Epitaph Is Kicking a LOT of Ass Lately

Posted by pixie | Filed under Uncategorized

Okay… so first, they sign New Found Glory. Then they snap Thursday up — and promise the band all the freedom in the world to make the album they want. And today, they announce they have signed Frank Iero’s band, LeATHERMOUTH. Can we please have a few thousand cheers for this label?

As if they didn’t already have a ton of awesome bands [I Am Ghost, Our Last Night, Vanna, HorrorPops, and of course Bad Religion and Rancid] they now have two fairly huge bands and one that can’t help but be huge, even if some of LeATHERMOUTH’s fanbase is just My Chemical Romance fans who wouldn’t listen to the band otherwise. When a lot of bands are moving around or being dropped from labels, Epitaph is doing a great job of choosing who to sign.

As for LeATHERMOUTH, their album will be out sometime in 2009. In the meantime, there is a bootleg of a show at the Social from their short early autumn tour that is pretty amazing and I highly recommend tracking it down. [I’d link, but I honestly forget where I found it. The audio is from this video series, though.]

And if you’re wondering why Frank is such a weirdo between songs, I think this quote makes it pretty clear:

“For me LeATHERMOUTH is how I can vent about all the bullshit that I see going on in the world that makes me ill,” says Iero. “I try to belabor the topics people want to forget exist. LeATHERMOUTH is where I can vomit out all the aggression that has built up inside. After recording or playing a LM show I feel empty of all that hatred that’s been bottled up. It’s a pleasant, cathartic experience. I would love to not feel the way I do about certain things, and have rainbows and birds chirping in my head, but that’s just not the way I’m built. I am embarrassed by my emotions and originally wanted to keep LeATHERMOUTH anonymous…but fuck it, none of us are perfect, the world is going to shit, and someone has to say it. I think it would be worse if I hid from it.
”

This band seriously rocks. I like what he did with Pencey Prep, but this stuff is just so much more angry — it hits the spot a bit better than the somewhat nasal pop-punk of Pencey Prep. And Frank has really become quite the screamer since his early days… I hope they work some of his aggression and ideas into upcoming My Chemical Romance songs. Though who knows when those will come along?

Reggie and the Full Effect Tour on Sale

Posted by pixie | Filed under Uncategorized

Do you want to see the last-ever Reggie and the Full Effect tour? If you are so inclined to do so, the tickets are on sale now, here.

But that’s not all — the really big news here [for me, anyway] is the support band — Leathermouth. I didn’t manage to get a much-coveted ticket to their show at the Knitting Factory last year, and I can see no reason whatsoever why I wouldn’t go see them at least in NYC and Long Island. It’s Frank Iero. Fairly up close and personal, since none of the venues on this tour are behemoth or anything of the sort.

Squeal. This totally makes up for the lack of My Chemical Romance touring for the next year or two, doesn’t it? I suspect a lot of the people at the show will bug me, because while I will fully admit to being a Frank fangirl who just wants to touch him inappropriately [I did, after all, sort of pet his back when I met him and posed for a photo with him] — Leathermouth rocks. And the band sounds nothing like My Chemical Romance. You really need to like screamo-hardcore to be into them. I happen to, so it’s a double-dose of awesome for me.

I’m getting twitchy just thinking about what kind of awesome will be brought by Leathermouth…..