Christian Rock OBSESSION

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  This week is just full of awesomeness, if you ask me.  Turkey day tomorrow, a ton of sweet deals the next day, and officially being able to listen to Christmas music without upsetting people for “starting too early.”  And to top it off, here’s an update.

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Speaking of Christmas music, Deas Vail will be releasing a four-song Christmas EP titled For Shepherds & Kings on November 29 (next Tuesday).  The EP includes the songs “Do You Hear What I Hear,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Coventry Carol,” and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  I’m no expert, but I’m thinking they’ll do an awesome job with this.  Also, don’t forget to check out dates for their Christmas tour, which you can find here.  

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Onto a totally different note, Demon Hunter has announced the release of a deluxe edition of The World Is A Thorn, due out on the same day as Deas Vail’s EP.  It will have one cover song and four acoustic tracks, in addition to the rest of the record.  Hopefully those songs are on iTunes so we all don’t have to buy the album over again, yeah?

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For all of you Owl City fans out there, pre-orders for Live From LA begin November 29th as well.  You can pre-order it on iTunes and have it for when it releases digitally the week after, on December 6th.  If you want to wait for a hard copy, set your eyes on February 7th.  It’ll also be on Blu-Ray, if anyone’s interested!  You can watch the trailer by clicking here.

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Last (but definitely not least), Five Iron Frenzy has made a pretty big announcement.  They’re back together!!!  And to make things even better, their new album is more than 200% funded, according to Kickstarter.  That is unbelievable.  For more info, click here.

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That’s all for now!  Enjoy your turkey!

Check out this exclusive video of Deas Vail performing “Sixteen” acoustic for Alternative Press Magazine!  Click through to watch.

An update?  What is this, you ask?  Every once in a while I’ll post a few tidbits of news regarding the current state of your favorite artists, and put them all in one post such as this one?  Sound familiar?  I haven’t done one of these in forever.  So…

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To start, Deas Vail’s newest self-titled album is out today.  And if that doesn’t get you excited, the fact that it’s only $3.99 on Amazon MP3 might.  I have no idea how long that deal will last, though, so you may want to hurry.  The album was produced by Relient K’s Matt Hoopes, and it’s pretty sweet.  Still a bit early to say anything definitive, but I’m definitely liking what I’m hearing.  Link up here.

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Now, this one is a bit interesting.  The Devil Wears Prada has announced something called Zombie Slay: The Game.  Today they launched the official website, on which you can find several links and this description:

Did you know there’s a zombie apocalypse upon us?! Prepare for it with Zombie Slay. Be the hero that rises from the darkness as you traverse realistic city and surburban landscape to save other survivors from disgusting, evil creatures that have overtaken the earth.

To keep your momentum up while fighting against the undead,  you’ll need some serious tunes — so enjoy your personal metalcore soundtrack while you destroy approaching zombies with a simple swipe of your finger. Your temperature is sure to rise as zombies crowd your screen, but get excited — the more you kill, the more features you unlock!  Awesome weapons, much needed armor and different environments become available with more play.

Zombie Slay is more than a game, it’s preparation for the inevitable zombie invasion!

Compete with your friends and foes using OpenFeint and Game Center integration! Zombie Slay is supported on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

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Lastly, Showbread has announced the title of their next album, which is in the works.  It is currently being titled Cancer.  No joke.  The band will be headed off to Europe in a few weeks, but expect some more announcements on that in the near future (hopefully)!

Deas Vail- “Summer Forgets Me”

I think I’m gonna go cry somewhere now…

I’ve known about Deas Vail for quite some time now, but never really took any interest in them until recently.  Well, their new self-titled album is available for pre-order, and you can expect it to hit shelves on October 11.  Click-through the image to check out pre-order options!

Okay, this update’s gotta be really quick.  FRINGE comes on in less than ten minutes, and if I’m not in front of that TV when it starts, it may cause a breach in the fabric of our universe, and then the two universes will get intertwined and it’ll be messy.

Today on Twitter, RED posted:

#RED will be the musical guest on CONAN (@TeamCoco) this coming Tuesday, 2/8. Tune in to CONAN on TBS at 11/10c. #UntilWeHaveFaces

Everybody better get excited about that, now.

