Shaded Enmity
Reden Tacheles

SHADED ENMITY haben auf ihrer Facebook-Seite folgendes Statement gepostet, in dem sie zum Business, einigen (großen) Labels sowie deren Politik und der Metal-Szene überhaupt Stellung bezogen haben. Um den Worten die authentische Nachhaltigkeit zu belassen, wurde unsererseits auf eine Übersetzung ins Deutsche verzichtet.

Original Facebook-Link zum Statement von SHADED ENMITY

So here we are just a couple days away from the pre-order release of our new album and I figured I would address a question that so many of you ask us. When we first released our 2009 album „Like Prayers on Deaf Ears“ virtually no one had heard of us. We spent over $5,000 making the album and printed 1,000 copies of it. It was actually really only like 960 cds. Someone at the cd factory was having a bad day and decided to replace a bunch of our cds with cds from some stupid Texas country singer. Needless to say our calls and emails for the remainder of the cds went unanswered. But who cares anyway right? We sent a bunch of copies out to labels and zines and for a couple weeks it was silent. Then one day our myspace page went from having 115 plays to 10,000 plays over night. One of the people we sent our album too felt it was worthy enough for him to rip it onto a torrent site where it was then downloaded by thousands of people and we were officially discovered by the underground. We took some hope in this and continued to send the album out to labels. As I have mentioned before in some interviews, we sent out over 50 copies to labels and we didn’t hear back from one label. We got a semi positive response from Season Mist but they told us they had just signed Morbid Angel and Dillinger Escape Plan and were putting all their money towards them. Thanks guys, you just funded the recording of the crappiest metal industrial record by a legendary death metal band. I won’t even get started about the other band. So before I get too far off topic I will resume. We spent the next year doing shows and then we hit the studio again to record the „Hijo Perdido“ album which was released in 2011. The original producer we were working with ended up screwing us quite a bit on production sound and on costs in general and this album ended up costing more to make than „Forsaken and Forgotten“. It was more than $7,000 I can tell you that. Not to mention the cost of printing cds, which, don’t even get me started on how long it took to help the lady spell „Shaded Enmity“ and „Hijo Perdido“ over the phone. Our current producer Aaron Smith ended up helping us out in the end with the album as he had found numerous mistakes made by the previous engineer and he did a great job remixing and mastering it. After „Hijo Perdido“ was released we gained an even larger fan base. Started doing more interviews and started seeing more reviews popping up everywhere. We even recieved album of the month in Rock Hard print magazine in Germany. We have gotten several emails from smaller labels that were interested in signing us. Some of the offers were insulting, and the others were just not really in the bands best interests. One time we heard that the reason a major label representative did not like us was because he thought that the band name was stupid. I threw up in my mouth. What about „Destiny Potato“? „Monsters Scare You“? „Elevuieitete“ (see, no one can even spell it), „We Came As Romans“, „Job For A Cowboy“,“Abigail Williams“ I mean seriously dude. Why won’t a label take a chance on a band whose members won’t be arrested for trying to kill their ex wife, or whose members don’t shoot heroin and bang underage groupies? Why won’t a label take a chance on a band who has spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to bring their music to the world? Why won’t a label take a chance on a band that doesn’t talk about gore and brutality? Well, for one, we aren’t a washed up thrash act from the 90’s, we don’t have a cool hair cut where you can flip your hair to one side and kind of looks cool but still kind of looks like you take it in the butt, I wear a size 33 in pants, I see guys as big or bigger than me in smaller pants, labels really like guys that wear pants that are really tight, we don’t play the style of music known as „djent“ (god knows Simon would make all those „djent“ drummers „djizz“ their pants), we don’t wear black rimmed glasses and most certainly aren’t hipsters who play metal. Sigh. There is no room for Shaded Enmity in the modern metal music world. But it’s no wonder. I spent several months touring the US and Europe and from what I gathered, most of the label reps I have run into are constantly drunk at the shows so it’s no wonder their judgement in bands is severely flawed. I played guitar with and tour managed Jeff Loomis for most of 2012. Because of this I was in direct contact with a representative from Century Media records named Steve. Steve is a rare gem in the industry. I always had pre conceived notions about label executives in general and they had all been proved right until this point. This guy was the hardest working label rep I had ever seen, and he even drove 7 hours one day just to help us out. Steve was the first and probably last label rep to tell me exactly how it is. He spent sometime listening to us and gave us a straight response. He was tired of not being able to sign the bands that he thinks have true talent and write great music. Labels want bands that will make them money immediately. They want bands like Kid Rock, Buckcherry, In This Moment, bands that will make them money. It’s not about the talent or the song writing. It’s about the look, hotness, how tight your pants are, your eye liner, your vests with no shirt underneath, the latex, the electronic samples, the breakdowns, all of that. We were told that Century Media was not signing „underground‘ metal bands anymore and so there goes the hope of being on an extremely respectable label. Or is it? After spending some time on the road and talking to countless young metal bands that were signed, Shaded Enmity is outselling at least half of them. All thanks to you, our fans. Collectively in 2012, we sold over 4,300 copies of our albums. About 2,100 of those were „Hijo Perdido“. Who knows how many were illegally downloaded, but thanks to our fans, this is how many we sold. So, do we really need a record label? My friend Steve doesn’t seem to think so and neither do we. This is why we are self releasing „Forsaken and Forgotten“ (well, that and obviously no one really wanted to anyway). We have gotten lots of support from fans such as SwampKalmah,Daymarre, Hevilck, Infidel Amsterdam, ProphetofMelodeath, Erik metal.de, micha from austria, nico, and many many more. That being said, our album is coming within the next couple days so please support us. All your money goes directly to the label, and that is US!
-Joe