R.I.P Sophie Lancaster

You kind of get used to hearing news stories about people’s intolerance to others and to be honest you become desensitized to a lot of it, however I’ve kind of found this story hard to forget, if you’ve not heard the story of Sophie Lancaster before it’s important to understand the situation surrounding her death.

Sophie was killed by two idiots who kicked her in the head while trying to protect her boyfriend who was also attacked; apparently the couple had been walking through a park when a gang of 5 lads mocked them for being “Goths.” 3 of the gang attacked Sophie’s boyfriend and knocked him to the ground, Sophie was then kicked & stamped in the head repeatedly by the other two lads while cradling and protecting her boyfriend.

Sophie' Mother has Lanched this short animated film highlighting the inccident called Sophie: A Dark Angel on what would have been her 23rd birthday, people gatherd on the day and released twenty three black balloons in here honour. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the charity can visit http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com/.

People’s constant intolerance to other people astounds me; in fact some of the articles and news stories I have heard regarding the incident in a lot of ways have been a bit insensitive. This “goth” tag seems to be put on anyone who likes metal and looks slightly alternative and it really annoys me. What doesn’t help is when so called journalist play with these tags, here is what the urban dictionary defines the word Goth.

Goth -Someone who likes the darker side of things.

They usually listen to death metal and goth music, such as Dismember and Bauhaus. Marilyn Manson is NOT goth. He's just...weird. Real goths are not depressing and suicidal like the posers you see at Hot Topic. Goths are fun to be around and aren't afraid to laugh at themselves every so often. They don't worship Satan and aren't evil despite what some ignorant people might say. Goths don't all dress alike either. They like to create their own unique style. Goths are also very intelligent and creative. A lot of them are writers and artists. Goths DON'T envy the popular people. They are what they are because it makes them happy. Goths would rather stay who they are and be among the so called "freaks" than be like everyone else and be popular. They understand that there are more important things in life than popularity, and usually succeed in life while the popular ones don't become much of anything.
If someone becomes "Goth" because they couldn't get any friends or are depressed and angry all the time, they are most likely a poser.

this article reads like it was written by some blonde bimbo from the east coast of America whos probaly only ever had a conversation with people from the same background as her, hows it feel when someone stereo types you, cunt!

I'm on a full on rant now, sorry

sIMo

\m/

SA-DA-KO: CD ARTWORK

If youve been cool enough to add yourself to the our facebook page, you'll notice weve been getting a bit of feedback and input from the fans there regarding our CD artwork, this has actually been a great help to us, but also its pushed me to try and design something special.

So I thought I would share with you our designs so far. the pictures you see will be the front cover inside sleeve and back of the cd.

Ive mentioned before about the department of design who took our photos bur Ruari has helped us a lot with art direction and gave me a few ideas, if your a band or artist looking for help regarding this I would defo get in touch even if its just for a bit of direction.

Thats it for now, let us know what you think

Laters

sIMo

Sa-da-Ko: The Brutal Legend

Sa-da-kO can’t seem do anything wrong at the moment, it seems that Ormagoden himself has been smiling down from upon high has granted us the gift of metal!!!

I’m sorry, I’ve been rather involved in Brutal Legend this week and it’s kind of forced me to re-think about my metal roots and it also means that my IPod now has a few new additions from my old CD collection, but more importantly it’s made me realize that my love for metal is even more epic than I first thought!!

Back to what I was saying, it really does seem that the gods are smiling on Sa-da-kO at the moment, every gig played seems to reap its own rewards and its nice to play to unfamilar crowds and have people come up and hang with the band afterwards.

Last night Sa-da-kO appeared in the Shakespeare (Southport), and the gigs keep comin!!! heres a few photos of the last couple:

As for an update Sa-da-kO are almost finished on the album and all is well, the chaps plan to knuckle down and have a release date by the end of next week by which time we will be able to publish some upcoming live shows!!!

Sa-da-kO - Incassum - Pray for Your Sins at Manchester' Grand central

Before I start this blog I'm going to mention, I have always loved Manchester, The place has always had a good vibe about it, there's a strong metal scene here and a lot of sub-culture about and in a lot of ways it beats Liverpool hands down on having a strong underground scene.

So as you can imagine I was a little worried about playing Grand Central mainly because I had heard that there was a tough crowd here, but saying that I have to say the people of Manchester couldn't have been more welcoming.

From the offset I found that the promoter (Mark) and sound crew really wanted the bands to do well, they did their best to ensure that the night went well and the crowd were kept happy, So with that in mind I'm raising my goblet to the crew at Grand Central last night and everyone one who came and checked us out.

