Tag: Hands

Check out this review of Your Memorial's final release.

The band Your Memorial (Facedown Records) is calling it quits and they are holding a farewell show on November 11th in St. Paul, MN. at Amsterdam Hall with Hands and Everything in Slow Motion playing a double set. Check out the flyer below. Tickets on sale now! … Continued →

Check out this really cool interview I recently did with Shane Ochsner of Hands and Everything in Slow Motion. We cover everything from the Hands catalog to EISM, Music, and everything in between. Check out both Hands and EISM at Facedown Fest this May.

The band Hands first formed back in 2007, releasing a couple of “Demos” of which I was a strong supporter of. Their songs even appeared on a few of our early digital compilations. I followed Shane and his band’s work closely over the years following their formation from their first independent release, “The Everlasting Ep” (2008), to the incredible full length debut “The Sounds of Earth” (Oort Records/2009) to “Creator” (Facedown Records), “Give Me Rest” (Facedown Records” and finally after a much deserved break, their comeback single “New Heaven / New Earth” (2017/Facedown Records).… Continued →

Read this review of Hands new EP!

Shane O. and the band Hands are back with a brand new 2 song single titled “New Heaven / New Earth”. You can listen to the track “New Heaven” below. They are releasing this 2 song single in advance of their reunion set at Facedown Fest this May. Order this 2 song single on a limited 7″ vinyl along with some other merchandise from Facedown here. I just sent off an interview to Shane so we shall have answers to all those burning questions very soon.… Continued →

Facedown Records has just announced the lineup for Facedown Fest 2017. The festival has hosted many bands that were signed to other labels or the subsidiary Strike First Records, including Clear Convictions (Strike First), Comrades (ex-Blood and Ink), Bloody Sunday (Strike First) and several others. This year is the 20th anniversary of the label so they have had many of their prominent acts come join in or even reunite. The label is also hosting the Fest for 3 days, which is very abnormal as it is usually a one day event.… Continued →

Facedown Records has announced something incredible cool called “Facedown LTD.” which is a subscription based vinyl plan. There are 12 Vinyl Records available from Comeback Kid, xLookingForwardx, War of Ages (2), For Today, Gideon, Sleeping Giant, xDeathstarx, A Plea for Purging, Hands, xDisciplex AD, and Figure Four. Keep in mind that these are rare and limited to just 250 of each album. Some of these haven’t been pressed to vinyl before and the others will be rare collectors items in a few years. The price is $190 for all 12 Vinyl in a bundle (shipped at different times with last shipment in March 2017).… Continued →

Facedown Records has saved the best for last as they release Everything in Slow Motion's full-length debut album "Phoenix." The album features Christian Lindskog of Blindside, in what may be the best song of the year, "Speak," among other powerful tracks.

The bottom line is that Papertowns. is a young band with a massive amount of talent. If they are able to accomplish this much in just a few songs, their debut full length record should get them places.

When I Learn to Sing The process of finding a front man for a rap-rock band is no simple task. There are many stringent qualifications that must be met. You need someone who can hype up a crowd, rhyme words at a fifth grade level, look good in parachute pants and a backwards hat… and maybe even sing. Matters became complicated to an even further extent in the case of Christian rap-rock bands circa the year 2000. In addition to the previous check list of “skillz”, the mythical creature known as the “front man of a Christian rap-rock band” was in this era expected to be one part adolescent rebel and another part pastoral guide and counselor.… Continued →

Rock The Party Around the turn of the century a new genre of music would see a meteoric rise in popularity. Teenage boys were stoked. Music critics were not. This genre would come to be known as “rap-rock”. Rap-rock was exactly what it claimed to be, a mixture of hip-hop and alternative rock or metal, usually played with down-tuned guitars and loads of testosterone fueled angst. Although pre-internet North Dakota was always a couple of years behind the rest of the world, rap-rock made a fairly timely breakthrough thanks to MTV and massive radio hits by groups like Rage Against the Machine, Linkin Park, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and 311.… Continued →

We’re A Band I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I’ve known way too many people who have said, “This is the year! I’m going to do P90X!” Most of them get up at 6:00 AM the next day, struggle through the first routine, go to work and exuberantly tell people “I’m doing P90X! It’s so hard! I’m so awesome!”, go to bed that night tired out but with a sense of accomplishment… and then wake up at 6:00 AM feeling like they got run over by a convoy of 18 wheelers.… Continued →

