For the uninitiated, Cloudkicker is one Ben Sharp from Columbus, Ohio. By day, Ben is a salary earning career man, by night a musical mad scientist. Cloudkicker’s percussive, polyrhythmic progressive metal is put together entirely on Sharp’s computer, with all instruments (and drums programmed) by the man himself. Cloudkicker’s music cost Sharp diddly squat to record.

Sharp releases short bursts of Cloudkicker’s music, given away free, to little fanfare. Currently there is 1 album and 3 EP’s, the latest of which is called ]]][[[ is both a continuation of Cloudkicker's trademark 'melodic Meshuggah' cacophany and a progression into both heavier and more melodic territories. Tracks 1 and 2 (which in keeping with the theme of grammatical symbols are named # and %) work as a single sprawling post-rocker, while track3 $ can only be described as post-thrash - frenetic, complex and stunningly original. Mr. Sharp kindly agreed to give me an interview.

Most would describe you as post-rock/metal, but you really stand out from the usual long song, slow build monotony. How would you describe your music?

I would describe it as "listenable". Anything beyond that is up to other people's musical sensibilities.

Do you consider yourself to be a part of any ‘scene’?

I consider myself a part of the "contributing member of society" scene, which is pretty exclusive as far as bands go.

You released 2 EP’s in a 12 month period. Was it a conscious decision to do that rather than release a full album?

I prefer putting out shorter releases more frequently. I get bored listening to an hour of instrumental music, and this way I always have something relatively new out.

Each of your releases has a distinct personality. Is this by design, or perhaps a reflection of your mood at the time?

Definitely the latter. I'm really moody when it comes to writing music, and I don't want to get caught up in some sort of creative rut where I'm ALWAYS writing within the confines of a certain style. Honestly, I'm getting bored of writing what amounts to being melodic Meshuggah but I still enjoy writing in odd time signatures, so I think applying that to some different styles will be interesting.

The title and song names of your current EP ]]][[[ only contain grammatical symbols. What is the significance of this?

Just mixing it up a bit. Usually I get a theme in my head or I'll be interested in a certain subject when I name songs but I wanted the music to be the focal point on this one. Also laziness.

Who’s the guy on the cover of ]]][[[ and why did you put him there?

I did a Google image search one time for the word “Black” and his picture popped up. I saved it on my computer and haven’t been able to find it since. I have no idea who he is, he could have committed mass infanticide for all I know. He just seems like a pretty solid dude, so why not put him on an album cover. I did color his garb though.

Your music almost seems defined by its rhythm. When you’re writing, is rhythm created before riff?

Sometimes. I’ve written some drum parts in the shower, but 70% of the stuff I come up with while noodling around on the guitar.

Have you considered releasing your music on physical formats and charging for it?

Eh. Sounds like a lot of effort. Some people seem to get really bent out of shape about the fact that they can’t buy a physical copy of the CD, and I think they’re probably somewhat OCD about it. I think it would be funny to sell CDs but have the artwork make it look like a regular blank CD-R.

Have you/will you ever consider making Cloudkicker into a full band?

I used to play shows back when I first started writing music for Cloudkicker in 2005-2006 and lived in Los Angeles. Since then I’ve taken on a career and moved to Ohio; I haven’t yet felt the need to hunt down capable musicians, practice, and put shows together. Instead I put that time and effort into writing music.

Well that’s good enough for me. Sharp’s chosen method of distribution, and the fact that he gives his music away free of charge, affords him this flexibility – the fans have no ownership over Cloudkicker, Sharp doesn’t need us, and thus artistic expression is allowed to flow unaltered by the malign influence of money. While the music industry bleats about loss of their poorly earned riches and foretell of the death of culture, Sharp and his ilk are out there proving that we no longer need these corporate wastes of space.

Cloudkicker’s entire back catalogue can be downloaded in its entirety for free here.

I found myself recently lecturing a non-metal fan, who harboured a preconception that metal is a narrow and one-dimensional genre, on what a diverse bunch we metalheads are. And boy does this show on this, the first ever Inevitable Nose Metal Mixtape. We have Classic Metal, d-beat punk, brutal thrash, doom, grunge, industrial, and even Nu-Metal.

Despite the overall washed out homogeneity of mainstream metal, the underground once again proves itself diverse and challenging. There’s something for most tastes here and perhaps a little something to broaden your horizons.