The bands themselves were quality and I would recommend anyone who follows homegrown metal to check these out, first up was Pay For Your Sins:

These chaps are from just down the road from us and its always nice to meet some fellow Merseyheads out and about, They love fast riffs, big choruses and heavy Breakdowns. In fact they say themselves that they're everything you would want from a metalband!! if you like killwitch engage and like your metal with a side order of rythmic chugging you will love these guys.

Were due to play with these again in December at Drakes Bar in Southport on the 18th December so come and show your support.

Incassum headlined last nights shanagans, they have recently released there album through casket records produced by Andy Giblin are a tight band, they tote their influences as Nevermore, Lamb of God, Emperor, Nightwish, Arch Enemy, Iron Maiden, Opeth, Killswitch Engage, Pantera, Black Sabbath and you can here this in there sound, if your can think of a heavyier, better and darker Eveneseance you'll be on the right track. check 'em out and make your own mind up, cool guys and a cool sound.

Marketing Metal Band 3: Viral Marketing

A question a lot of people ask me is: How can we get our fans to encourage their friends to come to our shows, or even listen to our music?

It’s pretty much a sad fact that the general public will not go and see a band they’ve never heard of before, so we need to build the hype beforehand and get our listeners involved in what our brand and USP (Unique Selling Point) is.


There is actually a hundred and one different ways to do this, some examples of this are actually in this blog on a few posts I’ve written about marketing metal bands, however our biggest ally in marketing is word of mouth. It’s cheap and it offers validation to the recipient.

For example, how many times have we seen a trailer for a film and thought it looked OK, until a friend tells you it’s the best film he’s seen all year; this is then further validated when another friend tells you the same.


Now, the term "viral marketing" is being thrown around the music industry more and more these days and for very good reason, it's one of the most effective ways of building your audience Ive taken some good ideas from varous potholes in the net to give you some ideas, check em out!


Using the Built-in Trust Factor

When friends tell friends about something that they like, a buzz begins. They usually trust each other with information about new things that each discover and music is no different from a great burger place, a great tv show, or movie. The fact that a friend says, "you should listen to this band" makes it a lot more likely that you'll want to listen to a new band rather than, "Hey! You should listen to our music!" (Coming directly from the band through their marketing, I don’t know about you but I get thousands of these via Myspace). This is often how people find out about new music.

Matter of fact, viral marketing (word-of-mouth) is one of the main ways we hear about "great things". When you think about how much advertising of poor products are directed out you daily, it's no wonder the trust-factor simply does not exist when we initially hear about something new coming from the mouth of the advertiser (in your case, you, or your band). This is why it is so important that you encourage positive word-of-mouth and do your best to stop bad word-of-mouth. Make sure that you always do things in an honest way...it's that powerful!


Guerilla Marketing for Musicians

Marketing yourself by viral, or word-of-mouth means, is inexpensive because it is usually so easy to implement. Doing the right thing (integrity) and going out of your way to make your fans' experience with you amazing, while creating great music, will ensure that your fans help spread the word about you and your band!



Make Your Music Viral

Here are some great ways to get word-of-mouth circulating about you and your music:

• Post videos of your band on YouTube playing covers & original material.
• Get your music on MySpace and other social networking sites.
• Include a "forward this to a friend" link on your site and email communications.
• Encorage fans to tag themselves on your photos at shows on pages like Facebook
• Encourage your fans to bring their friends to your next show!
• Offer two-for-one deals on ticket sales.

Simple Things You Can Do To Put You High in Your Fans Minds

• Sign autographs at all of your shows.
• Encorage drinking games and invlove fans in your gig by bringing them up on stage.
• Offer autographed headshots for free.
• Perform at benefits (non-profit events) simply for the good publicity.
• Send free mp3 music downloads to your fans on your mailing list. Encourage them to pass the file on!

SA-DA-KO LIVE: Halloween Hell Ride & the Zombie Apocalpyse in Southport

Halloween (also spelled Hallowe'en)[1] is an annual festival celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints, but is today largely a secular celebration.
Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, visiting haunted attractions, pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films. Thats all very well but let me tell you about this Halloween:

Around 200 people came to watch us play at Drakes bar in Southport on Friday the 30th Oct, we made a lot of new friends and the people who came as zombies looked wicked. Everyone drank, made loud noises and generally had a good time.

For us it was an end of a months hard work of planning and promoting and getting our name about as well as enjoying gigging with old friends of ours RISEDEADMAN. The Liverpool based metal band have been out of action for a while , due to a department of their long time drummer Ste Davis, but it was nice to have the lads back with a new drummer and ready to bring their unique sound to local haunts.

