Loathe

Day 2 of our tour kicked off pretty late. If there was one thing we needed after Day 1, that was some rest, and the powers-that-be gave us just that in the form of Daylight Saving Time. From Loathe, to all time keepers of this world, thank you.

So we got up around 10, for the most part still tired. Jake provided us with ample sleeping space, so any soreness we felt was due to our own indiscretions during the live show.

After a round of coffees, teas and bacon sandwiches, we showered. In turns, not sure what you were thinking there.

Wales is quite far away from Birmingham. Of course, yours truly dosed off most of the way, except for when he was buying coffee and muffins at some Services.

The Duke in Neath, Wales turned out to be a real pub, complete with day-after pub smell and punters. We had a good sound, and played to quite a few people who were really appreciative and showed it. Apparently metal bands that play in Wales are respected for taking the effort in doing so, which is cool.

We met a bunch of really interesting people, most with pseudonyms such as a gentleman ‘called’ Nightmare. The owner of the pub, Tony, is a real Welsh gentleman with a soft lilt to his voice and he is a great guy! Below are some photos of us with some people we met and SLAB doing their thing live in Wales. Enjoy!

Off to sleep on pub benches now. Let’s see about the smell of piss and farts.

UPDATE: It was tough to sleep on the pub benches. Especially with the yelling and generally drunken revelry still going on. That said, Tony was a great host and he gave the brave ones from us some very, very special shots of liquor.

Before anything else is said, we’d like to thank you all for the phenomenal response we got from you since we uploaded the first song from our new album, Despondent By Design. Be it on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace, you guys have quite simply rocked our world with your awesome comments! Thank you very much! We shall have a new song for you very soon.

Back to the album, this is some info about it.

It is called Despondent By Design, has 10 tracks on it and shall have a total run time of 41 minutes. The tracklist is as follows:

1. Hellfire
2. As Cold As They Come
3. November
4. The Devil’s Playground
5. Black Light
6. Children Of A Lesser God
7. This Respect
8. This Overwhelming Grasp Of Solitude
9. The Dark Diaries
10. The End Of All Things Good

Lyrically, this is what the songs are about:

• Hellfire deals with the story of a couple who push the boundaries of an unholy relationship and suffer the consequences thereafter.
• As Cold As They Come speaks of the abuse of a partner in a relationship, laying the blame on them for leaving, inventing faults and then leaving them hung out to dry
• November speaks of the loss of a dear person, Jade, in the month of November, of things planned and turned to shit and the regret and sadness from this untimely departure.
• The Devil’s Playground is the place we find ourselves in so many times, the crossroads of indecision, generally after betrayal and trying to take a next step with someone else after it’s over.
• Black Light is about the end of one’s life. Some people see death as dark, macabre and unwanted, but for others, though black, it’s also a guiding light.
• Children Of A Lesser God treats the endless cycle of physical and sexual abuse and that which stems from it.
• This Respect is about people who use the word respect as a punchline without ever getting into the merits of what respecting others really means.
• This Overwhelming Grasp Of Solitude is about the sense of despair one gets when they feel they are not understood even by the people closest to them and whom they love.
• The Dark Diaries is a dialogue between a shrink and a patient, in which the shrink repeats that it’s not so bad and it could be worse, while the patient screams that this simply isn’t good enough, this is not what he/she wants to hear, this does not lessen my pain.
• The End Of All Things Good speaks of a vendetta carried down through generations, owing to an a horrid act carried out long ago yet never spoken of or atoned for.

And speaking of the end of all things good, I think that’s more than enough positive vibes for the day I’ll leave you with our track Black Light for our enjoyment once again, and the promise of more new stuff soon!

Black Light by loathe

Hey again everyone! We are now precisely 24 days away from going on tour and we are really looking forward to it! The flyer is online in the previous post, however, here are the dates in text format, come check us out if you will.

24th October, Leicester, Exiles @ Redeemer w/Spirytus

25th October, Neath (Wales), The Duke

26th October, Stourbridge, Katie Fitzgeralds, w/Godsize

28th October, Wakefield, The Snooty Fox

29th October, Manchester, The Star & Garter, w/MWP

30th October, Wolverhampton, The Giffard Arms

31st October, The Unicorn, Camden, London, w/Nebukadnezza & many more!

01 November, Birmingham, Scruffy Murphy’s, w/Morgue Orgy

As a special bonus (not really, this is something we’ve promised for some time now, the new song is below in our soundcloud player. The song is called Black Light and is the first to be published from our new album “Despondent By Design”. Said album should be released soon.

Hope you like what you hear! Later amigos…..

Black Light by loathe

Plenty of new things in the Loathe camp. By end of this month we should have quite a few of the items on this list:

New album (we are listening to the unmastered mix right now, and it sounds sickeningly good. Not blowing our own trumpet here, we’re just in love with how it sounds, and very satisfied too!)

New video (y’know, snippets of our idiocy at the studio while recording the album) New website (which should be like a town centre to all our profiles across a bunch of sites. Pretty cool looking so far. Still coding right now, but promise to have it online soon)

New tour dates (we do have them, we just need to get moving on a flyer, and then all the dates will be published. UK be warned)

New gig (yeah that doesn’t sound right does it? Anyway, we figure we ought to play live at least once every six months in Malta, so once the damn summer tapers off and things chill a little, get ready to see our drunken selves on stage)

That’s pretty much it for now! We’ll be touch with a checklist of what’s done soon!

Looking forward to seeing you all!

love

the Loathe boys

We ain’t dead yet, just quietly working under the hood for the duration of summer!

Some of you may know, summer in Malta is a very particular kind of experience. To give you an example, the temperature today is 30 Degrees Celsius or 86 Fahrenheit, sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky, and essentially, very, very hot. This continues for most of summer, and only gets worse come September, when temperatures fall slightly but humidity almost doubles.

As you can imagine, this is not the ideal weather to play our brand of metal. More so in our practice space, which is a one car garage, completely soundproofed, with no air conditioning, and a number of valve amps inside. It’s fair to say that while the Swedes have their saunas and the Turks have their baths, we get down to practice in our little hot house.

All that said, we haven’t been inactive. The new album, ‘Despondent By Design’, has been recorded for a few weeks now, but we haven’t rested since. The artwork is getting drafted by our good friends Cedric and Clint at MadMadeMedia (formerly Gloryhole) and we have some really good ideas, all of which we can’t wait to unveil. A tour in the UK is also in the works, courtesy of our best friends Slab, and this should cover a lot of the United Kingdom come October.

We have also been practicing regularly throughout the week, and a new song, one that came too late to be on the album is now complete too. The song carries the working name ‘Wakkafew’, which really is an inside joke too complex to ever explain.

We may also be playing a few festivals locally, however a lot of that is still shrouded in secrecy (or uncertainty?) so I can’t at all be too definite about those.

And within the cool confines of air conditioned offices and houses, we’ve been busy with ideas for the new website, which will replace this one at this location, getting new people to listen to our stuff on Twitter, ( @loathetheband anyone?) and our facebook page: www.facebook.com/loathe

Finally, as a bonus to you loyal readers, here goes with a few live pics of the band from over the years. We’ll be sharing more media soon, and hopefully will have tracks for you from the album very very soon!