BMA News Update: DCM finishes tour, Cancer Bats feature in Alternative Press, Animosity to release exclusive vinyl

Welcome to the first edition of the BMA news update, meant to act as the family newsletter without all the embarrassing family snapshots, if you will.

• Dance Club Massacre finishes its tour with KillWhitneyDead, Carnifex and The Demonstration tomorrow at Uncle Pleasants in Louisville, KY.

• Cancer Bats have a glorious feature in Alternative Press by the amazing Scott Heisel. You can read it by going here: http://www.altpress.com/features/178.htm

• BMA bands are gettin' busy, recording new music that is. If you weren't already aware, Architect, Dance Club Massacre, From a Second Story Window and Romans all have songs off their recent and/or upcoming albums posted on MySpace. You can find each band's MySpace by visiting the BMA MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/blackmarketactivities

• Animosity will release a 10 inch vinyl through Man Alive! titled "Altered Beast" on Aug. 1. It's a collection of three songs from the band's BMA release, "Animal," tweaked and altered by Aaron Spectre aka Drumcorps. "Altered Beast" features four different covers, created from the groovy mind of John Lause. And there's plenty more goodies to go with that folks. For more info and pre-ordering, visit the Man Alive! Web site.

Artist Entry: The_Network guitarist Kevin wants the odds evened, one attention whoring band at a time

No living person on this planet really has it “all together.” That is a statement I’m certain of. We all float around in our lives just barely hiding a complete mess of a human being. Yes, some are better at it than others, but they’re probably the ones that go home and chew on their sofas with tears streaming down their face while blocking out thoughts of suicide and/or homicide. Literally, everyone you see in public are nervous wrecks with vibrating hearts and the darting eyes of a weasel stuck in a bear trap. The know-it-all crust punk, the Abercrombie model, the oh-so hip hipster, the Trekkie, the newly-weds with plastered on smiles, the boss, the manager, the vegan, the hunter, the gym addict, the life of the party, the guitarist of that band, the apathetic bartender, the homeless, the compassionate protester, the driver with “NRA” and “George ‘04” bumper stickers, the soldier, the record label owner, the teacher, the professor, the governor, the senator, the president, the American; all of them are an open wound with a shiny Band Aid struggling to hold on to slippery skin. Whether they know it or not, they don’t have a damn thing “together.” If a person has any sense in their head, they’re a fucking mess. If you have any kind of intelligence, you want to scream blood.

This is the kind of paragraph I’d repeat to myself every day regardless of what kind of life I’d be living. The reality is that I’m going to be 29-years-old in two weeks. I have a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Hampshire and an IQ of 137. I deliver pizza for money and live with my parents so I can devote all my time and energy to playing in the_network. And, yes, I too am a shaky pile of nerves behind an ill made costume of normalcy. If I had tried to start some horrific career right after college or gotten married and had kids or went to graduate school or became a vigilante or a serial killer, I’d still have to repeat the above paragraph to myself every morning. I’d still have to tell myself that life isn’t what you want it to be, life is what it is. This could all be some sickening pre-birthday, soul searching bullshit that would otherwise make me simultaneously laugh and puke, but it is necessary and true. No matter what life choices we make, reality is always going to confront us with situations that will force us to evaluate the entire world and our role in it, so why not do whatever the fuck we want.

Being in a band offers plenty of situations that will force a person to look far too deeply inward. If you’re in a band, you know what I’m talking about. When you’re in a van (the band bought themselves) literally all day only to lug out all your equipment and play in front of five people in the middle of the fucking country, you get to thinking. This is happening every day to bands that are really good. I mean, I think my band is relatively good (if you don’t like your own band, quit) and we’ve played numerous horrible shows with many bands that I know are good. And I guarantee that every shitty show an amazing band plays, there’s some huge tour package with three or four equally well known bands stopping somewhere within a hundred mile radius. This has gone past a minor annoyance to a full-fledged epidemic in the extreme music scene.

Only a few years ago, one or two big bands would actually tour with one or two less well known but great bands, and those smaller bands would get the attention they deserve. Now, it’s a little different. I mean, how many times do we see some tour with The Red Chord, Despised Icon, A Life Once Lost, and Through the Eyes of the Dead? Or maybe The Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die, Converge, and The Locust? Maybe Since the Flood just decided to help out Full Blown Chaos. (I’m not saying these tours have or are happening, but just using examples with well known bands.) Are A Life Once Lost and The Red Chord still both in dire need of gaining more attention? Is Despised Icon finally getting a break? Is someone going to go to a Dillinger show and just discover Every Time I Die? Fuck no. About ten of these tours happen a year and dozens of smaller ones have to spend weeks just eating gas money. What maniacal capitalists are booking these tours? When did Rockefeller and William Randolph Hearst start booking shows? I’m sure there’s some tiring explanation for all this and maybe I’m being naïve or bitter, but the reality of the situation is worth discussion.

