I have been having a hard time writing on this trip. Every time I start writing something I decide it’s not worth posting, but we are now already halfway through our first European tour so I finally forced myself to finish something.

This is what I wrote a few days ago: “Well here we are, in Rome, Italy. The sun is out and the weather is warm. We woke up early today to go explore the city and saw all kinds of amazing ancient ruins and Renaissance architecture. Yesterday we had a whole day off in Venice, riding around in boats exploring narrow alleyways and eating delicious pasta. Obviously, this has not been our typical starving-and-sleeping-on-dirty-floors DIY tour.  This is as posh as it gets.”

It is true. This tour has been quite luxurious. The main reason is that we are splitting a tour bus with Dredg. Riding on a bus makes everything so much easier. We party, watch movies and sleep during the drives, and then wake up every morning exactly where we need to be. Riding with Dredg has been incredibly fun. There are eleven of us total riding on the bus and everyone hangs out and has a good time. It’s much easier to be traveling with a larger group of people because you don’t get sick of everyone. It also helps that everyone on our bus is chill and fun.

Bunks on the bus: our home for the month.

When we first got to the bus in Barcelona, there was nobody there. This is us waiting for someone to show up and let us in.

In addition to the luxury of the bus, the hospitality in Europe is absolutely amazing. Almost every day we find our dressing room stocked with gourmet cheese, meats, vegetables and sweets. Almost every night we have an amazing catered dinner with wine. They sure know how to treat musicians over here.

It hasn’t been all fun and games though. To help offset the enormous bill that we are going to get at the end of the tour we have been hustling extra hard to sell cds. We have been playing on street corners in the day and sometimes outside of the clubs when the shows get out:

We made a special European tour cd that we are only selling on this trip called Excerpts. It includes three songs off of our upcoming record Peacocks /Pink Monsters as well as all of Opus 3: Acoustic. It has been selling pretty well and it seems like people like it:

Last night for Halloween we were in Dortmund, Germany. They don’t really celebrate Halloween here like we do in the US but we had a night off and we got into a show where The Hives were playing so that was pretty cool. Most of the rest of the shows on the tour are in Germany, which is where Dredg is hugely popular, so hopefully they will be good for us. I will try my best to publish reports of all interesting occurrences.

-anton

NEWS BACK HOME:

The super-awesome music blog Kata Rokkar is doing a ticket giveaway for the Dark Opus 5th Anniversary show. They are having a fun contest. All you have to do is describe what our music sounds like (and there is a song posted there) and the best description wins two tickets to the show. Details here: http://katarokkar.cribble.net/2009/11/kata-rokkars-judgement-day-ticket-giveaway/

It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog entry. I’m sorry I never did a big post about the spring tour about dredg. We were just having so much fun that I didn’t have time to write much. I think dredg might have some of the best fans out there. Every night was great for us and all three of us, Jon, Lewis ad I came off of the tour with a new found sense of excitement about the future of Judgement Day.

We have mostly been taking June off. Jon has been working and playing with his other band VS Them. Lewis has been practicing cello, working around the house and will be playing some concerts with Berkeley Opera soon. I have just been hanging out in San Francisco, doing a few recording gigs and playing with my new band Devotionals. I had a great birthday party  a couple of nights ago. A bunch of cool bands played at it.

In July Judgement Day will be back in business! We’ll be appearing on the Chasing the Moon podcast on July 7th, which is going to be really sweet. It’s basically going to be a really high-quality video of a live set. Shortly following that we’ll be releasing our very first vinyl record titled “Out of the Abyss: Live on Tape” on Third Culture Records. To celebrate the release we’ll be doing a one week California tour. We’ll do a whole blog post about that release very soon.

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There is a very exciting new record that was released last week and that is the new dredg record The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion. If you are a fan of dredg’s previous records you’re definitely going to like it. If you’ve never heard dredg before I’d say this new record might be just the place to start. In addition to the healthy handful of polished, catchy prog-pop songs, it also has some of the craziest interludes that I have ever heard. We’re talking backwords children’s choir through vintage ring modulator type of shit. Actually, I honestly have no idea how they came up with most of these crazy sounds but I’m definitely feeling it.

The other added bonus for on The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion is…. us! Judgement Day is featured on 4 tracks:

Track 5: Lightswitch -- We don’t do much on this one but we’re on it and it’s one of the better songs on the record.

Track  12: Mouring This Morning - We put some sweet disco string hooks on this uber-catchy prog-soul number.

Track 14: Long Days and Vague Clues - A crazy evil circus song on which we get to totally shred (see video below).

