Friday, July 04, 2008

How many albums til dropped?


Question: monte connor said on the chimaria dvd \"if somthing isnt happening by the second album, that band normally gets the axe\", Is this comon practice around the record industry or just roadrunner, do bands really normally have two albums to prove themselves, or is it different with earache being as you seem to keep hold of bands because of artistic value as opposed to just profit? From:


Answer: What Monte says is true and Roadrunner have to think like that but -being the straight talking good guy that he is- if you think about it, its actually just common sense, at least from a business perspective.Its quite common practise nowadays with labels tightening their belts,some even bail on a band after ONE album, or majors can even lose interest after ONE single!
Its cut-throat at the top.
The cost of launching new bands is astronomical-even if recordings can be done on a budget these days, touring and marketing costs are still sky-high.Eventually the economics are just not viable unless a band is paying its way.
A hell of a lot of goodwill is extended to new bands in the early stages by everyone, fans, promoters, journalists, the label - most people in the industry want bands to succeed.But time after time, if bands do not live up to their promise, then the knives quickly get sharpened and bloodshed ensues. Its not pretty, its a brutal business at times.Bands are often the last to realise theres a problem-obviously their 3rd album will "definately be their masterpeice", but if they dare actually venture out onto the road, they soon learn wether they have any fans or not- if clubs are empty after 2 albums,then something is wrong, and why bother, honestly?
Can you name any bands who created their defining masterpeice album on album 3? I can't!
Bands split up at this stage usually..
Journalists are often the executioners -they queue up to give the underperforming bands abysmal reviews, and reading the reviews is like the last rites.Bands get the picture that everything is not rosy by that stage.

In the 90's Earache kept faith with some of our major bands for albums 5-6-7-8 even when they were treading water, creatively speaking, with latter stage albums, even as their fanbases were dropping precipitiously, and terrible reviews were being printed,but this was the exception in the Industry. We acted through a sort of loyalty to the bands.Nowadays the economics of making records, especially in the torrent/megauploadnazi/rapidsharenazi era, means we cant extend such goodwill much beyond 2 albums ourselves, anymore.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dig, I disagree.

3rd album masterpieces:

Master Of Puppets
Reign in Blood
Rocket to Russia
The Ungovernable Force

MOP and RIB have never been bettered and both bands never achieved anything like those albums before or after.

Earache released:

Chronozon (masterful)
Necrotism (more or less single handedly created the melodic DM template - curse them!)
Covenant (landmark as far as breaking the band big)
Wolverine Blues (created Death 'n Roll)
Warmaster (showed they could be heavy without blasts and influenced a whole movement)
Mentally Murdered (not the shock value of the first two records but indicated that grind could be metal and intelligent)

Digby said...

Well,you cant argue with that eh- MOP and RIB are bona fide classics- so thanks for demolishing my theory dude! ha ha..
yeah, the way you put it- its like every bands 3rd album is the best.The point was more that i couldnt recollect a band that came from absolute obscurity to stardom on a 3rd album, meaning their debut was ignored, the second also cruelly overlooked, BUT by album 3 everyone stepped in line, got the program and hailed the 3rd as a classic, then the first 2 were re-issued to cope with demand..
Opeth might fit the bill actually- ooops there goes the theory again.