Tag Archives: Streaming

The Next Plateau: Sunflower Dead Talks About The Music Industry

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In Part 2 of chat with Michael Del Pizzo of Sunflower Dead, we discussed what is on tap next for the up and coming band, cover songs, writing album number three, and how do they see the climate right now for bands trying to be successful in the music industry.

We’re thinking about a lot of things. We’re trying a couple of songs with radio programmers right now to decide if were going to go to radio with the next single, and if we do, then there will be another music video and we’ll go to radio in the fall with the third single. We actually also are writing for the third record in our downtime, because you never know. We might decide to do the new record in the fall and get it out right away, or we might tour this record for another year. We’ll see what the demand is. I know there’s also been talk of, because we’ve been doing these acoustic tour shows, maybe doing the other three or four acoustic songs Sunflower Dead style, like a little EP for fans to download. We’ll see if that happens.

 

I know you guys have done covers before that were fun, but I don’t know if that’s something else you would do in the future or not. I think the first thing never heard from you guys was the Police cover.

We’re definitely not a band that does a lot of covers because we’re just lazy in the sense of learning other people’s songs, but we’ll do a cover thing on a whim, like we’ll just work it and reload it to make it fit us. I don’t knowing we’ll do any covers. Maybe. You never know. Like I said, I do think the album still has legs under it, so we’re just, like everything we do, we’re just going to see how it goes and make decisions when we get all the facts. That’s it. We’re just starting to tour the record now. We did press and media without touring for a year purposefully, and radio to just build the awareness. Now we are finally touring the record so it’s all coming together.

 


That was definitely an interesting choice. Do you feel like it’s tougher than it used to be to break a band? This is not your first rodeo with a band and this environment is brutal for rock music.

All I can say is that the music industry unfortunately is the Wild West right now. You have to make up your own rules. I would say that Sunflower Dead takes advantage of that. We make up our own rules and we see the current climate, and we use it to our advantage. I could see how the current climate would be discouraging to most people because at the end of the day whether you’re on a label or completely independent, it all comes down to not only does the talent and skill and desire you have, but you need to have financial backing. It costs money to make money in any business, and in the music business, it probably costs $2 million to make $1 million. Do you know what I’m saying? Its a difficult time, and for us we are taking advantage of it and it’s working. I think that I was personally disappointed that the first single didn’t go higher on the charts than it did in radio, even though it did well, and I believe that’s because it’s the first time we’ve gone to radio. We are a new band in their eyes, but It’s Time To Get Weird single hit the top 40, which was good. We’re just like everyone else. We’re working and cresting awareness, ans at the end of the day, a bands job is to create awareness of their sound and their product so people will come around to it. You have to beat people over the head with it over and over again until they finally go “Oh, I get it.” That’s just how it goes.

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I heard a really great thing on a podcast recently: for a new band to make it, you have to reinvigorate your fan base every couple of years with new blood, and really stay consistent for the first five years of your career. If you can do that over a couple of releases and bring awareness, then you get that sustainability factor kicks in when you get that recognition.

It’s a constant building process, and then when you reach a certain plateau, then you think “Okay, I’ve gotten somewhere.” Then you realize “Oh my god. There’s another huge amount this time.” then when you acquire that one, then you’re like “Oh my god. There’s another huge mountain.” It just keeps going and going and going. It’s why you have to keep in your mind, I would tell myself to enjoy the small victories, enjoy the process. You never know how long we’re going to be here in life or as a band, so just keep enjoying it and working to get better and spread that awareness. It’s working for us at a nice steady pace, and I believe that the groundwork that were laying, if we put out the right song, so the right things, when it does really connect, it’s going to connect big. That’s definitely the hope.

 

Catch Sunflower Dead on tour this fall with Hellyeah and Escape The Fate.

