Shows are updated. The first weekend in November we will be playing with the mighty Mourningside from California as they will be on tour and releasing a 7" soon after the tour. I got my hands on this bands demo last year and I've been borderline obsessed ever since, and I'm so glad they are playing up here. Nevermind the fact that we and our buds in NotxSorry are on both of the shows as well. The show in Seattle is at the Fusion Cafe at the downtown YMCA, and the one up here in Bellingham is at Casey's house and it will be the first show there. I highly encourage anyone reading this unfamiliar with the band to check them out.
Accidental sons: we could never be our fathers' guilt nor forgiveness . . . Nor would we be our brothers or countrymen exhausting an ancient crest. This was not our future-- to forget ourselves in an idle love for sympathy, expectation, and concern. And this kingdom, set aside for us, denied indifference towards ignoble pains. We were nomads, new men enlisted in a life abandoned by God, rejecting the toll to a world into which we would not cross. No, we will not be beggars to fate and misfortune.
This was mostly inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's retelling of the Prodigal Son parable. When I began writing lyrics for this song, I spent a lot of time trying to capture the fear experienced by the Prodigal Son as he returned home and had to face the suffering of familiarity from the family dogs. I don't think I really succeeded in the end.
I suggest purchasing The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge for the full story (or one of the many discussions on this piece.) You can also read the section in its entirety in Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke. If you're really ambitious, also check out his poem "You who never arrived." I think it relates well to the Son's journey after leaving home and his return. I haven't really found any kind of useful or concise manner in which to discuss these lyrics, so I'll just leave you to explore Rilke (to whom I am very indebted).
Other things: "To nut" is a horrible expression, and I despise Alex Frank for its utterance. If you're really bored, suggest a title for this song. I was thinking "Shepards" or "The Dogs," but that might be kind of dumb. Stay edge.
-- Dan xxx
Sunday, August 30, 2009
considering the brutal heat the pacific northwest saw this month, i wanted to somehow work "indian summer" into the title of this august-centric post. i know keith would feel the pedro the lion reference, but i wasn't sure if dan would approve of the emo name-check. but yeah, envision has been chilling pretty hard this month. first off, we played a couple of shows with xibalba. if you're not friends with any of us, you might not know this, but we've basically served as their hype crew since keith or eric checked out their demo, told everyone else about it and and we all proceeded to nut profusely over it. eric had been hitting them up to include seattle and bellingham on their summer tour, so when that actually panned out, we all got super stoked. on august 10th, we played with them at the morgue in georgetown, which, though fairly new to doing hardcore shows, is definitely one of seattle's best all-ages DIY venues. hanging out beforehand in the yard-ish thing outside the venue, we seriously felt like we were in bartertown, and kept looking for tina turner to make a couple of us fight. on a 85-degree-plus night, dudes were making bum fires in big steel cans, and there were those huge wooden spools that hold industrial cable everywhere. it was tight. you can't really see much here, but a few of us are blurrily chilling pre-show:
left to right: half of anna, the almighty alan blackman, keith, john, me and, against all odds, a sober jeff wampler
we played first, and it was fun. we got to silence months of nagging with about 45 seconds of a harvest cover. we also debuted a new, untitled song, which was exciting. it's been in the works for months and months, so getting to finally play it was pretty satisfying. keep reading for a video of it from the bellingham show. anyway, here's a couple shots from the morgue:
keith's tower of edge.
metal mike looking legit terrifying. just wish there was a photo of his epic xibalba windmills.
dan brings the brees.
next up was eric's road buddies parasitic skies, who, like always, brought it hard. they played a couple of tasty new jams, and their strife cover lit up the morgue like rick rodney after a few rounds of crown and cokes. then, finally, xibalba. just as brutally slow, low and heavy as we'd anticipated. lots of mosh, lots of chug, lots of fun.
nate from xibalba.
brian from xibalba headbanging through my floating cab.
after them, sojourner played and brian talked some noise. fun stuff. then we chatted with the xibalba dudes, made plans to meet up in bellingham the next day, made a quick hot dog/TDM run in capitol hill and called it a night. excellent show, excellent venue, excellent vibes. the next day, we met up with xibalba at the ground floor (which, sadly, has decided to put the kibosh on hardcore shows, since they don't fit in with the venue's mission to be "a place of healing." mmkay.), then ended up at whatcom falls for some cliff diving. john macked it hard straight out the gate, bryan from xibalba big-upped keith's circa '98 sleeveless soulfly tee, and everyone peer-pressured the shit out of their roadie bud to make the huge jump. after that, we headed back to the venue and jammed pizza, then split up for pal'meni and rudy's. the show was a lot of fun. torero (which features a couple dudes from john's old band ghost dad) opened, and were great. then we played, and while the consensus was that it was a bit sloppy, it was still fun. peep this video, courtesy of our friend aaron. watch for joey o. mosh, wampler intoxication and dan getting cross-checked by the bass player from media mind's punk-as-fuck kid at around 6:25:
then xibalba straight killed it after us. if possible, even heavier than the night before. we told them that they're not allowed to NOT play out of full stacks from here on out, and they agreed. pretty heady amount of 'vizh-mosh and nate in a "borrowed" american apparel windbreaker:
after them, our boys in media mind rocked it. always fun to play with them, as they bring a more stripped-down, nasty vibe to their 'core. dig it. afterwards, we kicked it with xibalba as they loaded up their van, quoted a grip of gary oldman movies and, after seriously an hour's worth of wrangling, managed to snap off a big group shot:
xibalba-vision...plus casey.