All tracks can be streamed in their entirety and most can be downloaded via the Soundcloud media player. Please post comments on what you thought of the tracks as I’m sure all the bands would value your (constrictive) criticism. Also, the Soundcloud player has a commenting function that allows you to comment on particular parts of the song that you liked (or hated).

Anyway, enough of this pointless chatter. Go forth and consume of the mixtape and feel your life infinitely enrichened.

The Inevitable Nose Metal Mixtape Volume 1

This billboard speaks the truth

Here’s a thought for unsigned bands who a) are feeling a little squeamish about giving away tracks for free or b) still think filesharing is bad for them.

So when you go to your shitty day job every day, and you’re sitting in the same traffic or on the same train (running late for the 3rd day in a row) do you notice the billboards gliding past you? It’s the same ad every day for weeks on end. You probably forgot about it, but still it’s there day after day, same place. Whether you like it or not, the name of that washing powder if tattooed on you memory despite the fact that you’ll never use the stuff (beer is the ultimate substance for cleaning clothes right?)

Companies pay hundreds, if not thousands of quid for that sort of ad placement. Whether you’re paying attention or not, that advert is making an impression on you. This is an age old and well understood advertising technique, and is used widely in web advertising.

Now let’s imagine another scenario. You’re an unsigned band struggling to get noticed. You give away a free MP3 of one of your tracks and advertise it on your Myspace. People like free stuff, and 50 people download it. Think about what you have there now, before going off half cocked about how those freeloaders should be paying you for that track that cost you 200 quid to record. Your band name is Metatron (Industrial Acoustic Grindcore since you’re asking), and because you were diligent enough to get your ID3 tags set properly on that file it now sits comfortably under Metallica in the “Artists” menu on most people’s iPod. Think about that for a second. You gave up 1 track, and now, every time those 50 people go to listen to Master of Puppets they will see your band’s name (the same logic applies to iTunes, Media Player etc.).

The brain is wired to attribute value to this sort of connection. This is why companies will pay so much money to sponsor music venues. From now on, those folks are going to remember your band’s name, even if they never listen to that track again. It’s like you’ve got a mini billboard sitting in a bunch of folks’ pockets. Now, I’m not going to start banging on about your band as a brand (although I fully intend to very soon), but the more folk’s iPod you can get that track on, the less time, money and effort you’re going to need to spend on raising awareness of your band later on.

Knowing that, if I were an unsigned band, I’d be actively encouraging people to share my tracks.

1 band, 5 questions, 1 minute per question...

Profile

Name: James “Rambo” Pearce

Band: Stone Circle

From: Brighton, UK

What you do in Stone Circle: Bass and Manager

Label: Unsigned

Website: http://www.myspace.com/stonecirclemetal

The Questions

Describe Stone Circle in exactly 3 words

Epic, Dark, Progressive

Name 3 albums you could not live without

1. Katatonia – Great Cold Distance
2. Opeth – My Arms your Hearse
3. At the Gates – Slaughter of the Soul

Tell me something I don’t know about Stone Circle

We live together!

What is Stone Circle doing at the moment?

Currently writing and getting ready to record our album in October. Getting organized to go on tour!

You have 5 minutes alone with Simon Cowell, how will you use them?

I would probably give him a handshake and tell him how he is 99% right on most of those shitty talent shows… Then make him give us a major record deal by asking Sam (Drums) to intimidate him immensely!

It’s perhaps suprising given my constantly developing taste for ever more complex and ponderous music that this album arrived into my life several weeks ago and was filed in the “too damn daunting for where my head is at currently” pile after a single listen. After a several week long odyssey into drone (Earth, Sunn O))), Boris) this suddenly didn’t seem so intimidating any more, so I gave it another whirl.

Apparently lumped into the post-hardcore bucket with the likes of *shels (who also don’t belong there) The Pax Cecilia wafts evanescent over the sorry arse of any dreary musical subgenre they damn well please. Labelling them anything containing the epithet ‘core’ seems painfully beside the point. These slow building arrangements melt effortlessly from from folk to caustic hardcore to sparse drone to proggish melodic interludes. Anyone sampling opening track The Tragedy would be forgiven for thinking that this isn’t even rock music. These lengthy tracks are peppered with baroque strings, soaring guitars and subtle melodic vocals which occasionally erupt into a harrowing scream.

The sheer array of ideas and undisguised talent on display here is astonishing. That this band have done little to bother the popular consciousness is both a testament to the bravery of this album and a self fulfilling prophecy – The Pax Cecilia may well have “too damn difficult for their own good” chiselled on their tombstone, something that wouldn’t be said for the aforementioned Enio Morriconeists *shels who have the potential to really break through.

