Aural Music Newsletter - June 2005

[Emi]

THEATRES DES VAMPIRES ​

SIGN WITH DREAMCELL11

the italian band Theatres des Vampires sign with Dreamcell11. The label, part of the Aural Music Group, will release the brand new album titled "Pleasure and Pain" in November 2005. now fronted by mistress Sonya Scarlet, the 7th album of the italian Vampiric Theatre will be a new dawn for the band, modern and refreshing Gothic Metal at his best, with a decadent bloody touch... The Album will feature Important names of the international music scene as special guests, details will be revealed in the next newsletter.

official website: www.theatres-des-vampires.com




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DISMAL PLAN NEW ALBUM ​

Dismal are proud to announce the starting of the creation of the new album “miele dal salice” (scheduled for a late winter release on Dreamcell11), the band is working in order to give you all the most intense and voluptous episode of their artistic and spiritual research.

official website. www.dismal.it

 

[Elwrm]

Great news ! I love this gloomy-goth-grim-from-outer-space stuff !

 

[BenMech]

This newsletter was nowhere near as good as the one in May.

Please try again for July.

 

[Tetsuo unit]

Dude
i did NOT see that one coming

 

[Christopher]

So, they're relasing an album called Pleasure and Pain on Dreamcell, next a band called Pleasure and Pain? Man, I have trouble figuring out why goth metal is still remotely popular. It dies in its own cliche and redundancy with every new revealed incarnation. Granted, I can't be too harsh, I like some fo the stuff myself, but these bands need to stop looking so gay and shoot for something unique.

But I give Theates the benefit of the doubt since it's been a while that I've heard a new song of theirs. Plus new stuff could even be good for all I know. And for some reason I'm looking forward to the next Diabolicum record, even though I completely laughed off Dark Blood Rising. Not that these bands are related, but you learn to expect mediocre results after a while.

Sorry Emi, I wanted to be nice and excited, but honesty ruled over deceitful politeness.

 

[Elwrm]

I find you a bit severe... "Kitsch" gothic imagery could be very interesting when used with a certain sense of humor. I love Notre-Dame, old Tartaros and other "tales of the crypt influenced" bands, so I wait for this album with curiosity. Why not ? This is just entertainment, after all...

 

[Emi]

guys, every polite opinion is well accepted

I just want to clear out that the birth of AURAL MUSIC gave me the possibility to separate the activities, attitude and goals of the various sub-labels:
so if code666 is still and always devoted to the weird, extreme, avantgarde, scary AND UNPROFITABLE side of the music, there's no reason to do the same with the other labels: that's why Dreamcell11 is focused on the gothic-dark metal, goregore with the underground death metal and Amaranth with post-rock and post-wave bands...

I'm not a mono-dimensional guy, i like different kind of music and I enjoy the Axis Of Perdition as well as Mechanical Poet or Sick Of It All.

believe it or not, but code666 is not making profit at all, we always loose money producing this kind of music... that's why Aural Music is a good way to release different bands that can actually sell enough to make some money , allowing us to survive and continue to invest money and passion in "economic-suicide" projects like Scald, Void Of Silence, Axis Of Perdition, Diabolicum, etc...

I agree that Gothic metal is full of cliche', as well as Black Metal, Death Metal, Nu-Metal, Power-metal and basically each kind of music like Hip-Hop, Rock, jazz or classical... I don't see the problem if a Goth guy likes decadent poems and to dress in black, or if a nu-metallers wears baggy pants and skate all the time... each one is free to find his own way to live and express himself... personally I enjoy many different kinds of music and I'm feeling very close to the Punk community , even if I bet no one would ever imagine this judging from what I release with my label(s)...

 

[Christopher]

You make a clear case Emi, I'll give you that. I do respect you quite a bit for releasing these different kinds of music, unprofitable as they may be, I would guess that most metal oriented labels would have dropped the more interesting* acts and found a plethora of bands that compose by number simply to please the masses and label executives for whatever trend is selling most at the moment. But not everything is to eveybody's taste, be it the mediocre clone bands or the interesting by prefernece bands that produce the 'less likely to be reprinted' kind of music. But I didn't find anything severe about what I wrote, for its only one man's opinion.
any you never know Emi, if you happen to catch that one superior band, that one guidning light in the current community of emo/metalcore, then code666/aural music could launch itself out of the oppression that drags down smaller labels. No, I'm just kidding. Money is very important (sadly), but integrity is even more important.

yesyes,

- C.





* see "unprofitable"

 

[Tetsuo unit]

The fact that the phrases 'economic suicide' and 'the axis of perdition' apear in the same scentence realy appeals to my morbid sence of humour! Quite Frankly Im surprised any one at all likes our music and that includes us.

