When we first arrived at around 2 pm there were already quite a few festival-goers out. We set up on a street corner in front of the Coyote Ugly bar and started playing. Our new battery-powered amplifier and bucket drum kit make for a pretty sweet guerrilla metal setup: within one minute we were surrounded by a large crowd of green-clothed music fans (it was also St. Patricks day today,) and by the second song there were multiple giant video cameras pointed at us. I have no idea what any of these camera people were filming for but they all seemed to be into it. All the while Brandon (our new drum tech / metal expert) was passing out fliers for our Saturday show, selling cd’s and generally hyping us up to every single person who stopped to listen. The response was great and for the rest of the day people kept coming up to me telling me that they liked it.

One thing that we found out which was slightly disappointing is that our big Saturday show is kind of far away from the rest of the festival. It turns out that South Congress is not the same as Congress. If you go to 515 Congress, which is right in the middle of the festival, you will be at a bank. That’s not where we are playing. We’re playing at 515 South Congress, which is about a mile away on the other side of the bridge. The place is really cool, but it is definitely a little bit of a hike. There were quite a few people today who were excited to come see the show, so I hope the distance doesn’t deter them. I guess distance is a good reason to do an “official” SXSW show. All of those ones are really easy to walk to. On the plus side, the bridge that you cross to get to our show also happens to be home to over 1.5 million bats and you’ll see them all flying out to hunt as you cross back over to the festival after our set. I have seen it before and it’s quite a site.
Some other good stuff happened today: we now have two more shows. They are both house parties and they are both tomorrow night:

9pm – 92 Rainey st w/BATTLEHOCH

2am – 3603 s 2nd st  w/?

So… tomorrow’s going to be another big day. I better get some rest. Bed time!

-anton

Here is basically my first tour blog entry, which talks about our trip up through Tucson: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2010/03/15/sxsw-judgement-day-315/

Here’s a cool little interview that Grant from Battlehooch and I both did talking about each other’s bands: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-20839-Exploring-San-Francisco-Examiner~y2010m3d16-Judgement-Day-and-or-Battlehooch

Here are a bunch of sweet videos from our San Diego show: http://www.sddialedin.com/2010/03/thank-you.html

Here’s my favorite from those videos:

Well, basically the problem is that our band is not called “EMPTY.”

Admission of guilt:
When we were shooting these photos Riki straight-up asked “are you sure you want that EMPTY sign right in the middle of the picture?” and I said “yeah, it will be fine. It will be cool.” I was definitely wrong.

____________________________________________________________

We weren’t sure what to do about this at first but then we had this idea to make an art project out of it!

Here’s how it works:

1. Download the Easy-To-Print 8.5″ x 11″ jpeg HERE

2. Print it out in color on 8.5″ x 11″ paper, preferably thick paper or card stock. (I printed mine at Office Depot and it cost less than a dollar).

3. Draw, Paint or Collage on it however you want!

4. Mail it to this address:

Paint the Empty
150A Laguna St.
San Francisco, CA 94102

5. Please include a note with your name and email so we can thank you!

Prizes

1. If you get your piece to us by March 4th, it will be displayed at the Art of Peacocks / Pink Monsters art show at The Space Gallery in San Francisco on Friday, March 5th:

2. We’ll scan and post all of our favorite pieces here on the blog.

3. We’ll make one of these paintings into our new press photo and then there’s a chance that your art will be printed in newspaper or magazines. If you want us to use your piece for this, you need to cover up the “EMPTY” and leave all of the band members visible.

That’s it! I’m excited to see what you come up with!

-anton

___________________________________________

GALLERY

Submissions so far:

Not only is Zzalgern0n an awesome, hi-energy, internet-savvy director, experienced with both green screen and animations; he has also beat Guitar Hero on Expert! It was clear that this was the man for the job:

Pre-production

There was quite a bit of pre-production on this project. Comic-book artist Brandon Redenius designed a Violin Hero logo and box. Zzalgern0n made a disc. My girlfriend Laura Weinbach from Foxtails Brigade made illustrations for the start screen and song-select screen. For the song-select screen we also consulted with musicologist Baker Peeples to come up with a list of the most shredding violin songs of all time in ascending order of difficulty.