This album is made to be loved and cherished and played alone on rainy days (perhaps on long train journeys like the one from which this article is being written). This is not a happy album, and not one that you will truly grok in few listens, but like all truly exceptional albums it’s worth the effort. What’s more astonishing is that an album of this quality is being given away free. Yes, you heard me right, if you want to grace your world with this work of loveliness then it can be downloaded in its entirety for free here. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

1 band, 5 questions, 1 minute per question...

Profile

Name: La la monkey Tasker and Rumble monkey Taylor

Band: Thracia

From: Northampton, UK

What you do in Thracia: Singist and basserer

Label: Unsigned

Website: http://www.thracia-uk.co.uk/

The Questions

Describe Thracia in exactly 3 words

naughty but nice

Name 3 albums you could not live without

1. Green day- Nimrod
2. Therapy- Troublegum
3. Turbonegro- Ass Cobra

Tell me something I don’t know about Thracia

We like to have sunday dinner together.

What is Thracia doing at the moment?

writing new songs, gigging, preparing to press new CD (Sea of Tediocrity) doing lovely interviews…

You have 5 minutes alone with Simon Cowell, how will you use them?

Have a nice cup of tea and ask him what he would do if he was given five mins alone with Louis Walsh..

This is the first of a series of articles on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for metal bands.

In my experience most new bands don’t know or care about SEO or perhaps assume that the record labels will deal with when they get signed (which they probably won’t). I think this is a mistake. SEO isn’t hard, and following a few simple principles will pay off in dividends.

Why should you, as a band, care about SEO? Well, the one thing that bands need most when their starting out is exposure. Getting found or noticed isn’t easy. In our internet saturated age the first place people go when looking for something is the search engines. If you want to be found then you need to pay attention to how the search engines perceive you.

It’s important to acknowledge that just because you are on the web, doesn’t mean that you can be found. Depending on how you present yourself, you may be very hard to find, which would be bad for you no matter which way you look at it.

Also, this is not aimed at improving your band’s website, although this is part of it. The aim here is to make your band findable and discoverable, and for this Myspace, last.fm, Wikipedia and countless other sites are equally (and in some cases more) important.

There are three key aims to this exercise:

1) Get found by people who are looking for you

2) Get found by people who are looking for stuff like you

3) Get found by people randomly (perhaps while they’re looking for, or doing, something else)

By making sure you have your bases covered here you will make getting your band found a whole lot easier. The key thing to understand about SEO is that nothing happens quickly. Search engines take time to react to changes, and there’s no silver bullet that will boost your rankings over night. By applying best practice you will see improvements over time that will add up to impressive results over time.

I’m eating my own dog food with regards to sticking to niches, hence the metal slant, but the same principles should work for any genre of music.

If you have any questions, or need advice on your band specifically, then feel free to leave comments and I’ll endeavor to help out.

Another couple of UKMU unsigned reviews for your delectation.

The frenetic Tharcia:

The legacy of what once was punk has been blurred by an array of mutations and countless stream of frequently turgid *cores. Punk, as an attitude of DIY, cheap and rough as hell anti-music, has been eclipsed by polished, platinum money spinning behemoths and countless cookie cutter copyists.

This is why it’s refreshing to find a band that (for the most part) is keeping the old punk flame burning – albeit in a modern kinda way. Tharcia’s sound is resolutely rooted in England at the beginning of the 80’s. Shades of Oi! and bands like The Exploited saturate these songs, but more modern influences blend effortlessly with the old school.

Read more…

The needing to try harder Numblocq

Just because you record your music, no matter how good the songs may be, that doesn’t mean that it’s ready for general consumption. Your songs are your art – a projection of your soul, and deserve the best start in life possible. Providing you’re reasonably good players and you put on a good show, then playing your songs live is likely to do them some justice (worse case scenario your crowd are wearing their ‘beer headphones’ and think anything you play is good). But recording these beloved songs is an entirely different discipline, that, if you’re a young band, you’re probably not that good at. Your songs deserve more than a swiftly thrown together demo constructed using Cubase in your mate’s bedroom. It’s really worth spending a moderate amount of cash to make the best job of it before unleashing them on the general public.

Numlocq didn’t do this. The sound quality is terrible. Some music lends itself to more lo-fi recording (Black Metal purists swear by this) but not this type of music.

