Let’s face it, times are tough. Especially when it comes to running a small record label. We’ve had some really great releases so far, but when sales start to slow, so does our future release schedule! In an effort to continue as planned with our vinyl releases in 2012, we are going to try something a little different. Instead of the traditional pre-order with contests, etc. we are running this fundraiser.

We’ve got a funding goal, a deadline, and some awesome incentives for donators at many different price points!

Donations to the fundraiser are also considered preorders and vary from a digital download of the album to a monster package including the Deluxe 2xLP album (with art by Murray Fraser), CD, Digital Download, T-shirt AND a numbered test press of the album (limited to fifteen copies, four of which are gone already).

First up is the Double LP vinyl edition of the critically acclaimed Wildernessking debut – “The Writing of Gods in the Sand”. Right now, we are planning to press 300 copies (100 black, 200 colored). The packaging will be what you’ve come to expect from Antithetic Records. Heavy weight gatefold jacket, two sided printed insert, and a poster featuring the CD cover art from Rainbath Visual.

100% of the money raised here will be put toward the production of this vinyl set. Truth be told, it will cost a fair amount more than our $3,500 goal, but if we can make that much, we will be comfortable with going forward with the pressing. If/when we reach the goal, I will contact everyone via email who will be getting a shirt and a copy of the vinyl for your color/size preference.

The album received a glowing review here on Metal4Africa and we would love to see it released on vinyl. If you have some cash to spare and want to support quality metal coming out of South Africa, please take some time to visit the Antithetic Page and make a donation to the cause!

Sindulgence has begun on recording for their debut album Recollections, and are doing so at the studio of Dean Hammond (guitarist in Moment Of Clarity) in the Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs.  The release will also be paired with a DVD featuring lots of fun “behind-the-scenes” stuff from the band, and will be sold for discount at the launch party, bundled with the album.

The band has described the album theme as a look at how things have changed through the centuries and yet how certain things stay the same. Lyrics focus on topics such as natural order, philosophy, and how things are more beautiful when they have history and significance attached to them.

There are seven bands scheduled to play and the show kicks off early in the evening. Forgive Us Not are a new band on the scene, and have just increased their mark on it by delivering a crushing set at SummerFest’12. They will be kicking off the party at 17h30. Thereafter will be Suiderbees, one of Cape Town’s fast risers in the death metal scene, followed by the long-standing thrash act, Infanteria. Punters who are foolish enough not to have arrived early will also miss The Thunder Gods, a tribute band (featuring members of Mind Assault) who have received rave reviews on their rendition of songs by Amon Amarth. There will be a taste of the dark when Rigormortem take the stage following The Thunder Gods, and then some lighter-hearted power metal by Strident.

Sindulgence will take the stage at 22h00 to perform the first of two sets whch they have planned for the night – so from that time onwards, it’ll just be pure sin until the strength is drained from all. Make sure you have this date marked in your diary: Saturday 23 June @ ROAR. 

Full event information can be found on the official event page on facebook – : here.

This just in from THE CASTING STUDIO in Cape Town…

4 Heavy Metal guys are needed for an advert to be made by a big brand in the automotive industry.  If you are aged between 17 and 30 years, and can make yourselves available for casting tomorrow (Friday 3 Feb), then you might stand to earn R10,000 for the work, if selected.

The theme will be headbanging inside the car (like in Wayne’s World).  Look and dress must be like metal heads of the 80′s.  Big hair is good, denim and leather jackets, badges, etc.  Make it happen, Cape Town!

THE CASTING STUDIO

73 Loop Street, Cape Town

Casting on Friday 03 Feb between 15h00 and 19h30

The same automotive brand is also looking for a musician “Father-Son” relationship.  So if you know of a likely pair, please forward the link to this article asap!

Caucasion or mixed race.  He can be a little cruffy and cool, as long as he’s not pretentious or off-putting.  Long hair or short is fine.  He must be charismatic and likable – and a guy who truly loves kids.  In the audition he should sit on the ground and play a fast, upbeat song for the kid so the kid can dance & the two of them have a ball!

The successful audition will earn R20,000 (R15,000 for dad & R5,000 for the kid).  Dad age: 25-40, kid age: 3-5.

Casting on Friday 03 Feb between 12h00 and 14h00

This text copied and pasted directly from RAMfest.  We’ve included the relevant links for your convenience.  Good luck, and happy hunting!

Boys and girls, we are about to run a competition like no other. We’re about to give you something no other South African festival has ever given you before…the chance for one of you, from each of the Ramfest cities, to win a Lifetime Ticket to Ramfest. That’s right, a ticket for life, to any Ramfest.

We’re not going to make it too easy for you. We’re going to make you hunt for your Lifetime Ticket. So, we’ll be starting with Bloem and PE on the 11th of February, moving to Durban for the 12th of February, then ending off with Joburg on the 18th and Cape Town on the 19th of February.

We’ll be running the competition through Facebook at first, and then Twitter, so you’ll need to make sure you have the following check-list ticked off if you want your Lifetime Ticket:

- ‘Like’ the Ramfest Facebook page  (find it here: http://www.facebook.com/Metal4Africa#!/ramfest)

- Follow Ramfest on Twitter  (Find it here: https://twitter.com/RAMfest )

- Make sure you have a smart phone with Facebook, Twitter and a camera.