 

[unhinged]

The fact that the phrases 'economic suicide' and 'the axis of perdition' apear in the same scentence realy appeals to my morbid sence of humour! Quite Frankly Im surprised any one at all likes our music and that includes us.

speak for yourself...I reckon scald is the next def leppard

seriously though, more than breaking even would be good now and again if only to keep things moving
but the cd sales slump can only marginalise bands like scald and the axis of perdition etc further into the shadows, at least economically

 

[Tetsuo unit]

mmmm scald performing 'lets get rocked' in regulation stars and stipes spandex....nice!

i try not to think about it too much y'know especialy when i see the amount of money some labels pour into utterly mediocre bands that are not going to shift that many units anyway and the problems not just there most people would rather listen to somthing completely familier any way, i was recently perusing a BM board and was watching folk ass kissing an unutterly unremarkable standard BM band...like i said i try not to think about it or it gets too depressing. Im just thankfull that thier are places where oddball stuff can get put out even if it is only going to be apreciated by a few folks.

 

[Emi]

christopher, I agree with you, expecially regarding integrity... BUT life is not a straight path from one point to another. you know where you start and where you want to go, but you don't know exactly how to reach your goal, sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes you find mountains impossible to climb, etc...


running a label is not different from life: in the end it's just a commercial activity: you print cds and sell 'em.
if you sell enough you can go on, otherwise you go bankrupt, you close and get a job .
the main problem is when you decide to run a label signing band that you know are not selling at all. it is nonsense but it's what I do . so I'm forced to find alternative ways of making money... of course the best would be to keep the integrity whule selling tons of cds, but well maybe I'm not skilled enough yet...

 

[Christopher]

Yes, I agree with that. Life is quite unpredictable. On my comment about Integrity: yes, there is that Idealist mentality that goes through a person that is willing to dream and keep up with those dreams, but sometimes you have to make adjustments in order to keep the path stable. I was nmeaning in my previous comment that it might totally suck for you to fall into a position where you were made to contiue what you were doing, only in way that you couldn't possibly feel good or successful about it. yet, you've achieved more success through this than many other smaller labels out there, and that defi itely means a lot, especially to fanboys like myself that regard these 'unsellable' kinds of music as legitimate musical art.

Oh yeah, don't really sign a metalcore band unless they're very left field, which might also mean that any or all metalcore has been negated on default. Man, anything that's really worth listening to and insteresting enough is destined to make very little money,eh?


:Spin: you do good emi

christopher, I agree with you, expecially regarding integrity... BUT life is not a straight path from one point to another. you know where you start and where you want to go, but you don't know exactly how to reach your goal, sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes you find mountains impossible to climb, etc...


running a label is not different from life: in the end it's just a commercial activity: you print cds and sell 'em.
if you sell enough you can go on, otherwise you go bankrupt, you close and get a job .
the main problem is when you decide to run a label signing band that you know are not selling at all. it is nonsense but it's what I do . so I'm forced to find alternative ways of making money... of course the best would be to keep the integrity whule selling tons of cds, but well maybe I'm not skilled enough yet...

 

[unhinged]

mmmm scald performing 'lets get rocked' in regulation stars and stipes spandex....nice!.

I actually shivered when I read that, and when the image formed in my head-
uke:

i try not to think about it too much y'know especialy when i see the amount of money some labels pour into utterly mediocre bands that are not going to shift that many units anyway and the problems not just there most people would rather listen to somthing completely familier any way, i was recently perusing a BM board and was watching folk ass kissing an unutterly unremarkable standard BM band...like i said i try not to think about it or it gets too depressing. Im just thankfull that thier are places where oddball stuff can get put out even if it is only going to be apreciated by a few folks.

it seems like a similar standpoint to my own
right now I'm listening to yet another death metal album to review
its not bad, well played brutal as fuck, tacky gore cover etc
but I'm so bored I could cry.
I'm sure they love it and it'll sell enough copies and all that but why?
what (un)inspires people to do the same as every one else?
I can understand having influences, (we all do), taking them as inspiration and creating something new, or at least slightly diferent but it just folows the formula down to the vocal phrasing.

in the press scald has always been praised for originality but I actually think that maybe 5% of people take this as a good thing and 95% are scared off by it. A lot of those 95% lie to themselves about what thier own attitude to music is, they don't realise they're sheep with a fear of the unfamiliar

also most of the 5% probably think we're shit but at least they can say they gave it a go, I'm sure taop has similar experience

 

[Tetsuo unit]

hey scald you got a mention in this months metal hammer in the irland scen report, just a little scentence about you being eccentric!