Read more…

The vast majority of unsigned bands out there are either shit, superfluous, disposable or just copies of another band. Unfortunately, the race for a record deal is usually won by those bands sprouting in the better watered plots, and the rest of the seedlings will wither and die – such are the strains of being in band. So when I come across a band that’s really decent but is lurking in the shady, untended parts of the musical garden I immediately get a bit nervous – if someone doesn’t sign them soon, they may stop what their doing and get a proper job, which would be very bad.

New Zealand’s Photonic are one such band. Photonic is really one guy called Craig. His music has nothing to do with much of the other music out there today. Somehow he has crafted a set of tracks that is both forward leaning and backward looking. It’s also totally unclassifiable.

So where do we start with this brilliant, self-published, motley collection of vignette’s and vast-scapes he’s dubbed Recorded Contact? First and foremost, this is not metal, at least for the most part. There’s no predominant style here other than perhaps sparse, indignant hardcore reminiscent of Fugazi with post-rock tendencies drifting into Mogwai territory. However, the spirit of this collection is as much rooted into the petulant lo-fi of 90’s alt icons like Pavement and Guided by Voices, and the psych-pop-metal of Pixies.

Photonic’s songs veer between half-complete ADHD experiments and fully formed post-rock mini-epics. Vocals sprinkle this album almost at random, and styles change mid-song. On the first couple of listens (and I’d listened to most of these tracks on the band’s Myspace, like, 5 times, before buying the album) you really don’t know what’s coming next.

The production is stripped back to the point of being resolutely lo-fi, which constitutes a sizeable chunk of this album’s charm. It’s difficult to tell whether this sound is intentional or the result of having too little wonga to afford a decent recording. However, let’s keep our man Craig away from Pro-tools lest he be tempted – the production here is just perfect as it is.

Photonic are another one of those bands that mix a bunch of my favourite styles in magical ways, but what an unexpected mix this is. It’s impossible to know where to place this within the modern skewed-spectrum of *cores. Craig describes Photonic as “a rock metal power-chord psychedelic beats party” and appears unable or unwilling to classify the band himself – indeed there is no-one else out there is recording music like this, at least to my knowledge. Given this, anyone who signs Photonic will be gambling on a band that damn near impossible to market. This is the travesty of the music industry, where conformity is rewarded and individuality is ignored.

Shit, someone better sign Photonic, otherwise I’ll start a record label and I’ll do it myself!

In the meantime, I implore you, give Photonic some of your money and time (check out most of the album on their myspace here). This seedling needs watering, as the world will be a duller place without it.

Another couple of UKMU unsigned reviews for your existential enrichment.

The brutal Skull of a Mammoth:

First impressions are deceptive. Skull of a Mammoth’s name lead me to expect lumbering doom laden metal. The bell chimes followed by eerie keyboards and owl toots of the first track here did nothing to dispel this and even conjured and air of Spinal Tap, or worse Bad News (“Bells don’t go dung, cows go dung!”). Oh dear, I thought, and braced myself for some cheese, only to be swiftly bludgeoned from my lazy reverie by a cannon ball sized chunk of Lamb of God style ferocity.

London’s Skull of a Mammoth are a curious mix. The vocals, and overall approach to stripped down, to the point brutality is resolutely Lamb of God, but these tracks effortlessly skip between Metalcore, Black Metal and Melodic Death.

Read more…

The burgeoning 15 Times Dead:

With a name like 15 Times Dead, I expected these guys would be another cookie cutter metal/death-core bands, so I was pleasantly surprised when a neatly packaged retro-thrash band tore its way out of the Myspace player.

What seems apparent from the recent revival of this revered sub-genre is that the hardcore elements that helped form the rudiments of this style are well represented (DRI, COC, Anthrax, Nuclear Assault), but the classic metal influence is less well represented (unless you count the endless power metal bands). This is perhaps because the big names on that edge are still going strong – namely Metallica and Megadeth. It’s certainly cool to be punking it up, but could it ever be cool to sound like Metallica when the beast lumbers on through varying levels of purist disrepute? This is perhaps why the labels aren’t clambering to sign up bands like 15 Times Dead.

That’s not to say that 15 Times Dead are a one trick pony. This music is deceptively diverse. The thrash masters are all here (Metallica, Anthrax and Testament seep through in varying levels) but there’s a grounding here in classic rock which is tempered by grunge and alternative flavours.

Read more…