For every sold out show full of kids buying their second or third Suicide Silence shirt across the country, there’s most likely an amazing band like Blues or Graf Orlock playing in front of 10 jaded guys or eight broke kids in some VFW a few miles away. And while Blues is hemorrhaging money on gas and sleeping on top of each other in a Wal-Mart parking lot after eating dry Ramen noodles, fucking Born of Osiris is trying to decide whether to go to Chili’s before or after they get their two rooms at the Holiday Inn. What the fuck happened?

There’s enough fans, attention, and, unfortunately, money to go around. All I’m saying is: let’s even the playing field. If the extreme music scene is going to be built up with the same capitalist attention paid to a game of Jenga, then it is time for the tower to crumble all over the fucking kitchen table. All I’m saying is give me one day when I don’t have to repeat the first paragraph of this rant to myself. Give me one day where I don’t have to force myself to look through everyone’s bullshit façade. Give me one day where I can tell myself that everyone around me is happy, well-rounded, and honest so I can get a gun and blow my fucking brains out.

Artist Entry: Lords' Chris Owens is the next Gene Siskel, minus the brain tumor

3 shitty movies

Every couple of weeks my uncle drops by with some DVDR's of shitty movies he's ripped. Here's my critique of the latest batch:

"I am Legend" 
Man, does Will Smith suck, or does Will Smith suck? So, he's this ripped, athletic scientist, who is the only dude left in Manhattan (or maybe the world...ooooohhh) that is immune to some virus created to help cure cancer but instead turned everyone into shitty, bald, hyperactive, CGI zombie types that apparently cant handle sunlight. Yawn. Everything is going fine and well until the Fresh Prince fucks up and flips out on some mannequin then gets himself stuck out side at night with the shitty, bald, hyperactive, CGI dummies.

What's the deal with those mannequins anyway? Oh yeah, he's going "crazy" He's like loosing his mind, yo! Oh! Naw he didn't! He just talked to that mannequin and asked her out on a date! Naw he didn't! Crazy ass Fresh Prince!

Well guess what, I don't believe it. I don't believe it because he's a shitty actor and I feel no sympathy for his character.

You know what else I don't believe, is that some chick and her little girl somehow manage to stay alive without the Travis-Bickel-workout-routine-six-pack abs, machine guns, a fortress house, or any of the other amenities that the Fresh Prince required for his survival. Furthermore, what the fuck took them three years, or however long it was, to find him in Manhattan? You know, when he's broadcasting his location on the radio every single day, AND, how the fuck did they drive off the island?! It was supposedly sealed off, as explained in some stupid flash back sequences.

Whatever, fuck this stupid movie. Go rent "Omega Man" instead.


"The Italian Job" 
I have chronic sleep problems which result in and are perpetuated by massive coffee consumption. I drink more coffee than Bobby from Engineer. I keep a coffee pot in the van and bust it out at every show on tour. I drink coffee all the time because I don't sleep very well, or often, and I need the stimulant in my brain to stay functional during the day. I can't sleep without earplugs or complete
darkness. I talked to a doctor about it years ago -- when I could afford to go the doctor -- and he explained to me that normally people's nervous system "turns off" when they're sleeping, but mine only goes in to "low gear," so I'm still aware of sights and sounds, and any kind of stimulation will easily wake me. So the bottom line is that I cant fall asleep with a TV or radio on, or people talking or any kind of shit like that.

....or at least I couldn't, until for the first time in my 29 years of living I saw a movie so fucking boring, contrived and shitty that I actually fell asleep during it.

Really I should have known. Being a remake and the PG13 rating should have been enough, but with Ed Norton and Mark Wahlberg I thought it would at least have to be passable. I really cant decide which actor performed more embarrassingly on this movie. I mean, Ed Norton had to wear the gay ass "evil twin" mustache and goatee. But Wahlberg acted like he was still playing Dirk Diggler staring in a no-plot, action porno -- but with no porno so it wasn't even like you could just fast froward through the dialog to get to the fuck scenes. Fuck scenes might have made this movie a little better -- not much -- but the formula
works for the rest of Hollywood. If there is no intellectually or emotionally stimulating substance to the film, then at least try to give me a boner, or real graphic violence of some sort -- something to make me feel like my money or time hasn't  been thoroughly wasted.