KEITH CHACHKES

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Staff Picks 2014: Mat Davies On The Year In Music Part I

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Through a Glass, Darkly: 2014 in perspective

 

Being asked to reflect back on a year in music, much of it spent in the company of the extreme variety sounds like an easy gig; if truth be known, it’s anything but. When you’re writing, your perspective is skewed by the time of year you were writing your review, the mood that you were in when you were writing it so, as with many of these end of year lists/reviews you are probably wise to see this as just another opinion to add to the many that you have probably already encountered.

It’s de rigeur at this junction to opine on “what 2014 will be remembered for”; experience tells me that we will look differently upon the year past in another twelve months time when its ebbs and flows, challenges, opportunities, highs and lows have had some more time to creep into our collective consciousness and sub-conscious. With that caveat in mind, and probably about to look enormously foolish, my reflection on 2014 looks something a bit like this….

2014 has been an odd year. I think of it a little bit like a boxer. Lots of good sparring, lots of interesting upper cuts and deflected jabs but not one knockdown, championship winning punch of an album that could define a year (in the way that 1991 was dominated by Nirvana’s Nevermind or 1987 got taken by the scruff of the neck by a certain Guns ‘N’ Roses and their insatiable Appetite for Destruction).

I think it’s fair to say that 2014 was a year of not necessarily taking stock, but harrying around the canvas wondering where to land the next haymaker. No one trend truly caught the collective imagination, no one band truly dominated, no one sound sat glue like in our collective cerebellum. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any great music in 2014 (there was bucketloads of it). The big difference is that you had to seek it out rather than it being a constant presence in society’s soundtrack.

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The most debated record of the year was unquestionably U2’s Songs of Innocence which landed in the iTunes accounts of some 500m listeners and is, by some considerable margin, their “biggest” (26m copies and counting) record of the last few years. Most of the debate around the record focussed, somewhat understandably, on the process of getting the music out there as opposed to debating the merits of the actual music- ironically, then, as Songs of Innocence is perhaps the band’s best record in a decade. Similarly, the decision of Taylor Swift to remove her country pop album 1989 from all streaming sites again spoke volumes about the record industry’s travails in identifying a long term business model in an age of change and digital ubiquity.

Over here in the boundaries of extreme music, the mainstream is something that most of us don’t generally give two hoots about but there is, for this writer at least, an ongoing frisson of excitement when one of “our” bands makes a breakthrough into the broader public consciousness. I have never subscribed, and never will, to the notion that our music should remain in the underground- on the contrary, I want as many people to hear the amazing sounds, insights, ideas of much of the stuff covered in Ghost Cult. Consequently, the fairly triumphant return of Slipknot to the top of the Billboard charts and to a ground-breaking Knotfest extravaganza is something to be cherished and celebrated. Likewise, a creatively rich album from Atlanta’s Mastodon in the guise of Once More ‘Round the Sun having an equally critically and commercially positive impact is perhaps proof positive that intelligent, diverse and inexorably heavy music can generate a broad based level of support and enthusiasm.

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Part II…. next

MAT DAVIES


Free Hot New Underground Metal! – Dewar PR releases Free Compilation

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Rising metal PR company Dewar PR have released a free compilation of some of the acts they represent, in a move that underlines their approach and ethos of discovering talented new bands and getting them the coverage their underground music deserves.

With an idea grounded in the mix tape and tape trading ideologies of yesteryear, of providing exposure to lesser known bands from a variety of sub-genres to people who may not have come across them along with further promoting their acts, the PR company primarily focuses on taking bands from the underground and helping them to establish themselves.

The compilation is available for both streaming and downloading here

The tracklisting is:

1. Thunderwar — Vimana (The Chariots in Heaven)

2. SoulSteal — Allegience

3. The King Is Blind — Revelation, Apocalypse

4. Decaying — One To Conquer

5. Dismanibus — Stamp On Your Grave

6. Diskord — Elytrous Oscillations

7. Jøtnarr — Relics

8. Illness — Zaraza

9. Praesepe — Acedia

10. Arkona — Klucz Do Istnienia

11. Ctulu — Mondsucht

 

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Contact Dewar PR at – [email protected]

 

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Steve Tovey