Sound and Fury Festival Lineup

For those hardcore fans, the full Sound and Fury 2012 lineup has been officially revealed today. The festival will take place at Earl Warren Fairgrounds in Santa Barbara, California from July 20-22. All tickets will be will call pickups, and you should get them in advance as they have sold out in previous years. Hopefully there will continue to be no repeats of 2010's riots.

This years performers are-

Alpha & Omega, Bane, Bankrobber, Basement, The Beautiful Ones, Bent Life, Black Breath, Blacklisted, Born Low, Brawl, Ceremony, Comeback Kid, Creatures, Dead End Path, Disgrace, Donnybrook, Downpresser, Early Graves, Earth Crisis, Everything Went Black, Fire & Ice, Focused Minds, Friend or Foe, H20, Hardside, Harms Way, Harness, Holy Fever, Hour of the Wolf, Ill Intent, Ivy League, Mindset, Minority Unit, Mountain Man, Naysayer, New Brigade, Night Birds, No Tolerance, Nomads, Piece By Piece, Retaliate, Rival Mob, Rotting Out, Sabertooth Zombie, Seahaven, Silver Snakes, Single Mothers, Souvenirs, Suburban Scum, Take Offense, Terror, The Mongoloids, Touche Amore, Tough Luck, The Wrongside, Xerxes, Xibalba

Free Download of "True Romance"

Head over to billboard.com for a free download of Motion City Soundtrack's "True Romance." You can also watch a video of the band explaining the creation of the first single off their upcoming album Go. You can also read an interview with the band as well as see their US tour dates at ourstage.com.

Albums Out This Week

Here are a few of the albums being released on 5/29-

Vehicle City Blues - The Swellers (7'')

 The Hottest Thing That’s Cool - The Atom Age

 









The Plot Against Common Sense - The Future of the Left

 

2:54 - 2:54

Valtari - Sigur Ros

Fort Atlantic - Fort Atlantic

What is All Time Low Up To?

All Time Low has set up teaser on their website with a counter set to expire on Friday at 4pm EST. Showing the following album art, one can only hope they are releasing a new single (and perhaps announcing their next album).

Laura Jane Grace Hits the Stage

This weekend, Against Me!'s lead singer Tom Gabel, now Laura Jane Grace, took to the stage for the first time since coming coming out as transgender. Rolling Stone, who broke the original story about Grace, followed up with the singer after the show in their article here. It has also been confirmed that the group's next album will be entitled Transgender Dysphoria Blues.

Warped Stages

Head to the Vans Warped Tour site to decide which stages you'll most want to check out this summer. This year's stages include Kia Rio Stage/Kia Soul Stage, Monster Energy Stage, Tilly's Stage, House of Marley Stage, Ernie Ball Stage, Kevin Says Stage, Acoustic Basement, Silent disco, Cherri Bomb, and Skinny Lister.

UK's Failing Fests

     On Friday, Hypebot ran an article listing the numerous UK festivals that have been scraped for this summer. With the well-known and highly anticipated Reading and Leeds festivals sweeping the alternative world every summer with their classic dirt field set up, other UK festivals aren't seeing the over 80,000 patrons that these twin giants do. While T in the Park, Slam Dunk, and Sonisphere are all well known even here in the states, you may be surprised to hear that the latter also saw the chopping block this year along with nearly a dozen others.
     In 2009, Kevin Watson presented the UK Music Festival Report at Live UK: The Summit and UK Festival Awards & Conference. Here he notes that from 2004 until 2008 the total licensed capacity of UK festivals rose from just under 1.2 million to over 1.8 million. 2009 saw a slight drop in those numbers, which Watson said indicates that "the market has reached saturation point." With 3 million people attending UK festivals in 2009 despite the price of tickets skyrocketing, how much is too much?
     Although the UK can draw attendees from continental Europe, it is still a smaller nation which makes performers and concert goers alike wonder how many times will a big name band play there in one summer and for what price? Although the market it rife with smaller, though still talented, bands, these are not what will draw droves of fans willing to shell out top dollar for a ticket.
     Cloud 9, another recently cancelled festival, stated in its cancellation letter that last year saw their attendance number reach nearly 5,000. However, that number is low when compared to major fests like Reading and Leeds. Cloud 9 stated, "The festival environment this year has been incredibly difficult for many small, independent festivals and has proved to be too challenging for us to overcome." While no major bands graced their released lineup, a fact that could contribute to their inability to create needed revenue, Sonisphere was slated to have rock idols Queen, KISS, Incubus, Marilyn Manson and more.
      However, they too stated, "Putting the festival together in what is proving to be a very challenging year was more difficult than we anticipated," and pulled the show from the listings.Despite that setback, Sonisphere is still set to run in other European countries - including Poland, which presented a limited number of free tickets to the UK audience.
      While we watch the UK festival industry contract, it makes one wonder why Vans Warped Tour is taking a limited group out to London in November.