after he left Morbid Angel.

Nowadays of course its totally normal to have DM and HC guys in bands,back then it was unknown.The massive metalcore scene is proof that HC and DM can mix, maybe Ripping Corpse were just too ahead of their time for me.

Heres Ripping Corpse in their prime:

Earache- some rumours put to rest.

Question: While looking through my dad's "Great Rock Discography" book I was surprised to read that it said that Napalm Death started Earache to put out their own records. This lead to wonder what the best/ worst rumour you have heard concerning Earache records is?
The book also mentions that Mick Harris did some time for robbing a jewellery shop or something to that effect, can you spill the beans on this?
Thanks a lot for all the great music. From: vanrawk@hotmail.com

Answer: Rumours are wonderous, ethereal things, seemingly travelling by word of mouse across the web at lightning speed, only to fade away just as quickly.It's only the most outrageous ones which don't die, with the most virulent seemingly sticking around for decades, becoming essentially folklore, and to many, the truth.

Earache has its fair share, and I thought I'd heard all the rumours in my time, but funnily enough thats the first I've heard of these two.To clear em up- both are 100% false, but I'll hazard a guess as to how they came about. If this book you mention is meant to be a reference guide to the bands in it, then its pretty poorly researched if you ask me, it seems written mostly on gossip.Not good.

Napalm Death was by far the best known band on the Earache label during an explosive couple of years- to the casual observer it probably looked like it was their own label- Earache's vibe mirrored the band's vibe quite closely, and it could have been mistaken for Napalm's own 'DIY label', if you were unaware that other bands were also released on it.



As for Mick Harris going to prison for robbery- that is truly scandalous, and untrue. I think it might refer to an infamous nightclub glassing incident involving fellow ex-Napalmer Nik Bullen (pictured above on right) .In 1995 or so, Mick Harris was doing a promotional DJ set at a scruffy Nottingham late-night bar, I think it was called 'Bellamys'back then. The bar was tiny, holding maybe 30 people max, mostly made up of Earache staffers, a few local Scorn fans and a few non-music-type strangers who I assumed were the regular drinkers in the bar.

Nik had come over from Birmingham to hang out, he was not performing that night so could indulge in as many beers and shots at the bar as he wanted.It was just a regular friendly booze up like many before it, and since. I do recall that Nik was deep in conversation with a stranger at the bar for a long time. Then seemingly for no apparent reason, Nik violently struck out at the guy, glassing him with his shot glass at close range and then fled the scene. No one else was involved and the victim was lucky not to be blinded in the attack. To this day I don't know what triggered him to do it, but it was totally out of character for him, something just snapped. Nik was arrested the next day back in Birmingham and was sentenced to prison for one year. The story is also mentioned at the AllMusic site.

Mick Harris was Djing at the time, and had nothing to do with the attack whatsoever, except his name was on the poster outside. The Scorn duo effectively broke up that night, Mick going solo from then on.

If you have any other rumours you want confirming or dispelling, feel free to bring em to this ask earache blog!

Black Sabbath- Master of Reality. The Book.

Question: Nothing Earache specific here, but more just a general metal appreciation question. Has anyone around the Earache offices read John Darnielle's Master OF Reality from the 33 1/3 series of books? I just picked it up and read it in a matter of about 2 hours (I'm a slow reader) and it might be one of the greatest books I've ever read (right behind Catcher In The Rye). Seriously. That's all. Plain and simple. If no one has heard about it, please take a strangers recommendation and pick up a copy to pass around. It's soooo good and could apply to anyone's favourite record or just a heavy music lovers appreciation for what heavy music can offer a person as a way of life and form of therapy. From: mufuka@yahoo.com


Answer: Thanks for letting me know about this.Personally, I had no idea such a series of books existed, it seems a great idea to cover an individual album and write about it from the listeners perspective. From searching the web I see Continuum have maybe 60-odd books in their catalog in this 33 1/3 series, most are too Indie for my tastes but for £6.99 you cant go wrong with the Sabbath or Slayer or the Nine Inch Nails books I reckon.

Heres a cool interview with author John Darnielle from Popmatters.com he certainly knows his stuff.

Last year I was fortunate enough to meet Jim Simpson who was the original manager of Black Sabbath- he was speaking at the first 'Home Of Metal' event in Wolverhampton.Back in the late 60s he was running a jazz & blues club, which Earth played at, after seeing their potential he got working with them as manager.Jim was the one who scored the band their record deal.You can read a great early band bio here.

What was remarkable to me was how he described the work ethic of the band.They had extensive rehearsals most days, as well as shows at night, sometimes two shows in a day, and - get this- weekly planning meetings.No one can deny that the band worked incredibly hard for their success from the get-go.Plenty of well-known bands today think one rehearsal a week is pushing the boat out.

Sadly after helping the band make two break-out albums Jim was ousted as manager.The predatory US mega-manager Don Arden whisked the band away from him, with promises of riches.Nowadays Jim is still involved in music, running a Blues/Jazz label and promoting an annual Jazz Festival in Birmingham.

