Shadows Fall Parting Ways With Atlantic Records?
MTV.com's "Metal File" has posted a "blind item" involving "one of the country's best-known metal acts [which] looks to be parting ways with its major label and plans to return to its original label home in the next few months." Speculation is that the band in question is the Massachusetts-based metal group SHADOWS FALL, whose last studio album — and Atlantic Records debut — "Threads of Life", has sold 93,000 copies in the United States since its April 2007 release — a fraction of the 301,000 sales total achieved by its predecessor, 2004's "The War Within", which was released by Century Media.
In a June 2006 interview with MTV.com, SHADOWS FALL singer Brian Fair spoke about jumping ship from Century Media Records to Atlantic for their most recent studio effort.
"We were friends with [the folks at Century Media] before we signed with the label, and they definitely went above and beyond what we thought an indie label could possibly do," he said. "They did offer us a great deal [to stay with the company before we signed with Atlantic], but we wanted to ... see if we could take it to another level.
"It was a tough decision [to sign with Atlantic], but one we felt we really needed to make. We've been together 10 years, so we came with a contract and we knew exactly what we wanted. If people weren't into that initial thing, we knew we could cut them off right away. We weren't settling. We were brutally honest right at the beginning, and it stopped a lot of those dinners right away.
"These labels knew they weren't signing BRITNEY SPEARS," Fair continued. "They were just getting a bunch of Masshole metalheads. We were just psyched to get some free pizza and beer."
Source: Blabbermouth
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14 Comments on "Shadows Fall Parting Ways With Atlantic Records?"
2. writes:
I agree that Threads is a great album, but it's not disappointing. They wouldn't be disbanding, just jumping back to a better, metal oriented label. Clearly CM took better care of them. 301,000 compared to 93,000 is a staggering difference. Someone fell short somewhere and it's the label's job to market.
Former Contributor
3. writes:
Threads was a good album but it couldn't hold up to the replay value of Of One Blood, Art of Balance, or War Within.
Fans probably weren't ready for such a clean sounding and straight forward album, even though the band have been gradually heading that way from the start.
This sounds like poor marketing, in conjunction with the band taking fans somewhere they weren't prepared to go...
Threads was such a mid-tempo affair, with extremely straightforward song structures. The band could wedge three songs like that in War within and still come away with positive feedback, but they took that notion about 5 songs too far with Threads.
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4. writes:
RM is totally right, I was definately not ready for such a clean sounding and straight forward album, I thought it was a bit too straight forward, like to the point where it just got really repetitive and formulated. Not a bad album though, it has some really geat songs like Failure Of The Devout, Forevermore and Final Call to name a few.
Former Contributor
6. writes:
Because it was stop-gap, mostly B-sides and covers albums it sold less. It was not marketed with any real effort beyond a few interviews, mag ads and a mini-tour. I happened to like Fallout quite a bit more than most.
It was thrown together but it flowed well. "Deadworld", "In Effigy" and "Seize the Calm" are all top shelf.
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9. writes:
Regerdless of my opinion of Threads of Life, fate hates me. I stole the very album from the Cd store, and it seems one of my "friends" stole it from right under my nose right before he moved. Irony is an a$$hole.
The few times I actually did listen to it, I noticed that it never kept my attention. the songs were good, it's simply that they didn't impress: if I listened to JUST this album from Shadows Fall, I would just write them off. The Light that Blinds held me in through the whole song, waiting to see where it would go next, everytime I heard it for weeks; Redemption ended up as just another Metal song after awhile.
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10. writes:
Century Media cleverly marketed The War Within. There was a lot of buzz around it, and the first pressing of the album included a bonus DVD and was priced at only $9.99 (from memory). As a result, first weeks sales were huge and the albums success continued from there on...
Threads of Life was a solid album, but contained too many clean vocals passages, and lost the hardcore feel that their previous albums had. Add in the fact Atlantic did a woeful job promoting the album, it was always doomed to fail.
Member
Former Contributor
13. writes:
I'm with z on this, the remastered OOB should sound great.
I've been a fan since 2001. Never bought that album though, and I only have 4 of the tracks that a friend made as a compilation disk for me ages ago (it also had Dark Funeral, Cynic and Dimmu Borgir if memory serves).
It will be interesting to see how SF translate the lesser sales from a major label after they dulled their edges...The idea of them ramping up velocity and heft would be nice.
Of One Blood, Art of Balance, War Within and Fallout are all great. There hasn't been enough time and albums under the bridge, they can get back to those albums if they want.
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14. writes:
Bringing back the Of One Blood sound would be pretty decent I think, although there are a few certain things about Of One Blood that really turned me off, one of them being there's too many acoustic sections in the songs that just sound out of place and wierd. Like Crushing Belial, a perfectly good song ruined by a wack-ass acoustic medly in the middle of the song, same with Root Bound Apollo.
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1. JonPaulJones writes:
Well, this is disappointing news. Threads of Life was really a great album.