Fever (A Defense of The Big Three) I need to take a brief pause at this point in my story to address something that I believe to be very important. To my knowledge it is something that has never been properly articulated publicly by any music critic from within the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) community. I will take the heat for my opinions and get straight to the point. Those from the outside world often form their perception of all Christian music based on the single experience of having accidentally stumbled onto a mainstream CCM station (designed to explicitly cater to “the church”) while scanning the dial in their car.… Continued →

Let It Begin I’ve always been one of those guys who shakes his presents. I’ve also been known to ask clever, probing questions in an attempt to sucker a gift giver into accidentally letting an all important hint slip out about what I might be receiving. To be completely honest, I probably find just as much (if not more) satisfaction in figuring out what a gift is before opening it as I do in the actual gift itself. It’s rare that I don’t have at least some notion of what is hidden beneath the wrapping paper.… Continued →

Best Kept Secret It’s hard to keep anything hidden for long in a town with a population of less than 2,000 people. You know who’s at the post office by looking at the cars parked out front. If you are walking down the street and see someone working in their yard, chances are you’ll know each other by name. If a kid gets a speeding ticket (or God forbid a minor) it seems like the lady at the grocery store will somehow manage to find out before their parents do.… Continued →

Check out a new track from Glower (Ex-Hands) titled “Black Hole Baby”, below (Originally posted at Substream). This isn’t standard post-metal or ambient-metal like the aforementioned Hands tinkered with. This is straight up melodic alt-rock with a strong 90’s influence. If you dig the era of bands long since past, definitely dive head first into Glower and their addictive, strong material. You can pre-order the Glower / Of Sinking Ships 7″ Split right here at Broken Circles Records. The split will release in February.… Continued →

The life of the average teenage boy is full of overwhelming contradictions. You want to fit in with everyone else, but you want to “be yourself”. You want to be treated like an adult, but you don’t want to take out the garbage or clean your room. You want to attract a girlfriend but you don’t want to use deodorant or change your socks. These are just a few of the complicated issues you have to wade through on a daily basis during those tumultuous teenage years.… Continued →

ALL THE WAY LIVE 1999 would prove to be a pivotal year in my young life for many reasons. I had just started the ever-tumultuous 8^th grade, I got my first job washing dishes at a local greasy spoon, I finally managed to score my first kiss, and most importantly… I started my first Christian rock band. This may never have come to be though, had not an equally significant event taken place before hand. That significant event was The Supernatural Tour. I still have the ticket stub from the concert.… Continued →

SET IT OFF I’m going to be honest with you. I am not a Calvinist. I like to believe that God’s sovereignty is shown through the fact that humankind gets to make its own choices even though God could pull every string and direct every action.  However (get ready for the hyperbole), it is hard for me to look past the idea of divine appointment, née even the possibility of total pre-destination in some extreme instances. Such an instance was about to occur. It wouldn’t seem like much at the time… I will never forget the day that I received “The Tape”.… Continued →

TEENAGE POLITICS I suppose it was inevitable that at some point my god-fearing (and also Marilyn Manson-fearing) mother would try to find a substitute that could replace my quickly developing taste for “worldly rock-and-roll”. She made it her task to find me the “Christian” alternative to Metallica. At this point in my life my only exposure to Contemporary Christian Music was the mundane crap that was peddled on the local Christian radio station. There was also a group (which shall remain nameless) of college age, amateur, wanna-be-rockers that would come to our Lutheran church once a year and butcher what I would later found out were actually some fairly descent songs.… Continued →

RESTLESS YOUTH In the year 1998 a small, quiet town in rural North Dakota was the place that I called home. I was about to enter the seventh grade and my life revolved around three things; sports, girls, and church… probably in that order. I spent my days in school, and my evenings either at practice for whatever sport was in season or walking around town consuming vast quantities of Dr. Pepper with my friend Henry. My nights were spent listening to music while reading or drawing.… Continued →

Energy is something that is extremely hard to gauge on a music album. Energy is the tone and excitement portrayed by the musicians. It’s the passion you hear in the sound. But how does one contain the energy of The Chariot and put that into an album? If you’ve ever seen them live, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Or Emery. They know energy. Ever notice the first track on any of their albums is one of their heaviest or hardest songs? Mainstream music production tends to suck the energy right out of music.… Continued →

Check out the brand new music video from Everything in Slow Motion for their song “Red”, below. This is the new project from Shane Ochsner formerly of the band, Hands. You can purchase the new “Red” 2 song single right now wherever fine digital music is sold.… Continued →

2011 Album Of The Year?