In search of Sunken Treasure

So, after a stressful time of constant emailing and begging, I'm proud to announce that Red Rum's Sunken Treasure UK tour is a go. Unfortunately Wales is a no-go for this tour as promoters were either not interested or just couldn't book it.

This was a surprisingly difficult tour to book, despite Red Rum's rise in profile following their UK tour with Alestorm last year. However, it should be an interesting tour and I'm happy to have managed to snag the band for a Bridlington show as well. Scotland - Glasgow to be exact - was a difficult one to score for the band but I persevered and succeeded in the end. And perseverance is an important thing when it comes to booking tours as I found out with the Aonia/Alwaid/Lost Effect UK tour that will be taking place next month.

If you've not heard Red Rum before, just listen to their brilliant cover of "They're Taking The Hobbits To Isengard".

Now, I'll go back to pretending to book bands for Valkyrian Festival.

"Female-Fronted" isn't a genre

I've had this argument - maybe discussion is the more diplomatic term? - on many occasions on social media and in real life. At one point, I used to use the term religiously to describe any band fronted by a lass - Be it in my reviews, when promoting my gigs and so forth. However, as I discovered more and more bands fronted by women, I began to think maybe it's time to stop using the phrase "female-fronted" as women in metal aren't as rare of occurrence as I had originally thought, although the number of female musicians is still vastly outweighed by male musicians.

Earlier tonight, just after watching the first episode of the new Game of Thrones season, a friend linked me to a Blabbermouth article which basically quotes Floor (ReVamp, Nightwish vocalist) saying that it's time to stop using the term "female-fronted".

I personally salute Floor for those comments. The term is over-used and outdated. How can bands such as Epica, Arch Enemy, Huntress and Benedictum, Paramore and so on, all be apart of the "female-fronted" genre when they each sound completely different to one another? A dictionary definition describes the word genre as meaning:

a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form,content, technique, or the like:
the genre of epic poetry; the genre of symphonic music.

I'm pretty sure that Arch Enemy and Epica don't have the same particular form or technique - one being death metal, the other being symphonic metal.

The "female-fronted" tag, in my opinion, makes the bands sound as if they're going to be a gimmick. More and more women are becoming musicians - not just vocalists, but drummers, guitarists, bassists and more as well. But does it really matter what sex the members of the band are? I'd sooner listen to a band for their music than whether their members have a pair of balls or a pair of tits. If you want to support women in metal, that's cool but try not bring their gender into it. Enjoy the music, not the amount of pairs of tits that will be on stage.

Hopefully, with a vocalist as well known and as established as Floor Jansen stating that it's time to get over using the "female-fronted" tag, more people will take heed.

If It's Too Good To Be True...

Recently, while browsing Facebook, I came across a post in one of the groups. The gentleman, as you can see below, is looking for supports for a supposedly really big (possibly massive, even!) international act. I've seen a lot of people jump onto the post offering their band up as support, no questions asked. It all seems very suspect to me.

Fortunately, I wasn't only the only one to notice several things wrong. No location or genre mentioned. Now, last time I checked, saying either of things wouldn't give away the supposedly big band's name. As I mentioned, there's been a lot of bands jumping on the post, offering themselves up as support - bands from the folky punk side of the spectrum to the heavier, grittier metal side of the spectrum.

It's not wrong that these bands are offering themselves up as support but some curiosity wouldn't go amiss. Some people had asked for details and what not, such as genre and date and location, but the gentleman who is seeking a support this "big international act" responded with the following:

Still smells fishy to me. I can understand him making a post, asking for supports, if the date was confirmed. I've done it before when I've had some well known names in the past, such as Hecate Enthroned but without a date confirmed, despite the band in question allegedly being on contract, this really comes across as a poor attempt at building up a database of bands - Well, I say poor but it certainly garnered him a lot of interest.

After searching for the gentleman in Google, it appears that he mostly deals with DJ club nights and the like. No issues here about that if he's wanting to work with bands but he could offer up a few more details to avoid coming across as "not so legit" or whatever the cool kids say these days.

All I can say is that if you're a band and you see something like that and it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Details are important before jumping onto something like this.

Northern Symphony Festival

So, it's been over a week now since I hosted Northern Symphony, the UK's first symphonic metal festival, in Selby and I'm still buzzing from it. Yeah, there were some issues during in the day but they were resolved soon enough.

A few people have asked me why I didn't do it in my hometown where I usually promote. Aside from the major lack of symphonic metal fans in Bridlington, I just fancied doing something outside of Brid. I used to promote in Hull until mid-late 2012 and so Northern Symphony was a breath of fresh air for me.

How did the idea came about...

I wrote a guest article last year, under the pseudonym Jarl Solheim, for Femetalism about the symphonic metal scene in the UK. The article can be read here. While I was drafting up the article, I began thinking about organising something that was just totally symphonic metal and touched on as many areas of the sub-genre as possible.

It was obvious the idea would never work out in Bridlington, so I began scouting for other areas to do it. The midlands and the south were too far away and awkward to get to with me being reliant on public transport, so a venue in Yorkshire was the best option for me. Eventually, after a couple of weeks of scouting the internet and some posts on Facebook, it was suggested that I try use The Venue in Selby - Which I must say is an absolutely fantastic venue. After some discussion to the owner, the date was fixed in for 4th April 2015.

The preparation and the lead-up...

With the date booked in and The Venue confirmed, I began short listing bands for the festival who I then proceeded to contact to book. The response from UK bands was exciting, surprising and confusing as well. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of decent symphonic metal bands in the UK but the amount of times I got an email from a thrash band or an old school power metal was ridiculous.

The first two acts I confirmed were Quietus and Scandelion, the latter of which was introduced to me by a musician I've know for a while and of course it turned out he plays for them! Securing the headliner was the hardest part of the booking process for NSF as it seemed like everyone I asked to headline was unavailable. Eventually I found the ideal headliner in the form of Winter In Eden.

As the weeks went on, I eventually booked a second venue (The Riverside in Selby) to serve as a second stage so I could try touch down on the various forms of symphonic metal like I originally hoped to do so.

The day itself...

When the day of Northern Symphony itself came, I woke up with a sense dread, all sorts of negative thoughts running through my head such as No one will show up and my personal favourite It's all going to go tits up. No one will work with me again. Of course, it didn't help put my mind ease that an event of a similar nature was happening the day after Northern Symphony and said event cropped up some time after Northern Symphony had been announced.

By the time I got on the train to Selby, I was on the verge of becoming a nervous wreck. To make matters worse, I was heavily hungover.  Not a good idea.

When I arrived at the venues, everything seemed to be running smoothly, so I flitted between the two talking to bands and letting them know what the crack was. Soon enough, doors opened and the first band of the day, A Clockwork Opera, were on stage. They were the only band I saw a full set of since they didn't clash with any of the other bands and they were extremely impressive, especially for their debut show.

Disaster struck on the main stage, which was being hosted in The Venue, some issues occurred that causes the schedule to be delayed, leaving me and others concerned that Winter In Eden wouldn't be able to play their full set. Fortunately, as the day went on, we almost caught back up with the schedule and WIE not only played their full set but a couple of encore songs as well.

As the day went on, I flitted between the two stages, catching what I could of every band's set and getting feedback from people about the event. It;s safe to say that Northern Symphony 2016 is on the books, so watch this space.

Photo credits: Craig Andrews - Femetalism.co.uk