 

[unhinged]

hey scald you got a mention in this months metal hammer in the irland scen report, just a little scentence about you being eccentric!

what the band or me personally? :Spin:

actually I heard about but that haven't seen it because its in a plastic bag so I can't read it in the shop and I don't buy that shit magazine

I heard they started doing demo reviews again...how supporting the underground of them.....and bad boat got demo of the month
cool, if it wasn't for them we'd have no practice room

I heard there was another irish scene thing in zero tolerance
did you see that?
its hard to find where I live but its a decent mag
...not just because dan lilker gave us 5/6 for headworm in it tee-hee

 

[Tetsuo unit]

Twas the band as a whole:

"Ireland's artistic inheritance finds its expression most notably through in those hards to catogarise bandsthat really are doing somthing special; primarily through the eccentricities of Scal, Wreck of the hesperus, or Sol Axis, the irish are adept at making their own musical statments without recourse to international trends."

Yeah Band boat also got a pretty glowing demo review, they do this little pull out section in the middle now where 'new' bands get pigeon holed in to little genre chapters and about 150 words on em and the demo's get tagged on the end, they used to also have a little section about various industry behind the scenes stuff that was well usefull but thats stopped now. I really really shouldnt read metal hammer its incredebly depressing for all the reasons in the posts above, reading about how well completely unremarkable bands are doing, especialy when im working on album myself ive spent the past 24hours at the bottom of lake 'whats the point' wondering why i've spent so much time, effort and money on somthing thats only ever going to be a short curio to some journalist somewhere, its not a very productive place!

I saw the irish thing in ZT but can only remember reading about Primordal again i shall dig it out and see if you get mentioned , remember reading the review though that was pretty cool. I get it and read it but i still think it has a lot of improvment to do i like the behind the scenes bits and the home recording but somtimes find that the writing tine can be a bit weak and occasionaly patronising, in some cases cringworthy there is still plenty there worth reading though and i would rather have 2 magazines about extreme music than just the one

 

[unhinged]

I really really shouldnt read metal hammer its incredebly depressing for all the reasons in the posts above, reading about how well completely unremarkable bands are doing, especialy when im working on album myself ive spent the past 24hours at the bottom of lake 'whats the point' wondering why i've spent so much time, effort and money on somthing thats only ever going to be a short curio to some journalist somewhere, its not a very productive place!

it is a pile of crap really
its only really interested in whats on the bandwagon

as for 'whats the point'
your own productivity is whats important
sometimes its hard to completely disregard an audience from your mind but lets face it, you'd be doing standard bm if thats what was motivating you

II get it and read it but i still think it has a lot of improvment to do i like the behind the scenes bits and the home recording but somtimes find that the writing tine can be a bit weak and occasionaly patronising, in some cases cringworthy there is still plenty there worth reading though and i would rather have 2 magazines about extreme music than just the one

agreed, terrorizer has gone too long without any real competition
if your an extreme band and not in terrorizer then your pretty much lost for coverage in the uk. They didn't review headworm, (despite glowing reviews of our 3 previous recordings) so we have fuck all uk reviews for it
hopefully ZT will improve in content and distribution
lets face it, terrorizer can be patronising at times too
but then some writers I've come across have much bigger egos than musicians


the best music mag in the Uk is Classic Rock
certainly the best written

 

[Tetsuo unit]

it is a pile of crap really
its only really interested in whats on the bandwagon
as for 'whats the point'
your own productivity is whats important
sometimes its hard to completely disregard an audience from your mind but lets face it, you'd be doing standard bm if thats what was motivating you

Oh yeah totaly but i think its those little skits in self beliefe that help focus a project , well for me anyway, as directly afterwards im always more fired up than before to push things. Im immensly pround of what ive achieved and would rather be in this position than riding the crest of a fad, though i will admit that i wouldnt sniff at the money that comes with the success

agreed, terrorizer has gone too long without any real competition
if your an extreme band and not in terrorizer then your pretty much lost for coverage in the uk. They didn't review headworm, (despite glowing reviews of our 3 previous recordings) so we have fuck all uk reviews for it hopefully ZT will improve in content and distribution lets face it, terrorizer can be patronising at times too but then some writers I've come across have much bigger egos than musicians the best music mag in the Uk is Classic Rock certainly the best written

Hopefully having competition will push both mags to tighten up the slack areas which can only benefit the extreme public. The thing with ZT is it seems that they like to feature bands that T dont that a lot of the time dont get much space in T because they either suck or more often are the embodiment of mediocraty. Im surprised that Headworm never got a mention, its usualy the sort of thing they go for at the moment.