News : LORD's new label, merchandise, and live release

Heavy metal band Lord have released a press release so chock-full of information, that they decided to also have a  cut-down version for you lazy bastards who can’t be buggered reading the full thing. On another note, you can read our review of their new album “Set in Stone” via this hyperlink. Now for the news, here are both the long and short versions for your convenience. Take your pick:

Short version:

Mainmain Lord Tim explains, “our label in Japan SOUNDHOLIC RECORDS has gone bust at the worst possible time – just before they paid us our advance and just after they shipped our new album SET IN STONE to the distributors and then to stores. We terminated our contract when we caught wind that something was up, but by that time it was too late and we’re now in a situation where we have thousands of copies of dead stock that now belong to the liquidator all over Japan that we can’t easily get recalled. We’re currently chatting to lawyers now to see what options we have available.

Thankfully we have signed a new deal with a company called RUBICON who will now be releasing SET IN STONE in Japan on November 21. As an incentive for people to buy this new release instead of the ‘dead’ SOUNDHOLIC stock, we’ve added two more bonus tracks and a bonus DVD with our video clip of the song ‘New Horizons’. This is great news for us because our Japanese tour starts the day the album is released.

Apart from those dramas, we’d like to announce we have a new range T-shirts coming soon and a live album ‘LORD – Live At The Metro 2006’ available soon for legal paid download. This album was originally limited to ten copies only as part of an exclusive eBay bundle pack and features the final performance of our first guitarist from the 2006 LORD lineup.

The end of the year is looking huge. We’ve been touring non-stop this year, next up we have a week in Japan and then some massive end-of-year shows back in Australia. All of the details about tour and a full detailed version of this press release is available at the LORD Website.”

Long version (with pictures!):

Things have been busy here in the LORD camp of late! The Set In Stone Tour is going great and has taken us all over Australia (even to Perth, FINALLY!), to New Zealand and in just under two weeks, to Japan – the first time we’ve been there under the LORD banner (of course, we’d previously toured there three times as DUNGEON a few years back). That should be amazing – we can’t wait!

Apart from watching endless stretches of countryside pass us by on tour, there’s been some interesting label developments in Japan, some awesome companies have come on board with us for endorsement deals and we have new merch that we would love you to buy!

Hope you’re comfortable, there’s lots to tell!

OK so firstly, the label news.

For the last few albums (both LORD and DUNGEON), we have been released in Japan through SOUNDHOLIC RECORDS. We found out last week that the company has gone bankrupt and is now in the hands of administrators. Our new album SET IN STONE was scheduled to be released on October 28 through them, but when they failed to pay our advance on time, we knew something was up and we terminated the deal. Unfortunately, it was too late to stop the albums going out from our now-defunct label to the distributors and subsequently to stores all over the country. That would be bad enough but seeing as we had terminated the deal during the bankruptcy process, it was actually illegal that SOUNDHOLIC released this album… however, their deal with their distributor was still valid and legal, which means for us to prevent this now illegal album being sold, it would involve some “fun” court action between us, the distributors and the administrators. In effect, we’re down an advance and have a few thousand copies of dead stock on the shelves all over Japan.

In short, a complete disaster at the worst possible time, seeing as we’re just about to tour there. We’re currently in talks to have this situation resolved.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however! At the eleventh hour, another label called RUBICON has stepped up to the plate to release Set In Stone on November 21, just in time for our tour! Of course, we still have all of those “dead” CDs still on the shelves, so to make the new one more attractive, we’ve added a bunch of extra bonus features as an added incentive for people to buy the new release. The original Japanese pressing came with the bonus track “Hard To Love” (a HAREM SCAREM cover), but to this we’ve now added the Australian bonus track “On A Night Like This” (our tongue-in-cheek KYLIE MINOGUE cover), and “Hear No Evil” which was from our limited release EP of the same name. If that’s not enough, it also comes bundled with a DVD that has the video clip for “New Horizons” – so all in all, a pretty impressive package that will hopefully turn our disaster into something more useful.

On to much more positive news, we’re honoured to announce that we have signed endorsement deals with the following excellent companies: LINE 6 effects, SABIAN cymbals, PRO-MARK drum sticks, AQUARIAN drum heads and DRUM CRAFT drums. Big cheers to Brendon and Dan at Dynamic Music, and Andrew at Music Link for helping us out with this stuff!
We’re absolutely stoked to be associated with these companies! A few of you may know that all of the tones we’ve used on every LORD release from Ascendence onwards was from a LINE 6 PODxt, and we all use PODs live in our touring rigs – it was a logical conclusion that we would be officially using their products considering the great things we’ve been saying about them just as fans for the last few years. We’re also the first band in Australia to be officially endorsed by DRUM CRAFT. As a long-term user of a competitor’s drum gear, trying to convince our drummer Damo to switch to DRUM CRAFT was not going to be an easy task… until he sat behind a kit and was sold immediately! Some of the most amazing drums you’ll ever hear – look out for them on tour and on the next LORD recordings.
Finally, we’d like to tell you about our new merch!

As a lot of LORD Forum regulars would have seen by now, in addition to our black Set In Stone shirts, we now have white versions of those shirts, available exclusively from our online store and directly from us at shows. We debuted those shirts in Perth a couple of weeks back and they’ve been selling like mad ever since.

But maybe white isn’t your style and you already own all of our black shirts? No problem! In the next couple of weeks we’ll be getting a shipment of new “Redemption” shirts which feature exclusive artwork designed by Felipe Machado and all of our 2009 tour dates on the back. The art looks sensational and we can’t wait to see the final  products ourselves!
Apart from shirts, very soon we’ll be offering legal downloads of “LORD – Live At The Metro 2006”. This album was recorded on December 23, 2006 in Sydney and features the final performance of our original guitarist MAV STEVENS. The album was originally offered as a limited-to-ten-copies-only eBay bundle but will now soon be available to buy from your favourite online download service.

That’s about it! Hope we didn’t lose you somewhere back along the way in such a big release but there was a lot to tell you all. We can’t wait for Japan, and we have some pretty huge shows lined up to close 2009’s touring schedule that will have everything from ESP guitar giveaways to free copies of our albums, and some of the best talent in the country sharing the stage with us.

Cheers everyone, thanks for your support! See you on the road!