Ladies and gentlemen, this is John, John is a drummer and John has saved our asses multiple times in the past… but never in the way he is now saving our asses. To cover our asses he is doing what he does best, by that I don’t mean being outstanding at being John, I mean he will be playing drums for us on our upcoming european tour with Almeida.

It has been a worry that has plagued our minds royally as the last thing we wanted to do was to cancel a hard booked, bad ass tour of climatic proportions.

Graham is getting through like a champ, we can’t wait to be together as the band of brothers we are. Please just maintain your positive thoughts in his direction and we’ll be chattin about this in years to come. He is of course… the man.

Now, let’s go on a fucking tour.

I have no idea how to word a blog like this… but I guess we have to mention something to put some friends minds at rest and to rest any rumors… It gives me a very heavy heart to say Graham our drummer has just entered into chemo therapy this Monday 22/04. It’s a difficult time for us as you can imagine, but what’s important is the future and Graham’s recovery.

This is a time for us when what matters most is our best friend and brother making a speedy recovery and getting back to what he does best.

We are sticking to our tour schedule with Almeida, more news will follow, but let’s not bleach the topic. Please just send out all the positive energy your soul can spare and we will take care of the rest.

Egos x 

A couple more from Pre-Production.

There’s nothing quite like a bat shit crazy, ‘we don’t give a fuck’ band with the raw passion and talent to make your core shiver…the pure aggression alone makes you want to drop-kick a small child in the face. Egos At The Door are a math/punk/hard-core four-piece act hailing from Blackburn, with complex time signatures and insane song structures that are stitched together from various recycled genres and vocals ready to melt your face off. This is certainly demonstrated throughout their debut album Blankets Of Denial. Straight off the bat, the album opens with “Calisthenics”- an instrumental track that I can only describe as a call to arms; the calm before the storm if
you will. The hypnotic guitar lick and war like drum beat
builds the anticipation for the carnage that this album
possesses. The first track on the album, “9-5 Ethics”
instantly made me compare these lads to iwrestledabearonce,
so I had a rough idea what I was in for. About half way
throughout the song I felt it lost its magic and energy that it
once started out with. The two minute instrumental section
just killed the hype for me and I was expecting these boys to
go hard all the way; suffice to say, sonically and musically it
still sounded ‘dope’; I just felt it let the track down a little. It
wasn’t until the song came to a close that the band shocked
me. Transitioning into the 3rd song on the album “My Car”
there’s a minute speech that pleasantly surprised me. I
didn’t expect that level of professionalism or lyrical content,
or even political references from these lads, to who I
previously once thought of as just a bunch of lads venting
drunken anger.

Tracks four through six are where this album changes tone
but it never-the-less blew me away…it was almost as if for the past three track these boys had been holding back all this time. On track four, I kind of felt the placement of the song within the album wasn’t the best choice mainly due to the silent part toward the end of the song. This may have worked an outro song on the album. It scared the shit out of me as I didn’t expect it to drop back in like that! Then there’s tracks five and six… good lyrical content, original, good production and tight as fuck and shows that these boys aren’t just restricted to one genre; I heard elements of punk, indie, and hard-core all thrown into one track. Which brings me onto my personal favourite. ‘An Ode To Folly’ just rapes your mind; it has something for everyone - insane guitar licks, brutal break-downs and even some two step ska; total mind fuck. The rest of the tracks pretty much work on the same basis as tracks four to six, bringing the tone down in preparation for “Southpaw Claw”. They start on high energy and end on high energy. Overall this album and band damn well gave it every thing they’ve got. The musical content is original and the talent is a breath of fresh air to those who follow the scene, not to mention they are tight as fuck. Lyrically, I couldn’t understand a fucking word the vocalist was saying; great vocal range, but really needs to work on becoming clearer in his punctuation and delivery of words whilst screaming. The only general criticism I have is to do with the musical content; although I’ve said it’s original, I feel as if it was lacking that something special that every band needs in order to be successful.

