If you missed us on our last East Coast tour (with Last Chance to Reason), this is your chance to catch us again! To those who don’t live on the East Coast, we’re working on getting to your towns soon, and appreciate your patience.

Dates are as follows in convenient text form:

Nov. 12 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Howlers Coyote Café (w/ NECROLYSIS)
Nov. 13 – Rochester, NY @ Bug Jar (w/ LIKE WOLVES, CURL & DRAG)
Nov. 14 – Ithaca, NY @ The Haunt
Nov. 15 – New York, NY @ Lit Lounge (w/ EMPYREON, PRISTINA)
Nov. 16 – Worcester, MA @ Ralph’s Music Diner
Nov. 17 – Boston, MA @ Great Scott (w/ SEXCREMENT, MOTHERBOAR)
Nov. 18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie (w/ FIGHT AMP)
Nov. 19 – Bethlehem, PA @ Secret Art Space
Nov. 20 – Baltimore, MD @ tba

It’s been a long and interesting couple of months, but “The Wretched Sun” is finally “out in the wild”, so to speak. The fine folks over at Big Machine Media have hooked us up with an AOL “Full CD Listening Party” for the next week or so. Head on over and check it out if you’d like! It’ll be on iTunes/Amazon/Etc. tomorrow when the record is officially released, as well as physical copies at our spiffy new merch store.

Psyched for tour in 3 days!

-steve.h

For now, here’s a slick poster I made for the tour:

Don’t forget: we still have a few slots to fill, and could use all of the promotion help we can get: streetteam [at] ironthrones [dot] com!!

w00t,
-steve.h

Hope to see some friendly faces!

Cheers,
-steve.h

We're still ironing out the details (no pun intended) & figuring out some cool perks for Street Team members, but for now what's certain is if you email us at streetteam AT ironthrones DOT com, we will definitely email you back personally and help get you some promotional materials. Plus, there's a nifty Street Team-only portion of our Forum that nobody can see but us/ Street Team members, and that makes it a club. And clubs are fun. Like I said, details are being worked out, but you can expect more official Street Team-related info soon.

Point being: if you enjoy our band and would like to support us on the road, please shoot us a message at streetteam AT ironthrones DOT com!

We'll be going out with a band called "Last Chance to Reason", who are currently developing a combination Album/Video Game release. That's nuts. Check 'em out HERE.

Tour Dates:

7/29/10 Chicago, IL @ The Double Door w/ The Alaya Conscious, Hessler
7/30/10 TBA (might be a really awesome show if we get on it!)
7/31/10 Columbus, OH @ The Summit w/ The C.O.A.S.T., Artillery Breath
8/01/10 Aliquippa, PA @ The Fallout Shelter w/ Sathanas, Dethlehem
8/02/10 Brooklyn, NY@ The Charleston w/ East of the Wall, Name, & more!
8/03/10 Allenstown, NH @ Ground Zero - NEED LOCALS!
8/04/10 Worcester, MA @ Tammany Hall w/ Irepress, Frozen
8/05/10 Philadelphia, PA @ The M Room w/ Monolith, Willing Swords
8/06/10 Somewhere between PA and SC (need help!)
8/07/10 Spartanburg, SC @ Ground Zero - NEED LOCALS!
8/08/10 Atlanta, GA (need help!)
8/10/10 Clarksville, TN @ The Coup w/ Evolve or Die, NEED (more) LOCALS!
8/11/10 Nashville, TN @ The Muse (tentative, NEED LOCALS!)
8/12/10 St. Louis, MO @ The Firebird w/ Ashes and Iron
8/13/10 Marshalltown, IA @ The American Legion w/ Anno Domine, Tony Rocky Horror

Cheers & Hope to hear from you,
-steve.h

Ain't it pretty?

Designed by The Syndicate’s own Bill Shouldis (who was recently interviewed about the subject of ironthrones.com and band websites in general) as part of the Scion No Label Needed contest, and utilizing the album artwork created by the all-powerful Portland at Sons of Nero, this Wordpress-powered site gives us the basic platform we need to establish our internet presence. The nice thing about using such a versatile underlying structure, is that as we grow and mature as a band, the site can grow with us without having to start from scratch every time we get a new idea. The whole look and feel of the site can be changed without having to mess with the underlying code. Sure, there are some bugs to iron out (no pun intended), but we’re working on them as they pop up. And of course, this means we have even less of an excuse for not updating the site on a regular basis, but with the way things have been going over the past few months, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding new things to add.

It’ll take some time for us to grow into it, and we have a lot of content to add (particularly here in the blog), but we’re pretty happy with our new internet home. As always, feel free to leave us a comment and let us know what you think, or shoot us an email (we like talking with people!)

Cheers,
-steve.h

Below are the dates and cities/states we’re attempting to book. Many of the dates have venues, but need locals booked to draw some kids and complete the bill.