Also, Purple Door has announced the first twenty artists to be confirmed for this year’s festival.  And they are…

Ace Augustine
Joy Ike
Windsor Drive
Mike Mains and the Branches
Sent By Ravens
Reilly
Sleeping Giants
Disciple
For Today
Aaron Gillespie (from the Almost)

AND

Talain Rayne
River Jam
Deas Vail
Sons & Daughters
Kevin Young from Disciple (Speaker)
Tedashii
House of Heroes
Lecrae
Project 86
RED

The end.  Go watch FRINGE.

-FISHER

It has been said that there are three things wrong with rock music, currently:

One, most bands sacrifice originality for “safe” marketability. 
Two, most bands place fashion over great songwriting. 
Three, most bands think production trumps heart.

But then, House of Heroes is not most bands.

And if you had to pick three characteristics to describe this, their opus, you would have to say it is fearless, uncompromising, and heartfelt.

Because Suburba is an album like nothing else you will hear today. And for that fact alone, it is a victory of epic proportions. Endlessly poppy, galactically ambitious, and dripping with honest, candid emotion, this is what a rock record is supposed to sound like. This is what a rock record is supposed to feel like.

“I like this album because we chose to write about things that we knew,” states frontman Tim Skipper. ”We wanted it to sound very American and full of youthful energy. We kept a lot of what we loved about the last record, but we just applied it differently and I think it came out exactly the way we wanted it to.”

So, what does one of the most ambitious records of 2010 sound like? In many ways it is a time machine, harkening back to days when music was wide-eyed and meant a whole lot more. Think classic Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, The Who, E.L.O. with a touch of Meatloaf. That’s right, Meatloaf. Who else could even attempt to pull of such a mixture than House of Heroes? Yet, here it is…In one sense, it could fit in arenas. And in another it is appropriate for the campfire. Teaming again with producer Mark Lee Townsend (Relient K, Deas Vail), Suburba is broad and anthemic at certain moments, yet vulnerable and intimate at others. There are driving, heavy tracks, as well as worshipful ballads. Make no mistake, the band bled to attempt to make this record not just a soundtrack, but an experience.

“This record is about growing up in middle class suburbia,” states Skipper. ”It’s about fighting for your own identity in the face of society’s ideas about love, money, religion and power. It’s about having big dreams and going after them with reckless abandon, yet having to reconcile the fact that things aren’t always going to go your way. And it’s about realizing, throughout all of it, that God is real and is the one constant among all the variables of life.”

The opening moments of the first track, Relentless will conjure up images of 4th of July fireworks, backyard bar-b-ques, and humid summer evenings. As the record moves forward you find yourself not just singing along, but seeing vivid imagery as House of Heroes sketches through your ears into your imagination. Hopeful and wide-eyed, House of Heroes harkens the voices of youth in the USA. It’s hard to imagine a record by this band that is just a collection of a couple singles and tracks, as they have always put painstaking effort into delivering complete albums. Yet, standout songs on your list would have to include the anthemic album opener, “Relentless” (which belongs on a college bowl game half-time show), “So Far Away” (which belongs on a climactic, season-ending scene of NBC’s Friday Night Lights), and “Constant” (which as worshipful as anything you will hear at a Harvest Crusade or Hillsong Event).

House of Heroes went the extra mile this time around to create lyrics that are cool, calculated, and crafty, while remaining vertical all the while. On “God Save the Foolish Kings” he comments on the search for significance: And we fight ‘cause we’d rather break our bones than brave this loneliness, And we draw blood ‘cause we’re just trying to draw out some significance, But I met God on the street tonight, He said, “Choose your battles wisely or you’ll never find me.” On “Love Is For the Middle Class,” they comment on materialism and unconditional love: If all I gave was love, Would you give up on me? But if you measure love in false securities, I owe you nothin’ at all… Perhaps the most poignant moment of all on the record comes in its most worshipful, on the track “Constant,” where House of Heroes simply states the following: All thru the night I was fallin’, Straining to hear your voice callin’. You never gave out. You never gave in. You never quite gave up on me. You are my constant.

Armed with great touring opportunities and the chops to execute every last note of this glorious record, House of Heroes plans to travel mercilessly in support of Suburba. Having just completed notional runs with powerhouses such as Skillet and tobyMac, as well as Family Force 5, the band has seen a surge of new followers which should propel this record to heights not yet seen by the band. And with the full backing of proven label Gotee Records, there is little that stands in the way…

“This record feels so innocent. We wanted it to sound and feel like the best summer of your life…when everything meant something and the world was wide open.”