Egos At The Door – Blankets of Denial

I love EATD. Not just because I have a long-standing musical and homoerotic relationship with Ed (guitar) and contributed some backing vocals to the album, but because they are a truly staggering live band, and because their pretentious experimentalism appeals to my own pretentious inclinations (keep reading, you’ll see what I mean). Blankets of Denial is an album of contradictions: the songs veer wildly between the brooding ‘Calisthenics’ to the furious and frustrated onslaughts of ‘9-5 Ethics’; between the busy technicality of ‘It’s all on you, Kiddo’ and the protracted silence of ‘Rumble in the Jungle’; then back again through melodious interludes such as ‘Joshua Barron…’. Savage vocals, snarled and hissed by Rayyan, are off-set with a diverse array of backing vocals, all pouring forth political but also quite ambiguous lyrics. Full of awkward riffs, fractured chords, dissonant licks and a stabbing, jarring rhythm, the guitar rushes through countless changes in tempo and style, in collusion with some ridiculously skilled and belligerent drumming. Graham drums like a duracell bunny that’s been hooked up to a nuclear reactor: barely stopping or slowing, but embracing each new change with an almost obscene energy. Throughout the whole album, the drums hurry and harass you: in ‘Southpaw claw, during a rare moment of peacefulness, the drums impatiently tap away as if impatient with the quiet, until finally the bass and guitar are rushed into something more stabbing and dissonant. The bass completely contrasts with this harassment: Pete plays as if he’s day-dreaming, with his basslines repeatedly wandering off into more gentle and subtle territory, amidst the din his bandmates are making. Straightforward, this isn’t. But it conspires to make something profoundly rich and worthy of multiple listens.

What shines through the whole album is a fascination with harmony and melody – which emerges through frequent returns to chords and notes that mums would like. Sometimes lasting just a beat (9-5 Ethics, about 1:30), sometimes strung together into a hummable riff (‘My Car is Thirsty…), these moments of what many would think of as ‘proper music’ seem to exert an irresistible attraction on the band. They are much more than just procedural respites from the noise, or calculated juxtapositions to throw the heavier, more autistic moments into sharper relief. Instead, they almost break into the songs of their own accord: somehow unintentional and yet expressing a definite and concrete desire, the musical equivalent of Freudian slips. But if these melodic flickerings represent anything at all, it is what happens to them that carries the message. Every single one disintegrates: either the harmony is shattered by the irregular, stabbing and dissonant chords that punctuate the whole album, or it trails off and collapses without resolving into a recognisable ending. This robs the moments of melody – of beauty – of any assertiveness: chords which in the hands of so many other bands reek of simulated emotional depth, appear here as fugitives, doomed from the start. The overwhelming sensation, then, is one of mourning. The whole album rings with love – of music, of sincerity, of that excitement that comes from finding a voice in notes – but it is a love only remembered, grieved for. This grief is not something introspective and withdrawn, but something indignant. Where EATD are at their most potent, the fragments of melody serve to remind us that the heavier, distorted and deliberately tuneless parts are no more capable of authentic, sincere expression than the ear-pleasing harmonies that the music industry has long since corrupted into saccharine sentiment. The surprising sincerity of clean, delicate chords reveals the cynicism and bitterness of the raw screams, dissonance and belligerent repetition. But this fugitive sincerity can only emerge in such a bleak context, and it is the bitterness of the heavy parts that carry the energy and meaning. These onslaughts are anti-music: learned techniques and conscious arrangements, carefully orchestrated to sound frenetic and chaotic. They ritualise rather than express, mimicking spontaneity through their intricately composed structurelessness. Even the rare glimmers of humour – the pouring noise in ‘An ode to Folly’, the in-joke song titles – are uncomfortably humourless; cynical references to fun. But such cynicism is itself sincere expression here. It expresses the innermost condition of our daily experience, in which we are brutalised by a society that has itself become utterly cynical. Blankets of Denial is the soundtrack to a world in which tears are the engine of advertising revenue, a world which industrially produces emotional highs and lows, whilst medicating away any unlicensed feelings that might inspire less profitable behaviour. Awkwardly, obliquely, this album explores the forbidden sensation that the promise of music – sincerity, expression, feeling – has been strangled by the cynicism inherent to late capitalism.

Thanks a lot to Blank TV for featuring our video.
Shot/Cut by none other than Rusty Shepherd.

Our good old pals Rusty Shepherd & Nikola came to visit us when we were just starting pre-production a couple of weeks ago. Rusty did some photos.

Raisins in the mix!

Of course, the EU/US was one of the most life changing changing thing we’ve done so far and we did fail to blog much on that here, see, it all happened in instagram, so fast… and since getting back we’ve had a shit storm of stuff to deal with, naturally…

http://www.iphoneogram.com/u/218104849

We’re eternally grateful to everyone who helped us out with a show, to Aaron, to Amber & Gary, to Joe, to Tyler, to JT & Victoria, Jay, Steve, Rusty, Bandit, Nova ‘jesus ice lord’ … fucking hell this will go on all day, basically, the tight family unit in Agawam, ‘Mayss’.