Then you have Donald Sutherland. Sometimes there are actors that no matter what role they're playing you always remember them for one weird obscure thing they did years before. Like how Jeff Goldblum will always be the street thug who's ass you got to see when he was raping and murdering Charles Bronsons' wife and daughter in "Death Wish" and to me Donald Sutherland will always be the Nazi spy who murdered this hot English lady's paraplegic husband then made her fuck and feed him, while he waited for the U-boat to pick him up in "Eye of
the Needle."

Painfully disappointing cast performances aside this movie is a very weak "heist gone wrong" tale with an apparent target audience of retarded 12-year-old girls.

Do your self a favor and don't watch this movie. Go rent "Cannibal
Holocaust" instead. It's nothing like "The Italian Job" in any way,
which is a good thing -- and it's banned in most self respecting first
world countries, so you know it has to be good.


"The Quick and the Dead"
High points: Sharon Stone tit shot, Leonardo DiCaprio dies.

Low points: Everything else in the movie.

This abomination of cinema is essentially a horribly failed attempt to mix "Kill Bill" with at least one scene from every western ever made. We have Sharon Stone as the sass-mouth cowgirl on a quest for revenge against the man who killed her father. I guess we're supposed to get some kind of girl power vibe off of her, but instead most of the movie she acts like a timid, sissy bitch, who is too pussy to kill this dude the first 500 chances that she has. Then suddenly she becomes a badass in the last minute of the film, while uttering one of the gayest
one liners of all time. Once again, I don't believe it.

DiCaprio is the young show off who gets killed by his own dad (Gene Hackman). When he died in the movie I was happy because his character annoyed the fuck out of me.

Russel Crow plays a sharp shooting preacher who has renounced killing -- exactly like Lee Van Cleef in "Gods Gun," except that in this movie Russel Crow doesn't also play his own twin brother,  who in "Gods Gun" comes back to severely mind fuck the bad guys and avenge his death.

Gene Hackman is the gang leader who is responsible for the death of Sharon Stones' dad (although we find out in some queer ass flash back sequences that Sharon Stone actually killed her dad, because Hackman was going to hang him -- but he said if Sharon can shoot the rope off then he'll let him go. But Stone accidentally shoots her dad in the head...HA!).

This movie offends me. Clint Eastwood kind of served as a father figure to me as a child. My moral compass is derived from his spaghetti Western characters ( and from Alan Alda as "Hawkeye" in the "Mash" TV series). Some review of this movie called it "campy fun," but as Dennis Hopper would say in "Blue Velvet;" Fuck that faggot shit. This movie is testament to the rapid retardation and pussification of
America. I hate this movie and anyone who likes it. Fuck it, and fuck you.

Good night.

Artist Entry: From a Second Story Window vocalist Will Jackson's bachelor party adventure

The night started off in the day time. The sun beat down on us as if we were all afflicted with fiery crimson locks and happened to be a large group of step-children. Sweat poured from under arms causing visible cries of cotton shirts, "Help, I'm fucking drowning here mate!" they would have yelled had they been able -- and perhaps been British. I pulled mine off to save myself the hours of verbal abuse flying from my muddled pits and continued to load the car.

The trip was planned for Charlotte, NC, and the pals were pulling in well equipped with beers of various brands, liquors from across the continent and farther (the Absinthe will top things off nicely), and an assortment of other explicables that Hunter S. himself would fully give a nod of encouragement and an "hrmmm, good good boys!" Needless to say everyone was excited and ready to dive right into the debauchery that is the time honored tradition of Bachelor Partying.

Mine was a crew of rather rough and wiley young gents that I have acquired sinful friendships with since the days of my becoming a man, the meetings include my first endeavor into the sloshy and short, first time I did it club, all the way to my very first indulgences into the visual side of mind expansion, i.e., you should know what I'm talking about. These were some boys with whom I had shared life and limb with at any and all cost. Homeboys one might say, and one of ours was getting hitched.

Now, needless to say, plans had been set and motions had been qued to make this one hell of a weekend. The room was booked down in Charlotte at the Courtyard Marriot, Suite 202 on the M2 level of the north tower, this was an upper level with a lower numeral in description, something I went over with the nice young woman who booked us the room. We had been told that it was a room where were could conduct our bachelordom in peace and quiet, at least to the outside world. I, having already removed my shirt and cracked a beer, greeted my fellow goers of fun with a friendly wave and a few lofty tosses of beers in their immediate direction. They plucked their beers from mid air as the descended upon them with great ease and began, as did I, to toast the young man whose life was about to be joined to another in a mere matter of days.