Trisha Gum, who made the clay sculptures for Dark Opus now works making miniature sets for stop-motion tv shows on cartoon network. She built a miniature set for this video out of mostly cardboard and paper:

Production

Zzalgern0n wrote a very ambitious treatment for this video which included locations like Egypt, Japan and Hell. Obviously it was out of our budget to film on location, so we had to do what we could with the magic of special effects. On the first day of filming we built a sweet makeshift green screen in Lewis’ old bedroom at our parents’ house, where we filmed some violin students (thanks Keith and Sierra!) After that we went over to a couple of our aunts’ houses and filmed our cousins there. Lewis and I have 25 cousins of all different ages on our mom’s side (I am the oldest), and we have been making movies with them since we were little kids. It was awesome to carry on that tradition in this video!

For the band footage we went to LA, where Zzalgern0n’s friend donated the use of a real green screen studio. It was super fancy with all kinds of different lighting tools. I couldn’t believe that we got to use that place…. so awesome! Rebecca Fierro did costumes and makeup:

After that, Zzalger0n wrapped up the rest of the filming on his own in LA. He got a ton of awesome people to be in the video. Watch for hilarious cameos from:

Paul Rust (I Love You Beth Cooper)
Matt Braunger
Josh Fadem (30 Rock)
Josh Perry (Retarded Policeman)
BJ Averell (winner of The Amazing Race)
Matt Cornell (Extreme Elvis)

Post Production

This is where the real fun began. Zzalgern0n had literally hours of footage to condense into a 3-minute video. This was truly a monstrous task, but he did it! The final step was animation. For this we turned to Mike Mayfield (The Cleveland Show). To help him out, I did a colored transcription of the Cobra Strike cello part:

see how that works?

________________________

Monday!

We premiered the video last weekend in LA and the response was off the Richter Scale! It’s going up on YouTube on Monday, February 1st and when that happens we need all of your help posting it everywhere! Here are some tips for posting:

-Join the Posting Day event on Facebook – http://tinyurl.com/postingday

-Post a link in your Facebook or Myspace status

-Post the link on Twitter and (if you’re into this kind of thing) call it #ViolinHero

- Email a link around your office or school or any kind of club you are in

Forums and Blogs:
If you have a blog or you post regularly on a forum, post a link there. If you really want to help us out, you could even sign up for some new forums and post there. These are the kind of sites that would be good:

-Band forums: metal bands, experimental bands, indie rock bands, classical composers anything!

-Music Blogs: again, any genre

-Sites that Post Amusing Videos: Digg, VideoSift, Fark, BestofYouTube etc

-Video Game Forums and Blogs: after all, this is a guitar hero spoof

-Comedy Forums and Blogs: We have so many awesome comedian cameos in this. Comedy fans will be interested.

-Any Other Topic You Can Think Of!

We worked on this video and we would love for as many people to see it as possible. With your help, we will make that happen. Thank you!

-anton

We’re releasing it 100% independently, which means we’re counting on all of you guys; our friends and our fans to help spread the word! There are a bunch of cool things that doing to prepare for the release:

Posting Day! First Single and Music Video!

On February 1st, we are releasing the first single from the record entitled “Cobra Strike” as a digital download and YouTube music video. The video is AWESOME. I think it might be one of the coolest things we’ve ever done and I think people are really going to like it, and really like the song.

HERE’S WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU:
On the day that the video comes out we need everyone to POST THE SHIT OUT OF IT!  Post it on your Facebook feed! Post it on your Twitter! Post it to everyone in your office and everyone at your school and everyone in your family! Post it on every blog and every forum you can think of!

HERE’S WHAT YOU GET:
In exchange for your help we’re going to make Cobra Strike a FREE DOWNLOAD for the whole day on posting day, and for a couple of days afterward. We’ll post the download link on this Facebook Event and update everyone who has RSVP’d as “Attending” with the URL. This way all of our real fans and friends can get the song for free with some bonus material and anyone who discovers Judgement Day later from the video will just have to buy the regular download from our music page http://stringmetal.com/judgementday/music .