We got looked after insanely well and we’ll put all the photos up asap.

Basically, just want to update you on our future plans, we’ve been asked a couple of times so I guess we need to assure you, we’re not dead… physically. No, we’re just exhausted working ourselves out of debt after the previous tour and pushing things forward.

Without revealing too much, yes we have release plans, but it takes as long as it takes. (Summer ;) ). 

We’ll also be leaving on an epic tour with our best pals in Almeida, the facebook event is in the making. Keep an eye out! JUNE’13!

We’ll be playing in Lille, FRANCE 6/6 to do an 18 date non stop rally. Gonna be ridiculous. We finish 23/6 around Belgium/Germany.

These are things in the makings and I’m personally really excited to get this moving. We’ll be in touch.

Our biggest announcement of all, we will be running THE BIG GIG TING #1 at The Live Lounge in Blackburn. It’s going to feature 8 of the bands/artists we really wanted to bring together to show Blackburn that underground music ain’t dead! It’s feasting, or something. Ravenous pig.

The facebook event is here:
http://www.facebook.com/events/527714093926226/

TODAY THEY ARE OLDER:
Hardcore/Metal local legends.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Today-They-Are-Older/101340723278449

ALMEIDA:
Progressive Skate-punk/Thrash from Southampton/Brighton
http://www.facebook.com/Almeidaofficial

FIGHTING FICTION:
Acoustic/Melodic/Punk/Rock awesomeness from Brighton
http://www.facebook.com/fightingfiction?ref=ts&fref=ts

SOUTHPAW FAKERS:
Heart Felt Punk from Gloucester/Cheltenham
www.facebook.com/southpawfakers

BLACK ART:
Groovy as fuck Hardcore/Punk from THE Forrest Of Dean
http://www.facebook.com/Blackartuk?ref=ts&fref=ts

FERALUS:
Acoustic 3 piece from London
http://www.facebook.com/feralusuk?ref=ts&fref=ts

THEKIDSISFIREWORKS:
Rhythmic Pacey Hardcore/Punk
www.facebook.com/thekidisfireworks

EGOS AT THE DOOR:
Mathy/Metal/Hardcore from Blackburn
www.facebook.com/EgosAtTheDoor

WES WALTZ (FRANCE):
Funk Hardcore Punk fusion madness from France
http://weswaltz.bandcamp.com/


DOWNLOAD THE SAMPLER FOR FREE, FEATURING A SONG FROM EVERY BAND:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/am73ti9rl3vf9ke/Y7NYQBrH9E

TICKETS: £3 DOOR: £4

DOORS OPEN 4.30pm
FIRST BAND ON 5.00pm

More details to come!!


Over and out x

So we might have posted on here that it was May, this was incorrect and irresponsible and completely inappropriate. It was disrespectful and hurtful and we’re very naughty boys.

It is in fact going to be in June, from 6/6 - 23/6 and we’re so close to announcing the dates.

If you live in Italy, Germany or East France, please befriend us via email:

egosatthedooruk@gmail.com

A real update on ‘life’ will come soon enough… xxx

Some photos here from the second show of EU/US tour, the time we played Swansea with thekidisfireworks, Stillbust, Black Art… never caught the name of the band who played first, but they were cool!! Adam Hunter photography

Well, we’re happy as heck to finally announce that this May we will be hitting the mainland on a tour with Almeida. The dates span from 2nd May - 20th May.

Anyone wants to see us anywhere or get involved booking the tour please get in touch! Eager to hear from anyone!

Updates to come.

This was composed by ‘Rusty Shepherd’ who jumped in the van for all the UK touring we did in 2012. Photos from March and July (where we toured 11 dates with Almeida).

Tour posters from the past 2 months. Some day… some day, we’ll leave on a tour not still booking it… until that day…

Today was eventful!

After 14 hours of travelling on planes we arrived in Boston, USA. It was glorious.
Of course the second we landed stuff had to start going wrong. What else would have happened!?