Cheers for the question- it gives me an excuse to add my fave Black Sabbath track- Symptom of the Universe 1975. Sabbath undoubtedly created the Heavy Metal and Doom metal genres, but you could also argue this song hinted at the start of the coming speed metal or thrash scenes aswell.

Is Gama Bomb getting a physical CD/LP release?

Question: Interesting news about the new Gama Bomb album being released as a free download - I'm not sure if it worked for Radiohead with 'In Rainbows' but fair play to the guys for giving it a shot. My question is however - will there actually be a physical version available at any point? As much as the world seems to love music for free, I am an old school collector and would love to have a 'proper' version for my shelf.
Cheers! From: larsonchristiansen@hotmail.com

Answer:The whole idea for the new Gama Bomb album to be given away free came from this blog actually. In a guest blog for MTV's Headbangers Blog, singer Philly Byrne admitted quite truthfully that he obtains most of his music collection from torrents and illegal download sites. Some time later - with tongue firmly in cheek- I mentioned in this askearache blog that it would be hypocritical for him not to do likewise on his own new album. I guess I dared him to do it, and he in turn dared me to do it!

So we both agreed it was a cool thing to do this.Its a genuine gesture by both label and band to give it away free, main motivation by the band is to not 'criminalise' anyone who downloads this album.Downloading is not illegal if the band wants to release it free. Neither of us know where this thing is headed, except both sides have a vague hope it'll increase the band's overall popularity.The band head into the studio to record the album in 3 days time, and it will be placed online within a week of it being finished, on November 5th. Its available on that date from earache's website as 320kbps Mp3s fully tagged and no DRM whatsoever, and digital artwork, and we assume it should be all over the rest of the web after that within hours.

News that it will be given away free has gone down fairly well with fans and non-fans alike, but we realise some collector-type folks prefer a physical release.Metal Hammer mag in the UK will release a cover-mounted version of this album in December, so a CD can be obtained if you purchase the magazine.

Sometime in 2010, when all the hullabaloo has died down we do have plans to release it on CD and LP, and a very lavish deluxe collectors edition to boot.It should also appear on Spotify as a free stream, and on iTunes as a low price download, if you prefer your music that way for ease of synching to iPod or whatever.So yes, if you simply must pay for it, in time there will be indeed a physical version of the album, but for at least a few months its download only, I'm afraid.

Heres Gama Bomb singer Philly Byrne explaining why his band are giving away their entire new album for free on the interweb:

Carcass- why so many versions of 'Necroticism'?

Question: Dear Earache,
I have been collecting Carcass since 1991 and recently acquired a USA pressing of 'Necroticism' from 2004. The back cover is different to all other versions of that album (I own 6 copies on CD now) with alternate mortuary pictures and a yellow Carcass logo as opposed to the usual purple one. Also, on this pressing the actual disc has been accidentally screen printed with the 'Swansong' disc art and cat no. MOSH1601CD!

Can you possibly explain why the rear artwork is different for this version?

Sincerely, Daniel. From: maxperv@hotmail.com

Answer:You own 6 copies of the same album? Blimey, I take my hat off to you Sir! Thanks for supporting the band and the label, its appreciated I tell ya. Hey, can I suggest you take a snapshot of the back of all the Cds together and include the link to the pic as a comment here- I for one would love to see all the versions we made, its hard to remember them all actually.

Your question is interesting because fans don't realise how much work behind the scenes it takes to keep anything in print pretty much continuously for 18 years- its impossible to manufacture the exact identical same thing for 2 decades straight.Look at cans of Heinz beans or Coca Cola from 1991 and they don't look anything like todays products.

The manufacture of the record has had to keep up with the changes with printing technology which have occurred over the past 2 decades, the change from analog printing to digital being the main one.Plus, the label has moved pressing plants maybe 10 times in that period, as many went bust in the 90s recession, moving the printing process to each new plant brought its own subtle variations to the CD.



On top of those changes, Earache itself has made maybe 6 major overhauls to the audio on the CD and cosmetic surgery to its artwork to signify a special edition, remastered version or most recently the deluxe, lavish digipacks with documentary DVD which came out last year.This was done to keep the record fresh in the minds of the high street record retailers, and reflects the ups and downs of the bands popularity.

The original art was literally made with scissors and prit-stick, cut and pasted by hand by Jeff Walker and Martin Nesbitt (Carcass Manager and early Earache employee).This was photographed on camera and turned into a set of CMYK printers films.This original edition was reprinted for a few years unchanged,print-wise these are undoutedly the best quality versions of the album. It has been Earache art dept staffers who have created all the versions since.

In late 90s printers went digital and the laborious process of digitising and scanning in the artwork began. Scanners back then were terrible and the quality of resolution was poor so the printings from that era suffered. In America the production manager even took artistic license to 're-create' the back of the sleeve, presumably because the scan didn't work properly on the day, trouble is he didn't pay any attention to the original, hence the yellow logo. Luckily this was rectified in later runs, and as scanning resolutions got higher the quality of the CD printing became better.Even $100 desktop scanners are amazing nowadays.

The catalog number change you mention is to do with our distribution by EMI in US, who require labels to use an 8 digit indentification code of each product for werehousing purposes.This is annoying because an added 1 is placed in each MOSH number but is done to fit their computer system.