Track 18: Stamp of Origins (Horizon) -- The sorrowful album closer.

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Although we only worked on that record for a few days it was truely a great experience. The members of dredg as well as the record’s producer, our friend and colleague Matt Radosevich are all great artists and collaborators, continually excited by prospects of musical exploration. Whether it was late-night percussion jam sessions or ultra-precise string overdubs the process was always fun and fulfilling.  That spirit is present throughout the record.

Check it out on itunes.

-Anton

What’s up friends,

Tour with dredg and Torche has been so awesome that we really haven’t had time to blog. We’re really excited for the grand finale – Chico, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and LA! What a way to go out. Here’s something really awesome for you to check out if you are into instrumental rock music. It’s our fellow San Francisco musicians Silian Rail playing on this really sweet local podcast Chasing the Moon. Enjoy:

We just filmed this with a laptop on stage. We wanted to release this whole show but our ghetto-ass minidisc audio recorder kept skipping and only got one song all the way through. Here it is:

ZOMBIE RODEO CLOWN

It’s been fun playing with the Mates. We’ve had some great shows and some great fun. Tomorrow we’ll be meeting up with Jon and Judgement Day will be opening and riding in the minivan for the next Month and a half. We can’t wait.

Here’s a fun video that I found on youtube from our Manhattan show:

We are coming back for another great night. Always the best crowds, always the best parties, always the best after hour jams. See you Friday.

Late night jam after our last Chico show in Spring of 08.
Erik Khun – Guitar

Nolan Ford – Guitar

Lewis Patzner – Guitar

Anton Patzner – Violin

Jon Bush – Video Camera

We blogged about this trip. This is the link to that entry.

Practicing with Margot Before tour:
http://www.vimeo.com/1843037

Late night jam with Margot – San Francisco 10/6/08
http://www.vimeo.com/2399745

Rocking out in Norman, Oklahoma – 10/17/08

photos by Kriea

Live on South Street in Philadelphia – 11/9/08
Our set got cut short this night so we decided to play the last song out on the street after the show. Thanks to Joe for the video.

Live from Minneapolis – 11/17/08
FREE AUDIO DOWNLOAD: Klagenstuck Live in Minneapolis
Hear the rest of the set at The Live Music Archive .
Thanks to John Coughlin for taping.

Live in Omaha – 11/20/08

If you have any other cool videos, pictures or anything else worth checking out let us know.

We’re very excited to announce that we will be touring the US for 2 months this fall supporting first Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s and then Dredg. So if you’ve been waiting for us to come to your town, this is it. Help us spread the word!

Tour Dates

This week we went on the “Break this City” podcast. Basically it’s a talk show that talks about all of the murders and robberies in Oakland and in the process manages to offend…. everyone. If you are offended by harsh language or homicide jokes definitely DO NOT tune in. Otherwise, check out Anton and Lewis talking about drive-by’s and playing an acoustic version of “Cobra Strike” and an improvised soundtrack to a murder sentencing:

BREAK THIS CITY – EPISODE 20

Videos from the Podcast:

COBRA STRIKE (acoustic)

HANS REISER SENTENCING SOUNDTRACK

HANS REISER SENTENCING NEWS CLIP
Directions: First start the “Soundtrack” video and turn the volume on it down as low as it can go without being off. Next start the “News Clip” video with the volume up all of the way. Get ready to be creeped out!
[brightcove vid=1762088229&exp=1612844765&w=300&h=260]

Finally, we’ve got one more big show left at Bottom of the Hill before we leave for a two month tour. Come out and send us off in style! It’s also an EP release show for DESA and there will be free zines for the first 100 people that want them.

Judgement Day's last big show before tour + Desa's EP release + 100 free zines

Here are some awesome videos from our show at The Phoenix Theater at the beginning of the month. Thanks to Grace from Cleveland who happened to be there and took these videos. I think they are great.
Barrage

Air Raid

Revelations

Finis Omne

Our week:

For the past week we’ve just been gearing up for our tour, figuring how to get our gear to Cleveland and get some songs mixed before we leave. This past weekend Lewis and I flew to Canada to play strings for Mates of State at the Pemberton festival. It was awesome. We rode in a Limo, ate gourmet food, got free stuff and saw some great music. The festival was in a beautiful valley in the mountains near Vancouver BC. The lineup for the weekend included Jay-Z, Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Flaming Lips and Tom Petty. My favorite set that I saw was from My Morning Jacket. They were in top form.

Alright, so we’ll see you Northeastern folks in a week and you bay area folks on August 17th at Cafe Du Nord.

-anton