First off me and Chris got pulled into border control room. After sitting for 10 minutes utterly confused and fatigued and ready to just get to Aaron’s. I got pulled up first, the standard questions were asked and of course travelling without work visas (because we aren’t fucking working!) the man was suspicious of our intentions. He asked for contact for where we were staying and I explained how I had to do contact through the internet due to abroad charges. He urged me to get in contact with Aaron which was fine… I went onto my facebook to find him as I wasn’t leaving the office until he had spoke to Aaron via telephone.
As I browsed my messages he insisted on taking my phone off me with facebook open and just went and had a nice old browse on my shit!!! He asked ‘what’s Edgarville Clive Hall’ so I said that’s my facebook thank you.
He continued to have a nice old look through it and of course he soon realised I played guitar. The questions came thick and fast.
After 10 minutes of avoiding talking about anything to do with music I asked if I could just continue getting hold of Aaron, he said fine and then as I continued he walked around the desk and said he had to watch me getting hold of him. FUCKING HELL!!!! The last message I sent to Aaron was about the tour poster. So my new friend asked ‘what tour’ - for anyone who doesn’t know about work visas and playing music in the USA, basically you get deported for playing anything whether you make money or not. You can’t be involved in anything to do with playing music without paying thousands on visas. Hence us using a backline out here and not getting visas.
Avoiding any conversation at this point he just confiscated my phone and left the room for another 10 minutes. Chris and I thought the game was up and we were getting sent home. FUCK.
He took me back to the desk. We discussed stuff further and his colleague just turned to him and said ‘this kids tired, let him go’… and like that, the shit got stamped and we were out!

Then we met our new friend Joe who was picking us up in ‘the van’. Turns out the alternator went and the van was broken down before we even sat in it. We got jump started and drove for 2 minutes then the van cut out again and there we were, at the side of the high way. To be honest, all we could do was laugh. The police showed up and unlike in Poland they didn’t want to fine us, that was a plus!
The van had to get towed to Agawam and 4 of us had to go back to the airport where Aaron had to come collect us. The kind police chap offered us a ride and was really nice to us! So, true to form, within one hour of being in the USA we were in the back of a police van.

Eventually Graham and Joe got transported home and we waited in the airport. After some escalator shenanigans, strong coffee, twisters and dunkin’ donuts Aaron came to the rescue and we are now safe and sound in Agawam drinkin beers after some vegan pizzas.

Day 1, you’ve been fun… let’s hope the van gets fixed in the morning and now is smooth sailing. What idealist non-sense. Ciao for now!

What is there to say? To feel this stunned is such a surreal outcome to what you could simply perceive as a silly hobby or struggle to grow up… it’s impossible to articulate how beautiful this experience has been for us as a band and as individuals.
We have travelled many thousands of miles, seen many beautiful and unique countries, witnessed so many cultures and ways of life and had events put upon us which would have never been foreseen and what’s more is that I was unaware if I/we would have known we were capable of managing such scenarios.
I won’t focus on what could be perceived as negative experiences, but there are some stories which resonate and bare mention. As I say, they can only be perceived as negative… there was so much ironic beauty in these situations.

Our first event in the strain of bad luck began in Amsterdam, there was clear negligence to the show which was supposed to be arranged and the co-ordination was minimal and vague, but we simply turned up as you do. Apparently a day early? Okay, well sure. So we had to find a place to crash the first night which was… expensive. Our friend Jeffrey who has been a great dude to us turned up with some food in sympathy to our situation and we smoked lots of weed and ate bread. Wasn’t all bad.
When we turned up at the venue the following day and the promoter didn’t know who we were and wasn’t expecting us… was ‘one of them’ I guess, but non the less we played and then through a friend of a friend somehow we managed to find a place to stay with a guy called Sam.

Sam had been partying his ass off at some big event that was going on and was already worse for ware when we arrived at the venue. But he offered us his place, cooking facilities and just pulled through for us like a great guy would. This may have been a big financial hit way too early on but had we not had these great people to fall back on then it would have been awful to deal with on our own.

Straight over to Sweden!

In Sweden a health problem Graham had been struggling with for a while decided to manifest itself quite violently and I had never seen Graham like this, he was shaking, pale and was clearly in a lot of discomfort and he’s usually a massive puss with a hang over but this was different… So naturally we had to get him over to a hospital where they bled us dry of money to look at him and then his medication was a bomb on top of that. Graham soon perked up after all this and powered on through. Our good friend Sophia was the driving force in ensuring all the translations were made and she fronted the Swedish Currency which we didn’t have and generally took care of everything as we watched with worry. She also let us stop at her place for 3 days (I think) and we had a few meals and drinks together which were all really pleasant and worthwhile times.

Our time in Finland was so positive from start to finnish (get it???), the dates with One Hidden Frame were all so well promoted and managed and has left a long lasting impression within us of the Finnish way of life.