- You must be able to take pictures and tweet them to Ramfest in order to take part

- You will need transport – a car is preferable, but if you ride really fast and are super fit you could maybe try a bike, but we don’t recommend it.

- You must have purchased a ticket to any Ramfest to be eligible for the prize (winners will have their ticket reimbursed)

We’ll be updating you leading up to the hunt, so in the mean time make sure you have the above sorted and know how to use it all.

 

Terms & Conditions

 

- Entrants must be 18 years or older

- Entrants must be carrying a valid form of identification during the Lifetime Ticket Hunt

- Entrants must have completed all stages of the hunt, correctly, to be eligible for the prize

- First prize (lifetime ticket) is non transferable, for cash or to another party

- The Life Time ticket is valid for any Ramfest city

- Entrants must have purchased a ticket for Ramfest 2012 to be eligible for the main prize. Winners will be reimbursed.

- Once presented with the lifetime ticket it becomes the property of the winner, if lost the winner will incur costs for a duplicate to be made

- The judges decision is final

- Persons participate in the Lifetime Ticket Hunt at their own risk

- Ramfest, The Organisers and Partners take no responsibility for any person taking part in the Lifetime Ticket Hunt

At this point we urge that unless you have any particularly reason NOT to do so, then please prove your metal and go right now to http://www.musicreview.co.za/2012/01/17/best-local-artist-of-2011/ and show some heavy metal love for Durban’s Contrast the Water who will be returning from the USA in March from their few months of conquest. It would be such a great honour for us to see SA metalheads rise up in their hundreds – or even thousands – to see us take our place of recognition as a genre. For metal!

In a recently submitted press release, the band told Metal4Africa how recording for the debut album, planned months ago for release in January, has come to a catastrophic collapse.
“A major stumbling block from the start has been the drums,” they told us, “Having received the product from the person who recorded the drums, we’ve spent much of our time trying to rectify technical shortcomings these last months, but to no avail.”

A visibly distressed Theatre Runs Red wish to apologise to all of those fans who have been looking forward to the national release in January/February 2012.
“We have to apologize to all of our fans who have stuck with us throughout this process. This had the makings of a great product and it pains us to have to watch it fall apart, despite having poured in our blood, sweat, and now our tears into the endeavour.”

We at Metal4Africa are nonetheless looking forward to Theatre Runs Red performing at SummerFest’12 (link to event). Although an album would have been great, we have not come to love Theatre Runs Red any less for their lack of recorded material since first gracing the M4A Stage in 2009, and we are happy to patiently wait it out until such time as they are able to deliver the quality product they have envisaged for us.
The band remains fairly upbeat about their tour dates, saying: “We intend raising hell with all of you in exactly the same demented manner originally had planned. So join us as we blacken the doorsteps of your towns for a round of gigs where we are joined by SA’s finest metal madmen for a couple of nights of frenzied moshing, beer-swilling rabble-rousing and great fucking metal!”

Theatre Runs Red will be headlining Metal4Africa Summerfest ’12 alongside Sabretooth.

Made up of a wide variety of electronic industrial styles, drawing from diverse genres as far removed as breakbeat and 80s electronica, EBM industrial, psytrance and ambient drone, the aim of the release is for it to be an accurate depiction of Axxon‘s broad scale of influence and future genre-busting intentions and at the same time, to stand on it’s own as a strong, aggressive debut release, and pave the way for a full length album later this year.

The release comprises of seven new tracks. The single release of the title track, an industrial breakbeat affair, making use of heavy rhythms, aggressive guitaring, and atonal synth lines, two remixes by Stephen, their frontman, founder and producer, an electro-industrial cover version of Depeche Mode‘s classic b-side “Dangerous”, two remixes by local psytrance and electronica producer Aviv Hallale (one of the title track and one of the b-side, “Dangerous”), and ending off with a 12 minute long experimental ambient track, titled “Panopticon.”

Themes that run through the release range from sexual depravity and taboo topics to repression of memory, spiralling madness, guilt and paranoia. Never afraid to touch on heavy subject matter, always using subtlety over blatant imagery, Axxon paints a dark picture of the human psyche, bringing out into the open that which is usually kept in shadow.

Production of the single has been an almost totally in-house affair. Song-writing credits for the title track go to Stephen Green and Cathryn Golby (main guitarist / co-songwriter), with a majority of recording done by the band themselves. The two in-house Axxon remixes of “Bite Your Tongue” portray the title track in two different lights, giving the release a club sensibility. Aviv Hallale(Chemogen and Plazm) has added a flair all his own to the single, with his aggressive psytrance take on the title song, incorporating glitching, sampling and symphonic elements. Aviv also contributed an 80s infused electro remix for “Dangerous”, lending a dark pop sensibility to the track. Scott Miller (drums) also contributed in the song-writing stakes for the first time with “Panopticon”, the final track on the release, co-written with Stephen. The track also incorporates extensive samples recorded by Cathryn and co-guitarist Malcolm McArb.

