Thoughts on a sixth birthday...
posted on 29 Dec 2005 under category History
Rampage Bellum Infinitum turns six today. And just as I was planning on blogging about this, I remembered that I wrote about how it turned five last year - and decided to go back and see exactly what I said about it then.
[(Link to Last year’s post on BI - )]
And then I saw I had two entries a year ago today, with the other announcing the release of the “Ticket to Hell” Websingle. While it’s technically a few days early, it’s put me in the mood to be reflective of the past year and where I expect to be heading…
First off, a few big music releases happened over the past year. Not as many or as soon as I’d have liked, but they happened. Aside from the Websingle, we also finally beat the curse of Crimson Frost by getting it released on December 13. (Of course, it should have been much earlier and under a different title, but I’m not about to tempt that bitch fate by complaining now…) I also of course managed to get Death Beast’s debut album out this year, my first pro-CD release ever.
Publicity has been on a bit of an upswing compared to my DIY efforts of previous years. In January I did that interview on Hell On Earth’s radio show (on Radio Glendon, CKRG out of Toronto). Rampage was featured along with a lot of other UHR bands in the “Apokalyptic Raidz” column in Metal Maniacs’ July ‘05 issue. And finally Death Beast got interviewed by Tom Wren for the latest Metal Nightmare zine.
Labels and distro have been a push. BWV closed, but was replaced by ADRs webstore. ADR managed to put out what I feel is the labels’ strongest release to date with Misantropical Painforest’s debut, but all of the work of the new release and the changeover of the distro took its toll on UHR - Crimson Frost is basically the only new thing released this year, except for the UHR Sampler 4 collection from March or so. I’ve got a couple of new releases lined up and more in the pipes waiting to be recorded or mastered, but some of it is beyond my control. Still, I feel like things will be moving forward on that very soon.
And finally, of course, it’s Bellum’s 6th birthday. I haven’t really gotten too deeply into the preproduction for the new version, so the old one is still firmly in my memory. This will be good, though, I think, because I want to remain connected to the emotions and ideas I had when first creating the songs. Hopefully this will help the new version have the same kind of impact that the first one had.
Time will tell, I guess - it always does.
(Evidently, this need to stay connected to my past was always a part of me. As it recedes even farther, I’m more and more grateful for these bread crumbs I left to the emotional and mental places I was in back in those times.)