As the journeys continue we had a 24 hour drive over night from Riga, Latvia to Brno, Czech Republic. It was a ridiculous thing to attempt but obviously the offer to play a new place and then play for our dear friend Rusty was too good to miss.

During the Polish excursion we had made a few rest stops but we were generally fatigued due to the task taken. As we headed down a sketchy country road the weather was foggy, wet and icy. Clearly a very unpleasant atmosphere to deal with.
Everything was okay, Rayyan and myself were having a discussion about family ethics and ‘stuff’. Our speed was under the limit, our distance was more than safe.
Almost as if we had been taken out of the world we were existing and then forced into a world of chaos the entire lane of fast moving traffic ahead of us abruptly hit a complete stand still in a matter of seconds. As I reacted to the situation our over packed, heavy van, Beany - complete with shitty winter tires began gliding across this shitty road leaving skid marks in evidence of our clear unpreparedness to the situation. We skidded in total between 15-20 meters straight into the back of a hefty Lorry; completely shattering our headlights, bursting our radiator and oil tank and in total taking any chance we could have had of driving this van for the remainder of the tour. This was the beginning of the most torturous 48 hours…

From here the police turned up which was reassuring… until they then bypassed checking on any of our conditions or well beings straight into forcing us into a fine. After arguing the point of the fine it reached a point in which our options were cough up money for them or settle it in front of a judge. Needless to say they succeeded in taking their share out of our pitiful pockets. Once their greedy appetites were attended to and they went on with their blatantly corrupt day then began the task of having to arrange accommodation and another way of making sure the tour didn’t get cancelled.

A night in a last minute motel furthered our financial condition. I mean, you have to recognise that we get very little money for shows and everything up to this point had been the funding of the shitty jobs we have to do in order to make money happen for this, even though I am a self-employed recording engineer I still had to take up the extra work and beg/borrow/steal in order to front what we needed.
The donations from the single before the tour were awesome, but these still covered very small aspects of the input this took.

From this point from Chris’ laptop and my phone my fingers did not cease to move for 26 hours posting, emailing, txting, calling and exploring every avenue possible to recover us from this situation and to keep the tour moving.

After a day a man named Frank who offers tour driving services in an awesome big ass van dug really fucking deep and drove 10 hours to recover us and our backline and within this 10 hours the lead chasing and posting finally became fruitful and we managed to arrange a rental van… once Frank arrived he then repeated the same 10 hour drive straight back to his home which became our sanctuary for 5 hours as the rental arrived. Frank then, after blowing money on fuel, lent us a further amount towards the first van payment.
Frank did not know us or of us prior to any of this. It’s almost like a dream how he just fabricated out of the internet, turned up, saved the day, saved our asses and then sent us on our way.
At this point it was clear, the 820 euros we needed to make this van happen were far, far out of grasp and we had already thrown away the immediate free ride home from our insurance on a complete whim and assumption that no matter what, tour did not stop. But we had committed to this now!! The word soon spread thick and fast of the whole situation we had endured and through our single on bandcamp friends and family soon literally just threw money at us. It was insane to watch the paypal account just fill up with monetary love. With donations, shows and merch - don’t ask me how but we managed to get the money together and not get in much debt.

This amount of humanity is the concept that has been blowing our minds when trying to explain how thankful we are! A facebook status just isn’t enough, an elongated tumblr blog isn’t enough! We are still scratching our heads in order to make a thank you plan, something, anything just to show the world how much this saved us. If this hadn’t worked out for the better, it would have left us in a shitty situation and quite frankly I have no idea how we would have got out of the mess we clearly created for ourselves.

We must say a deep and sad sorry to Rusty and Money Left To Burn for cancelling the shows we had booked. Under no circumstance ever is cancelling ever an option to us so it was very very disheartening to watch these shows crumble before our eyes.
- guys, we will come back to you asap!!!!

From here on in we just encountered warmth and welcome from everyone, we received a lot of donations, merch sales and extra money from shows just to send us on our way and it couldn’t have worked out any better from here.

Everything went great, the rental van fucked up a bit but it turned out to be nothing.

There are so many stories to add to this, there are so many thank yous needed to be said… I leave this blog here just out of the need to get my head down before the final stresses of making things happen for the next left of the tour.

USA! Here we come, we will be doing 3 weeks with the amazing ‘The Great Repression’
Listen to this soulful, meaningful and powerful music here:
http://aaronhibbert.bandcamp.com/

Until next time; much love, many well wishes, all the bloody fucking best and THANK YOU WORLD! x