fast-forward to the 27th, and we're gigging hard in olympia. or, to be more specific, in tumwater, at a grange hall kiiiinda out in the sticks. after getting cockblocked on buying a new guitar by some dick on craigslist, i met up with the van (piled high with 'vizhers and our buds in stuck), eric and keith jumped ship to my whip, and we navigated two hours of awful traffic to oly. we jammed some vic's pizza with our not sorry homies, toasted gina's 18th/19th birthday and ate some tasty vegan cupcakes. stuck was first, and held it down nicely. congrats to them on putting out their demo and their wolverine-themed t-shirts, even though earth crisis and entombed both beat them to it. we played next, and got to kick out the new song again. was fun. after that, not sorry raged with their unbeatable youth crew jams. keith and i peer-pressured alan into borrowing one of our tuner pedals, to which he agreed under extreme duress, and promptly disconnected all of his cords with his bleeding through-esque guitar acrobatics. and then did it again. and then he discovered that one of his cabs wasn't connected. suffice to say, alan no longer likes us (just kidding), but they still killed it. they played a couple new songs from their forthcoming 7", and they are, if possible, even harder than the demo cuts. get excited. oh, and keith stole the mic from j25 for the last half of "moving on," which was fucking awesome. after them, white wards kicked some challenging, noisy 'core, and media mind ripped it again. and the little kid sang a black flag cover. rad.
so yeah, big month for the 'vizh. lotta fun shows, and lots of exciting stuff coming up. for all you demo haters, we are vaguely planning to record for some sort of EP soon. we've also got a show in honor of our friend toby's return from iraq in bellingham on september 18th with vanguard, serious black, get it ready (SB dudes and toby on vokills), and a "surprise secret headliner." if you want to know who it is, please send 50 e-mails a day, every day until the show, to bellyhamster@gmail.com asking about it. seriously, do it. anyway, that's about all i've got. holler at us at envisionannodomini@gmail.com, keep checking here, and stay high. a-frank out.
Hello internet, my old friend. How are you? Me? Well, I'm stoked beyond belief to be playing not one, but TWO shows with southern California's heaviest, XIBALBA. If you've ever had even a passing interest in bands like Disembodied, Santa Sangre or the mighty Sepultura, then do not miss them. Hear 'em out at http://www.myspace.com/placeoffear. Pretty sure you can download their demo somewhere on there. Prepare to have your hair blown back, kinda like this guy.
I haven't been this excited to play with a non-NW band in a while. And it's been about a month since we last played. With a bit of luck, we'll be playing a new song at these shows. Don't hold your breath, though. But, you can definitely count on us playing a certain special cover that we had prepared for the unfortunately cancelled (prayin' 4 U, Brian) Parasitic Skies/Unrestrained show last month. So all you dickheads that have pestered us for months and months to play it had better be there, 8 pm sharp.
And if once wasn't enough for you, or perhaps you reside in Bellingham, then come out to this one on Tuesday, Aug. 11th. Torero is a new Bellingham band featuring the dudes from Ghost Dad and Media Mind rips it Black Flag style.
Actually, you should go to all those shows. Bellingham all ages shows, movin' on up.
Unrestrained and Parasitic Skies hit the west coast early July in support of their respective 7"s. Check out the shows, and yell for covers by bands like Mouthpiece, Ten Yard Fight, and not bands like Undertow or Strife.
not only are they our bros among bros, but not sorry have kicked the illest six minutes of hardcore in the northwest this year. so buy their demo. then look fresh as a motherfucker (like us) and cop one of their shirts too. peep game:
All money can be paypaled to: notsorryxxx@gmail.com. Along with any other questions.
Please make sure to include what you want as well as shirt size in the message section, along with your address if it's not the same as your paypal account.
so now that eric is a master of arts, you may be curious: what are his plans to, uh, manage the environment, or whatever they taught him at his weird hippie college? apparently, he'll be conducting an upper-level seminar on crushing mid-'90s hardcore at selected west-coast institutes of higher learning, as a fill-in for our buds unrestrained on a week-long tour with our other buds, parasitic skies. so peep the tour dates, hang out with eric and bring him lots of advil because, after he gets back from tour, he has to go back to being in a band with this guy.
is Daniel Mohtiak, John Sanders, Eric Sanford, Alex Frank and Keith Carmack. We are a hardcore punk band from Bellingham, Washington. We want to play your venue/basement/mom's couch. Nice.
left to right: half of anna, the almighty alan blackman, keith, john, me and, against all odds, a sober jeff wampler
metal mike looking legit terrifying. just wish there was a photo of his epic xibalba windmills.
dan brings the brees.
All money can be paypaled to: notsorryxxx@gmail.com. Along with any other questions.
