P.O.U.C.H.

I’m going to start writing my posts like an episode of The Simpsons.

Has anyone seen the video for The Battle of Kruger? It's at least ten times more epic than the battle at the end of Lord of the Rings. You can't write brutality like that...This is going on the next album. It's still a little early, but I'm feeling generous. Here's a little nugget for you bloggers to leak to the press: the next album is a concept album based on the cruelty of nature and the horrors inflicted on the earth's creatures by each other in the name of survival. 90% of it will be ripped from the pages of National Geographic. The other 10% might be embellished a little.

So the tour is progressing, albeit very painfully and slowly. Self booking a tour is murder on your motivation and sense of self importance. You start to realize that your band is but a dim star set against the backdrop of the Milky Way. There are hundreds of thousands of metal bands in the US and every single one is convinced that they are Satan’s gift to music. Half of them are (supposedly) going on tour this summer. How do you compete with that you ask? Persistence to the point of annoyance. For every 50 emails and messages sent out to venues requesting a date we might get two responses, one of which will be negative or completely unhelpful. Is this the result of the sheer volume of requests dive bars across the country are getting? Some openly claim to get hundreds of booking requests a week. I doubt that in most cases, but whatever the cause correspondence of any kind is rare. It’s only by becoming numb to rejection and indifference that you can become a successful tour booker. Pretty Zen, huh? It also helps to be working with motivated bands like Stabbing Eden, The Pant Factory, and The Osedax in their respective areas. Do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with their music. You will be hearing from them in the future. The hard work is beginning to pay off. Our list of confirmed cities has expanded to include:

Houston, TX

San Antonio, TX

Dallas, TX

Shreveport, LA

St. Louis, MO

Chicago, IL

Detroit, MI

Staten Island, NY

Jacksonville, FL

Tampa, FL

Orlando, FL

We have a few more that are on the brink of full confirmation and still more that are under full QTV attack. Our spoken goal at the beginning of the tour booking process was to play fifteen shows over the course of three weeks (July 8-31). It looks like we’re on pace to hit that goal and there’s an outside chance that we might surpass it. We can’t wait to get out there and shred faces and make new friends!

I’ll close with a list of my top five albums of the moment. It wouldn’t be a blog if there wasn’t a top five list! Maybe other members will post their lists too, just in case you were thinking “I wonder what QTV listens to when they are seeking inspiration?”

Fragile - Yes

So – Peter Gabriel

Dreaming Saturn – The Crinn

Portishead – Portishead

Animals As Leaders – Animals As Leaders

So…leaning in a decidedly prog direction with some trip hop thrown in for good measure. Go create your playlist based off of these suggestions and I promise your brain will thank you. That’s it for now villainous treacheries! See you on the road!

-Jason

Jungle Rats of the Sahara

Wow, has it really been five months since this thing has been updated? To our thousands of dedicated blog readers I can only offer our most sincere apologies. Those of you who went on a hunger strike until we posted a new blog will be missed. I just hope you had the foresight to make a will first that specified that your remains be launched into the sun, or put into a living reef, or shot out of a cannon. Those that survived the ordeal can rest assured that we are back in the game. You see, in the months of inactivity this blog has somehow creeped into the number two spot of Google search relevancy. Whereas previously, when we were updating it, it wasn’t even in the first ten pages of results. You have Google to thank for yet another enhancement to your lives.

Lots of big stuff! Let’s get you up to speed on the last five months of QTV, and what the near future holds.

The new EP is progressing nicely. I.e. it will be done two days before we leave for tour, just like last year. There have been advances. The artwork is very near completion. Choking A Sloth is totally done. You may have noticed that it’s been posted on our Myspace. Go listen to it right now! Ok, now that you’re back we can continue. Sock Puppet Vendetta is obviously mostly done. It just needs to have the guitars spruced up a little and a quick re-mastering job to make it sound uniform with everything else since it was recorded about nine months ago. F.U.B.A.R.B.Q. is a 90% mix at this point. We just need to do some post production and get it mastered. Frontier Justice and Calculate Your Escape are the least formed at this point. They’re still in that embryonic state where it could be a lizard, a chicken, or your baby brother. Giant eyes, translucent skin, stubby tail, total toss-up! They’ll be done soon though and the world will have to deal with Regicide on an unprecedented scale. It will be like the late 1700s-early 1800s with revolutions popping up across the globe to snuff out the few remaining monarchies. Yes, even those with strictly ceremonial powers.

Hold onto you butts! We’re going on tour again! And this time it’s national. We’re hitting the road with our bestest band buddies in the whole world, Melora. They will amaze you with their playing and dark wizarding abilities. With the obvious exception of this year’s Summer Slaughter tour this might be the most brutal and technical tour this summer. Please allow me to introduce you to “VELOCIRAP-TOUR 2010”! As of this posting the fully confirmed cities (in chronological order) are:
San Antonio, TX
Dallas, TX
Shreveport, LA
Chicago, IL
Jacksonville, FL
Orlando, FL
Plus we have several more that are right on the edge of confirming. Over the three weeks that comprise the tour we will be sharing the stage with some of the finest un-signed bands in the country. Check our tour date postings on the Myspace for a full list but some stand outs include: Stabbing Eden, Erjony, A Small Town Murder, Malignant Spawn (feat. Our boy Evan from C-Ho), Capracide…really too many to mention. If you live in the eastern two thirds of the country there’s no excuse for not coming to one of these dates because we WILL be in your neighborhood.

Other items of less earth shattering, but equally bad ass proportions include:
-Our FREE show May 7th at Liquid Scrips. We’re bringing the finest metal Orlando has to offer with Abdomen Canvas, Misanthropist, and Putrescent Secretency. Plus we’re bringing our new buds Eating Infinity to town. They will shred your mind, run it through the toaster oven, and cover it in sweet jam.
-June 8th. Will’s Pub. Orlando. The Last of Lucy (L.A.) and Pacifist (NOLA) are coming. Come out to this one or you will miss the most insane tech-grind bands in the universe spinning plates while riding a unicycle blindfolded. We’re not even going to play any music!
-We have new merch designs in the works including one just for the ladies (the offensive slogan on the back won’t disappoint!) and another with a five color depiction of nature in action, at its most brutal. Buy this stuff because the tour isn’t going to pay for itself unless we decide to knock over every liquor store along the way. Don’t make us become interstate bandits hunted down by the FBI and gunned down like dogs behind a seedy dive bar in Sheboygan after we all get paranoid and make separate immunity deals with the feds, none of which are honored.
-Mike got new drums. Yay Mike.

So that’s all I can think of for now. Besides, I gotta leave something for the next update in 2014.

-Jason