WHAT’S THIS VIDEO ABOUT ANYWAY?
It’s CRAZY! It’s RIDICULOUS! I’m not going to tell you everything about it right away because I want you to guess. (If you already know please don’t spill the beans!) Instead, I’m going to give you hints. You should all recruit people to the Facebook Event, and for every 25 new Attendees that we get there, I will post one new picture and/or hint about the video or the new record.

US TOUR!

We just started booking a record release tour, which begins on March 11th. Booking is going pretty well so far but we could definitely use some tips about cool bands to play with and cool clubs to play at, especially on the east coast. Check out the tour routing at http://stringmetal.com/judgementday/tour and if you have any ideas, please email us at judgmentdayband@yahoo.com

SHOWS THIS MONTH:
LA and San Francisco

Sun. 1/24
Los Angeles
Cinespace
Cobra Strike video release party. Free admission and free vodka until 10:30.
9:30 pm / 21+ / FREE until 10:30

Sat. 1/30
San Francisco
Bottom of the Hill (Winter Music Festival)
Presented by SF Indiefest and Talking House Records with BATTLEHOOCH and the Hot Moon
9pm / All Ages / $8

Alright! This is going to be fun!

-anton

Dark Opus: THE MOVIE

Post it! Share it! Blog it!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Germany

As soon as we hit Germany,  our casual European vacation turned into a full-on, epic rock tour. Dredg are heroes in Germany, and every night we played to over 1000 people. This was definitely the biggest week in Judgement Day’s life so far, and it went incredibly well. For all of the German shows we were also joined by another cool band called The Parlor Mob, from New Jersey. They fit perfectly into the bill with excellent musicianship and a sound vaguely reminiscent of classic Led Zeppelin. They seemed to be excited about our band as well. Their sound engineer Tony liked us so much that he ended up doing our sound for free, which made a huge difference for us.

The Prank

A few days before our show in Berlin, Dredg got a memo from the Berlin police department saying that they were looking for “Dradg” for questioning about some “property damage”.  Everyone in the band got really paranoid, so Drew Roulette (bass player) came up with a brilliant prank:

On the night of the Berlin show, he hired 2 actors to dress up like German police, come on stage in the middle of the set and arrest Gavin and Dino (singer and drummer)! It worked perfectly: Gavin and Dino were scared shitless!

Drew wanted all of the fans to think that the arrest was real for the first few days, so after the show we posted this video, which cuts off just before the prank is revealed:

Three days later we posted the full, uncut version:

Last Three Shows

Our last big German show was in Hamburg, which is a total party town. It’s kind of like the German Las Vegas: there are tons of bars and clubs, and gambling and prostitution are legal. There are transvestites and prostitutes walking around everywhere and sometimes they try to grab you. Lewis, Drew and I walked down the main prostitute street to check out the craziness and it was interesting. The clubs in Hamburg stay open all night so we celebrated our tour properly, drinking and dancing until 5am.

Two days later we played in Christiania, an anarchist commune town in the middle of Copenhagen where drugs are legal. The club there was awesome. It looked like a viking tavern – totally metal. The crowd was small so we decided it would be a good opportunity to practice for the Dark Opus 5th Anniversary show. We played Dark Opus all of the way through and it went way better than any of us thought it would. We got an awesome review from that show; one of the best live reviews we’ve ever gotten. You can read it here but it might give away a couple of surprises for this Thursday’s show.

The last show was in London, a city that I love. We played one of our best sets of the tour and the next day we flew home.

Summing it all up…

My friend let me borrow a Flip video camera for this trip, and I did my best to film cool stuff with it. I edited all of the footage together into a music video that I think sums up our tour well. Here it is – my official Dark Opus video for Pitfires of Hell:

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FLIGHT II

Click here to view the embedded video.

FINIS OMNE (grand finale!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch all of the Dark Opus music videos on our Youtube Page

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/

1. Every song will now have sweet visuals by different artists.

2. You will be able to watch the entire record for free on Youtube.

On November 19th, after all of the videos have been posted, we are going to have a big Dark Opus 5th Anniversary and video release party at Annie’s Social Club in San Francisco, where we will play the whole album straight through and project all of the videos as we go. Booya!

Here are the first two videos:

INTERLUDE & INFERNO

Click here to view the embedded video.

REVELATIONS

Click here to view the embedded video.