July 28 – Madison, WI
July 29 – Chicago, IL
July 30 – Indianapolis, IN
July 31 – Columbus, OH
Aug 1 – Cleveland OH / Pittsburgh, PA
Aug 2 – NY state / PA state
Aug 3 – NH
Aug 4 – Worcester, MA
Aug 5 – Brooklyn, NY
Aug 6 – Philadelphia, PA w/ Monolith
Aug 7 – Baltimore, MD / Richmond, VA / Charlottesville, VA
Aug 8 – Richmond, VA / Charlottesville, VA
Aug 9 – NC
Aug 10 – Atlanta, GA
Aug 11 – TN
Aug 12 – St. Louis, MO
Aug 13 – Iowa w/ Aseethe
Aug 14 – Minneapolis

Please help us out if you can!

Of course, as a band who touts themselves as “striv[ing] to express ourselves honestly and completely through our music, so that we may deeply connect with people all over the world,” it’s important for me to say that our goal hasn’t changed. Everything on the record we made came from us, and was performed by ourselves. That said, we did essentially have a fifth member of the band on this record, acting as a sort of sagely guide to help us along our path, personified by one Will Putney (our producer). Because of his influence, parts of the songs on this record are very likely different than they would have been had he not been there. I realize that this is likely tripping some rather prickly triggers in some peoples’ minds, and so I will elaborate and explain this apparent contradiction in philosophies.

Music, much like any other form of communication, is by its nature an imperfect medium when it comes to expressing the emotions/mindset of the communicator. This might depend on the goal of the one doing the communicating, but I can speak at least for myself in saying that when I write music, I’m attempting to communicate my thoughts/ideas/emotions with those willing to listen. As a relatively young musician, I’m still very much learning my craft: striving to express myself honestly and completely through my music. It’s an interesting and important contradiction to realize that on the one hand, nobody can ever be a “perfect” musician, because there’s always something else to learn; yet on the other hand, it could be argued that anybody who is constantly striving for honesty is by definition a “perfect” musician. The constant struggle to perfect one’s craft and learn more about music itself, is in my mind what makes a great musician.

Some might argue that the purest music is that without outside influence, but I think that’s an incomplete and impossible (and thus irrelevant) argument. If one has senses, then one has outside influences. The ability to analyze and interpret things we experience is the very thing that makes us human, and indeed is expressing such is the definition of music. As such, it is not whether or not we’re open to outside influences, but our reasoning behind incorporating said outside influences into our music that determines our honesty. If a musician makes a musical decision based on another’s advice with perceived monetary or social gain in mind, then that musician has sold out. Put in layman’s terms, if you change anything about your music in order to appeal to a wider audience, with money in mind, then you’ve sold out. However, if someone whose opinion you respect, feels the thoughts/ideas/emotions you’re trying to convey might not be coming through the way you had intended, and that if you work on it a little bit, you could come up with something truly awesome, then you’d be cheating yourself not to at least entertain the idea. It’s not dishonest to re-think something: every song I’ve ever written or co-written has gone through many, many revisions before the final revision is put to ‘tape’, and even then many times it changes even after that, when playing it live!

And so, when making this record, Will mentioned several points in our songs that in his mind could be improved, and if we agreed, we set to work on improving it ourselves. There were some parts that he suggested changing, that we disagreed with and they ended up staying the same as they originally were. The point of having a producer is to bring a respected and experienced opinion to the table, with the goal of improving our song-writing and performance skills. I can safely say that every significant change you hear between Visions of Light and the new record, is stuff we’d planned ourselves before ever meeting Will. There are some new elements that will throw some people off, maybe even lose us some fans. Fortunately, as we’ve said before, we’re somewhat of a selfish band: we make music for ourselves. The reason we love our fans isn’t because they validate our love for our own stuff (we’d love it regardless of if we had any fans), but because they love what we’re doing as much as we do. If we all wanted to throw some bagpipes into the mix, we’d fucking do it, and if it was expressing what we were trying to express, we could give two shits if some producer doesn’t like it. We’d find a different producer. Fortunately, by some strange fate, the producer we happened to be set up with in this contest was a huge fan of a lot of the same music we were into (it turns out he was already a big fan of one of my old bands!), and so much like the contest itself, things just sort of magically worked out. Most of the suggestions Will made, were of things we already knew were weak points in our songs. He was more of a sort of Yoda character, pinpointing our weaknesses and not allowing them to end up on the record, and while I was honestly quite resistant to it at first as it was quite foreign to me, I ended up thanking him for it.

I’m a much stronger musician, guitarist, songwriter, and producer because of this experience, and I’m proud to say that regardless of whether or not our new material and how it was produced rubs some people the wrong way, I know it’s completely honest and 100% pure. If you dislike this record, you’d have disliked it anyway even if we’d have produced it ourselves. If you love it, you’d have loved it regardless as well. The only difference is that we had some much-appreciated help along the way, and have grown and matured as a band and songwriters as a result of it.

Hopefully, y’all dig it

Cheers,
-steve.h