To Hawk and TSO...no I have never been privy to the thrill of being on Century Media's illustrious yet ridiculously inept signed roster of bands. I have spoken to MANY of their artists and also had the priviledge to have had phone conversations with and on one occasion, stay with a couple of band members in the past. I am not in a band.
But, the facts remain that if you are a fan of this sort of music with an above-average nose for quality music (sorry to brag, but that's what I believe of myself), then the cold hard facts are obvious. I have been listening to bands of CM for over 12 years and as I've mentioned before, they have dropped the ball time and time again. By dropping the ball, I mean by not taking their collective income of a company, going into the red if they have to, and getting some of their bands on major tours! This was the only way to go in the mid-90's for Heavy Rock/Metal bands.
I'll now use a comparative label (as TSO asked) to conrast what CM DIDN'T do. Roadrunner Records in the mid-90's also was an independant just like CM, with some acts in comparative genres to CM. For example, they had Type O Negative, Machine Head, Fear Factory, and others that don't come to mind right now. Those three examples all released very solid offerings in those times and Roadrunner had an active A & R staff that BELIEVED in the quality of their work. They had VISION. That label then went out and worked these artists on to fairly decent-sized tours, with tons of effort and all the money they could spare. Because we all know that this music has little to no radio appeal, getting their bands to open for larger bands on larger tours was the ONLY way for promotion. And guess what? It worked! MH, TO, & FF all had individual albums that sold over 400,000 in the U.S. ALONE. (TO actually has two Gold albums in the U.S. now -sales over 500,000)
Century Media might not have had success that would have been equal to Roadrunner's, but they definitely would have gotten a huge U.S. sales spike, an area where their albums up till about 2000, never did jack squat in sales.
And just for everyone to know, my personal opinion on where CM fucked up massively for themselves (and more importantly, for the artists), would be:
Holland's The Gathering in 1997- Not getting this band on the U.S Alternative Rock festival Lalapalloza. This fest was still going decent around that time and TG would have benn eclectic enough to have fit in on the bill. You think this trend with female singers nowadays is something new? TG are one of the older bands around still to have a female singer, and I'll put Anneke Van Giersbergen's voice up against ANY other female singers (including Christina from LC). TG, IMO would have been a surprise act of the fest and done incredibly well in the U.S. CM Major fuckup #1.
Stuck Mojo in 1998. Atlanta's Stuck Mojo were a Rap-Metal fusion band before the trend went crazy three years later in the U.S. Say what you will about Rap-Metal (I don't blame you), SM were light years ahead of any other band comparable to them then (and now) to this day. SM as well as having a lead rapper, also mixed the songs with backing clean vocals from bassist Corey Lowery and death Vox from lead guitarist/songwriter extraordinare Rich Ward. SM tore up every European fest they played, and still remain to this day one of the most electrifying live acts I have EVER seen. Also, due to Rich Ward's connections with buddies of his being wrestlers from WCW, he then filmed a promo video for the title track of their album Rising. This video was shown on Monday Night Nitro, a weekly WCW program that was at it's commercial height in 1998. Rich told me that getting their video played on MNN was equivalent to getting their vid played on MTV 7 times!! This then translated to SM playing to sold out venues around the U.S. in small theaters with capacities of up to 1000 people. Rising went on to sell about 90,000 in the U.S., a massive feat at the time. Sadly, when SM asked CM for some tour support to open up for Pantera in the U.S. (after they had already opened for them in Europe), CM declined. stating there was no money available for such a thing and that they "needed to concentrate on their other artists as it would be unfair to them..."
CM fuckup #2
Nevermore in 1999. Nevermore put out Dreaming Neon Black. One of the top five greatest albums in the last 15 years. An album that was pretty close to being #1 album of the year in almost every publication at the time. And they are real huge nowadays from such a great album...
Century Media has a LONG history of dropping the ball and they have just gotten lucky in the U.S in the last 2-3 years, due to a radio station in Massachusstetts playing LC on the radio and Shadows Fall getting on to MTV2.
Fuck Century Media.
