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

“The Battle” – Photo by Riki Feldman

We are on tour with Mates of State. It’s been pretty intense. In 3 days we played in New York, San Francisco and Portland. We’ve been flying everywhere and renting new gear every day. So it’s a little bit different from the car tours we’ve been doing in Judgement Day.

Conan O’Brien was super fun. We all shook Conan’s hand which was pretty sweet. One of the questions that everyone keeps asking me is “is he tall?”. He’s definitely tall but after all of the build up I have to say he really didn’t seem that mind-blowingly tall. I might just say above-average height. La Bamba played trombone on our set too. He’s awesome. He wished us good luck on our tour and told us he missed touring himself.

If you want to see the Conan performance click here.

Lewis and I have been jamming a bunch on our breaks too and coming up with some cool new Judgement Day ideas. It’s been even more productive for us than when we’re home. We’re also thinking about pulling some guerrilla moves at some of the upcoming shows and playing some Judgement Day songs in the crowd before the show or something. We’ll see…

Finally, our good friend Nate Heller from Wendy Darling did a sweet remix of Coda in E Major from Opus 3: Acoustic. I think it sounds great so we’ve got it here for our free download of the week:

Producer Nate Heller
Coda in E major *REMIX* MP3

-anton

Barrage has a more of a set structure than many of our new songs but it still manages to be a whole new song every time we play it. Here are two versions:

The first is a full band version from Cafe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz. It’s pretty straight forward and similar to what will probably end up on the full-length album. Thanks to Luke Soin for the MP3.

Barrage Live at Pergolesi MP3

The second version is from the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco. It was going to be a straight acoustic show for us but at the last minute we told our sound lady Julia to do an epic dub mix with whatever effects she wanted. She got all trippy with delay and made it totally different and awesome. Thanks to Kevin Dick for the video. He shot it on a Flip.

January was a fun month of acoustic shows for us. They were a little bit different from what we’re used to but it was nice for a change and it totally whipped us into shape on the string parts. Our last one was at Cal State Sacramento on Wednesday and this guy Mikhail did a cool video article about it. It was kind of a funny show. I think it was in a classroom or something and everyone was sitting down in chairs quietly and politely listening to us play acoustic metal songs. You can see what it was like in this video:

Nick Cova is awesome! He video taped and recorded our entire acoustic set at Monterey Live and put it all up on youtube. It looks great! We’ve been having a fun time playing acoustic shows this month since Jon has been off traveling in Israel. Earlier this week we played one at UC Riverside and last night we played one at The Uptown in Oakland. We’re doing one more at The Hemlock Tavern next Thursday before we bring Jon back to start rocking with drums again on Feb. 2nd at Blakes in Berkeley. Our Acoustic EP will be dropping some time next month so these acoustic shows have been a good warm up for that.

Here are the videos:

Barrage

Out of Abyss

In the Hall of the Mountain (by Edvard Grieg)

Genosha (this was a little sloppy but it had a sweet jam in the middle)

You can check out all the rest of the set at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=nickkova

This other band that we played with that night was super sweet too. They’re called Japandi and they have a bunch of their videos up there too. They’re a jazzy, math-rocky band with great musicians.

Here’s a Japandi video from the same night:

GREG

Thanks Greg, you posted 4 awesome videos and a bunch of photos from our Monterey show on your myspace page. That earns you the first (and possibly last) ever Fan of the Week award.

Last week we played at the Black Box Caberet at CSUMB. It was an amazing show. Everyone, check out the videos HERE.

A big THANK YOU goes out to Meana, the performing bands and everyone who cheered for an encore!

_________________________________

Honorable mention for the Fan of the Week goes to Nick Kova, an awesome photographer who got a ton of great pics from the show:

Check out the rest of Nick’s Pics Here.

For Thanksgiving this year Lewis and I went to Palm Springs where our dad’s family all lives. Our dad and all of his siblings are musicians like their father and his father before him. Something like that. Anyway, our family gatherings always somehow turn into recitals (and eventually drunken jams). Here’s a clip of Lewis playing Schubert with our aunt Patty:

How was your thankgiving?