Bite Your Tongue tracklisting:

01. Bite Your Tongue (Single Version)
02. Bite Your Tongue (Chemogen Remix)
03. Bite Your Tongue (Sanctified Mix)
04. Bite Your Tongue (Bodypulse Mix)
05. Dangerous (Depeche Mode cover)
06. Dangerous (Plazm Remix)
07. Panopticon

The band is aiming for a late February release date for the single, which will be coupled with a launch show, to be announced at a later stage.

The single will be available to download for free from the band’s Facebook fan page, and a limited number of signed and numbered physical copies will be given away at future Axxon gigs.

Axxon are already working on their next single, “Final Breath”, featured in the video below.

Cape Town Thrash/Death Metallers Mind Assault have long been known to take jabs at local and global politics.  Oppressive policies by governments and institutions are one of the bands key sources of lyrical inspriration and have sometimes landed the band in hot water.  It is now again that Mind Assault finds itself on the receiving end of attack because of the open stance they have taken against the recently proclaimed Protection of Information Bill by the South African ruling party, the African National Congress.  National media reparts that the ANC, in a brazen display of force, used it’s power of Parlimentary majority to vote in the bill and sought to ‘discipline’ even it’s own Parlimentary members who might have felt reason to oppose it – of which there were a number.

“We in Mind Assault are under attack from some individuals for exercising our freedom of expression,” a spokesperson for the band told M4A, “but this sort of thing only strengthens our resolve.”  The band claims not to be pushing their agenda along racial divides as a recent attack has suggested.  “This band is not trying to speak against people innocent of any moral violation, regardless of skin colour.  We are telling the story of our beloved South Africa as it is seen through our own eyes.  At the present, there is a villian who seeks to rob all of this nations people of their right to know how their country is being run, and how their tax money is being spent.  That people anywhere around the world should be put to work under the power of anonymous masters who hold to zero accountability is paramount to slavery,” says Mind Assault, “And if this band was in existence twenty years ago, then we might have had a few things to say about a different government as well.”

Despite the potential for a backlash, the band holds by their protest of the Protection of Information Bill and the political party who has propogated it.  They have told us at M4A that they plan to use their next performance to bring this message across with even greater voracity than their ‘South Africa Betrayed’ image which has appeared on the bands page, and on many supporters facebook pages since ‘Black Tuesday’ on 22 November 2011.  In the past, Mind Assault has been known to ‘tell their stories’ in a most entertaining yet often stirring manner.  They offered no hint as to what the public can expect, saying that people would just have to be there if they were interested enough in the subject.

This next performance is scheduled for appearance at the Rock The River music festival near Cape Town over New Years weekend.  Mind Assault are advertised to perform at approximately 21:30 on the Metal Stage on Sunday 01 January 2012. We at M4A suspect that this is one not to be missed!

Rock The River facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/284358398259139/

Mind Assault facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/mindassault

More info about the Protection of Information Bill: http://www.r2k.org.za

Crow Black Sky surfaced in the Cape Town live metal circuit in 2010, and released their acclaimed debut album Pantheion in 2011.  Although the band has not been known to appear live since the release of this album, they are now making a much anticipated return to the stage to launch their newly remastered Pantheion and to also film a music video for the song “The Oppressor’s Fortune”.

“We’ll have epic pyrotechnics, we’ll be performing new material, we’ll be unveiling a powerful new image, and we’ll be officially launching the remastered album” promised Crow Black Sky, inviting all to come and be a part of the music video.

The performance will take place at Cape Town’s widely publicized New Year’s Party, Rock The River Music Festival, which takes place a mere 20 minutes drive from the city centre – complete with full weekend camping.  Full festival details and ticket sales are available at: http://online.computicket.com/web/event/rock_the_river_sa_new_years_fest/478744593/referer:highlights-index-3-2-0-grid and other event information on the Festivals facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/284358398259139/

Crow Black Sky are expected onstage at approximately 23:30 on Saturday 31 December and will see audiences into the new year.  A host of other metal acts will also be featured at the festivals dedicated metal stage, including other great local metal bands: Ing, The Warinsane, Mind Assault, Suiderbees, Strident, Bulletscript, Wargrave, Imperium Of Man, to name only a few.  Metal 4 Africa will have a team to cover the event as well.  We hope to see you there!

There will be only 1000 camping tickets available, so booking in advance is crucial. In addition to your RAMfest ticket, a small surcharge of R50 for 2 nights, or R30 for Sunday night only will be applicable and ticket sales will open soon via the RAMfest facebook page.

Announcements and pass sales are expected to come from RAMfest from 05 January 2012. Camping passes will be separate transactions from your ticket,so even if you have already purchased your festival ticket, you can easily still add on your camping pass.

The M4A team will be providing all-weekend Hard Rock & Metal Entertainment at a shaded bar at the camp site, so for those who only want to check out the main act, there will be no lacking for excellent metal vibes and a gathering of great people. So book your leave so long for Monday 12 March and come make a weekend of M4A and In Flames at RAMfest Cape Town!