Extreme Music Blog

I wanted to report a bit more detailed about the gig on Saturday without knowing what was waiting there for us. A very small venue and a bad sound (also due to the drum kit which is simply too loud for a small venue with reflecting big windows on one side) and no chance for me to shoot decent photographs without using flash (which I keep denying for live shoots).

We were playing an one hour lasting set and added two songs which we hardly or even NOT rehearsed with the current line up. But it was fun despite all problems and a small audience. All other bands were very nice – cool people. And not to mention that a friend of mine from Dresden (see previous log entry – sent him a picture with TANKARD some days before) was attending the show. It was great to see some people which I do not see that often…

Now back to business. I wanted to post some news and reviews the last week but unfortunately the server began beeping on Wednesday telling me the fan that become louder and louder the days before was now in real trouble. For the nerds among you I will tell some details – others might skip straight to the next paragraph. I turned off the server and already had in mind which fan was causing troubles. (not at least because there was a red light flashing). Opened the Adaptec S-ATA Backplane and yes – this one was the problem. Back in and order a new fan. Exchanged the cables unfortunately – had to rebuild the RAID 6 array (2 disks – needed 2 days to get the 4 TB RAID back to normal work!). Did a backup on three different discs.

So this was the reason why I was not posting anything. Two evenings lost and I came to the conclusion that it was the right time to order a replacement for the whole server which I wanted to buy in early 2010 anyway. No more troubles in the future I hope…

All except nerds skip this paragraph again. I ordered a QNAP TS-410 Turbo NAS and will put 4 Seagate 500 S-ATA II with NCQ in there. All the rest of the server will be sold (special case incl. great power supply, Areca 8 port SATA 256 MB / 500 MHz controller, 4 SATA-Discs, 2 Backplanes – now that is something huge – had 11 discs running in there…). The QNAP needs 11 Watts of power idling and 24 Watts in full operation (including discs). Compare this to the server with > 300 Watts. Plus you have a nice web front-end for administration – easy to use. The times when I was playing around with Linux from the pure text cosole will be gone. Of course I will keep Linux on a small 700 MHz slimline box for testing purposes. But hope to have no server breaking down when I need it the most!

Back to the music. There is some news for SUPREME CHAOS RECORDS / PREVISION MUSIC. We recently signed UNDERTOW which can be entitled the local doom core pioneers. You can find elements of CROWBAR, PANTERA and the sorts in their sound but they also have very calm moments which are including one track with the singer of END OF GREEN on the new record “Don’t pray to the ashes”. We are really happy about this record. This is maybe the most varied and ambitious album of the band so far… At the moment the artwork is about to be finished. It is done by Bjoern Goosses from KILLUSTRATIONS and we are sure that it will look fucking great in the beautiful first edition digipak.

Yesterday Kristian “Kohle” send me a new track for the ANOTHER PERFECT DAY album which we have scheduled for early 2010. This was a preview right of the studio featuring Jagger from DISBELIEF on vocals. What a hell of an emotional death metal hymn. Great! Now I am even more thrilled about this cooperation which is getting to new highs right before it has really started. But more about that later…

I just have to tell you some news about the bands – cannot avoid it. So there is CHEENO who have also finished the studio work for their album “2Face Macy” and now are working on the last details for the product including a comic book which will be released in a package and separately. If you know the last artwork you can imagine the very mature style of the comic which is done by the same illustrator.

Australian/German black metallers AGRYPNIE are in the same status as CHEENO and UNDERTOW. Album finished and now doing the last works for the artwork. This one will look really killer. A cold white artwork fitting to the really aggressive atmosphere of “16[485]“. The first edition will be in a DVD digipak. Imagine that – a DVD package in usual digipak style including a usual sized CD booklet which is fully integrated in the DVD sized background. Crazy shit!

So now I will be off to pick up the new NAS, do some work and later on visiting a new venue called “Arena” in Ludwigsburg which was mainly build for the basketball team (which are now in the premier league). There are also a lot of other events planned in this hall. The opening was 1st of October with Scorpions playing with an orchestra. Check out youtube for some videos. The last weekend there was a boxing event and today will be DREAM THEATER and OPETH. Now that is something we need, right? Of course we want to check out the venue with a usual rock stage setup to keep it in mind for pulling up some bigger concert events in the future. And maybe we can even see the show and not only the preparation for it…

I will be back tomorrow with a new blog!