"To Billy boy, may you enjoy fucking only one woman for the rest of your life!" said a friend by the name of Brandon, a muscular gent of whom we all also knew by the alias Hambone, who followed it up was some hardy har har's or which we all followed suit.

After the toast and the laughs and a few more beers we all blinked a bit and looked at one another. Small bags that could be easily carried on any size airplanes surrounded the two cars that had been chosen to carry this gang of misbegotten souls.

"Who's driving, and where is everyone riding?" A tall lanky fellow by the name of Colby hooted, his eyes swayed behind thick corrective lenses framed in soft gold.

"Toby's driving my car, and I'm drinking. Who's with us you bunch of dogs!" I yelled striding behind Colby and smacking him firmly on his hind end with one hand while pointing at my mates with the other.

I must admit, I was getting rather excited thinking of our lavish room and mini bar just sitting there high in the air, empty and waiting to be ravaged; like those young girls who stroll down Marion drive walking home from high school not quite ready to be taken, but wanting it all the same. I could envision it floating, take the rest of the building away, just our box of sin waiting to be taken over.

The route was simple, 77 South, straight. It is best to plan a trip like this around as man simple directions as possible, especially when people are drinking and otherwise. The cars faired well. A 2007 Toyota Prius, economical, sporty, roomy, and wild as hell with our own Billy the bachelor nestled deep in the back seat smoking away his nerves. He was nervous I tell you. He had no idea what was in store from his foolish friends, God only knows what his mind was cooking up in there; what kind of devilish acts were about to take place down here in the deep southern city of Charlotte, NC...

Artist Entry: Lords' Chris Owens wants you to take that D-beat and shove it

If I hear the phrase "D-Beat" one more time, I'm going to fucking puke.

Seriously.

At some point -- I think around the mid-to-late '90s -- bands all around
the country started to think that it was OK to stop writing their own
songs and start producing lesser versions of what ever happened to be
popular at the time.

Now, it may be that this kind of thing was always happening and I was
simply sheltered from it by growing up on the musical island of
Louisville, KY that was chock full of genre pioneers and other fucked
up exotic punk oddities ranging from Slint to KINGHORSE. But in the
early '90s, when I was first playing in bands and going to punk shows,
it wasn't cool to sound like other bands. If you ripped some one else
off then you got called out and made fun of. There was this
underlying pressure to be better, tighter and different than
everything else that was going on around you, and the end result was
BETTER BANDS.

Anyone who's in a touring band knows the scenario of playing with the
same band in every city, but with different names and different
members. Sometimes you play with the same band several times in one
night and their sets might get progressively better as the evening
progresses, but it's still pretty much the same shit.

Until recently, it was that same shitty generic metalcore band that you
played with every night. Yeah, we get it, you can palm mute and do
sweeps. You wear your stupid Ibanez higher than Paul McCartney's
fiddle bass and you all have wicked cool rack tuners that make your
mesa's look like extras on the Battlestar Galactica set.

Now a days, it's the drop C, "d-beat" nonsense. There are literally
thousands of these bands, a few in every city, and they all sound
the fucking same! I mean, what's the deal guys?

I understand that a lot of you are young and probably haven't heard
much of that one rock band from England that's been playing those same
riffs for 35 years. Or the punk band that the drum beat is named
after, who were playing those riffs 25 years ago. And maybe not even
the guys from Tennessee who moved to Oregon and popularized this most
recent revival seven or eight years ago, but I know for sure that you've
heard of my friends from Louisville who've been playing these songs
for the last five years.

I just don't get it. Yeah sure, every thing's pretty much been
done already, and every band is influenced by other bands, but you
"drop C, D-beat" guys aren't even trying! Seriously.

I mean, I love Voivod and Megadeth. Listen to a Lords record and then
listen to "Rust in Peace" or "Nothing Face" and it should be evident. But
no one's ever going to confuse a lords song for Voivod or
Megadeth. Whatever.

So in conclusion, I think this tuned down dropped C, "D-beat" revival
is already tired, old and run in to the fucking ground -- and I really
wish you kids would start being more creative and original so that it
will make shows on tour a lot more interesting for me.

But that's just my opinion, man, what the fuck do I know anyway?