This is not only a blog which is about music – it is more about the extreme music experience in my daily life. And there are always things to write about because I have to deal every day with a huge amount of different artists, music and everything that goes along.

I wanted to put up the OPETH interview on tuesday but failed. Integrating an eBay interface into the shop system was not easy but then something went really, really wrong. I actually can’t even tell what happened. But suddenly there was only one item (DAMNABLE‘s Completely Devoted CD) all over the shop – about 35’000 times. It was meant to be updated with a price of 3.90 Euros but updated the whole database. So I had to restore the database this evening and to prepare for similar scenarios. I put up a new backup system for the web database (for those who are interested – the shop runs on a MySQL 5 database and is now backed up with MySQL Dumper, the backup is downloaded the same night to my local server). Unfortunately half of the items were still in the shop for 3.90 Euro after restoring the title etc. information. So I had to update all the date and the shop went back to normal status early in the morning (I had some hours of sleep – the update took some hours, but had to check something in the mid of the night). This is the reason why there is still no OPETH interview on the blog. I will add it the next days – be sure!

Today I was busy with a lot of other shit but also talked to some nice people which resulted in booking BLACK SHAPE OF NEXUS (post hardcore / funeral doom) for the NIGHT OF DOOM – finally, and fixing a date for CHEENO (alternative rock / metal) together with NOCH NE BAND (alternative rock) in January 2010. And with the singer of BLACK SHAPE OF NEXUS I am still trying to organize another live event – so be prepared for some news about this.
Also Stefan of GRAVEART gave me an idea about what the MySpace page of SCR will look like in the future. We started a collaboration and are now working on this as our first project we do together – and it will be great! You will hear of that guy in the future…

An old friend of mine, Dominik, just gave me some new tracks of YASMINE TOURIST for a listen. I think a will post a short review about these tracks on Friday…

Tomorrow I will be at the ZWÖLFZEHN in Stuttgart to check out IRA and LIQUID BROOM. Markus (A&R of SCR) was enthusiastic about IRAs live performance earlier this year so I am really excited about seeing them live, finally! I know the guys from LIQUID BROOM from different bands with totally different music. Of course I will report from this evening filled with finest art / alternative / post rock…

Black shape of Nexus

Today I was just working on a lot of mailorder stuff and getting this blog running again after I moved it from wordpress.com to our own domain. I want to customize it more and more in the future (as previously done with the METAL NIGHTS page where you almost cannot see the original theme / plugins anymore). And of course I had to work in my usual job as well.

I also added a new feature to the blog. You can now send me your tracks via soundcloud for a prompt and very honest review which also means promotion for your bands as it is published on these sites. Check out the “Send me your track” link at the right. I guess this feature will become more important in the future…

But now to something different. My friends from DORNENREICH have posted a new Trailer for their upcoming DVD “Nachtreisen” which is also promoted with a new tour. And the date in Stuttgart – surprise, surprise – is was also booked by me and will be organized by the Metal Nights team. I will be really looking forward to this one as mentioned in my previous post.

Sit back and just watch:

DORNENREICH links:
www.dornenreich.com
www.myspace.com/mehralsdasein

And always feel free to comment below. You can even do that without registering.

Dealing with extreme music the whole day by running an independent label for progressive extreme metal music and open minded rock music we are eventually discovering new, interesting artists as well as having the possibility to visit very special live events we want to share these experiences. Saying “extreme music” includes any kind of extreme music, but main focus will be on rock and metal music.

You may check out our progressive extreme metal label (Supreme Chaos Records) here:
http://www.s-c-r.de

Also, do not miss our more open minded rock music label (Prevision Music):
http://www.prevision-music.com

With a great team we also put up a lot of live events (Metal Nights / Red Flame Promotion):
http://www.metal-nights.de

I wanted to start this blog right now, in the mid of a night, finding no sleep at all after visiting a noisy live appearance of two bands in a let’s say very independent an alternative venue. I hope that some of the guys helping out with the label or at our live events will join blogging right here soon…