At midnight we took the stage and the festival of Samhien was welcomed in by the sound of Sa-da-ko, the pit exploded and bodies were pretty much slain about the room. it all made for an awsome night and one we will treasure for long times to come.

I've put the pictures on the SA-DA-KO facebook page as there is far to many to put here so if you get a minute check em out, they look great.

Gotta go for now I'm afraid as I'm off work at Aku Studios at the moment and intend to get ahead with this album as much as I can.

Next stop Manchester's Grand Central with Incassum on Nov the 12th, See you there

Marketing Metal Bands 2

In the past ive posted some other ideas of how to market your band, and because of my day job I regularly stumble accross valuable promotional and marketing ideas. I came accross thie blog by Andrei Petrik & thought I would share it as it has some great info here.

8 Lessons for marketing from heavy metal

I am always amazed every time I go see a metal band with the amount of people actually attend the concerts. That’s not the amazing part; the amazing part is realizing that metal bands are able to accomplish this with minimum or no airplay and with very little marketing budgets. Take Iron Maiden for example, for more than 2 decades they have been able to fill arenas across the planet consistently, while artists from other genres with massive marketing dollars and over saturated air play on radio and TV can barely hold it together for couple of albums. The obvious question is how do the metal bands get people to come to the shows consistently? Judging from my own experiences, minor research and analysis, there’s something that metal bands are doing right. Perhaps marketers can learn a thing or two from heavy metal and apply it to their own strategies. Here’s what the metal bands do to pack the venues, consistently.

Quality Matters
Believe it or not, successful bands spent countless hours and sacrificed a great deal to become good at what they do. Practice and sacrifice. If by some chance a band sells out a venue during their first gig and completely butchers the show, no one will come back to see them again. After all, the core product is the music. Successful bands are good at what they do and always deliver quality show. When you go see Iron Maiden or Slayer show, you know you’ll get the best out of it every time.

Give Them Something To Talk About
Even if the band plays a killer set, they’ve got to get the audience to talk about the show the next day. It could be anything from pyrotechnics to lighting, stage props to mosh-pits, or just simply playing flawlessly. The first time I saw Hatebreed for example, the next day I was telling my friends (even the ones that aren’t metal fans) about a huge circle pit the band got going.


Engage The Fans
Metal bands are great at engaging their audience. They spend time signing autographs outside the tour buses, they get the audience to sing along, and instigate mosh pits. Engaging and interacting with the fans is pivotal when building a loyal fanbase. Anyone ever attended a music festivals knows that performing bands will usually mingle with the fans and sign autographs after they’ve performed.

Build Loyalty
Metal bands that stay true to their roots, music and their fans build a loyal following. Fans that make a personal and emotional connection with bands tend to feel disappointed and frustrated when their favorite metal band “sells out”. Case in point Metallica; they lost a loyal fanbase when they released Load record that signified change in music direction. Only recently Metallica has made an attempt with Death Magnetic to lure back original fans that were with the band from Day 1. Loyal fans are the grease in gears that will prolong bands’ careers.

Scarcity Drives Demand
Another reason why some metal bands can pack each and every show is because they don’t come around too often. There are only so many times in a given time frame fans will pay to see their favorite bands. Playing too often in a given market saturates it and makes the event a commodity. Some bands strategically plan out their touring schedules and routes to ensure that there’s enough demand to fill the arena while commanding a top, yet fair dollar for the seats. Although creating artificial low supply and scarcity is unethical, but saturating the market with product or endless licensing agreements not only devalues the product and the brand, it will also eat into your margins and eventually drive down demand.

Exclusivity
Heavy Metal or any other sub-genre of Metal is not for everyone. Outsiders often dismiss it as real music because the barrier to understanding the genre is fairly large. No one but metal fans have the clearest understanding of this. For the most part they don’t really care. What they care about is the sense of exclusivity the metal bands create. Exclusivity creates a sense of community, pride and ownership.

Cross Promote
Metal bands are very effective at cross-promoting their music. Although most metal fans share similar tastes, but it is a common practice for metal bands to tour together and cross introduce fans to other bands’ music. In recent years, veteran bands such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Metallica have taken younger bands on the road. This introduces the young to the old and vice-versa.

Promote With No Budget
All of the methods and strategies discussed above can be accomplished with low or no marketing budget. Metal bands let the fans do all their marketing for them. Loyal and happy fans become advocates

Sa-da-kO Live - Tearing Manchester a New One

Just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone involved in the Gig we’ve just played in Manchester’s club academy, the turnout was great, the reception was warm and the other bands were pretty cool too. We hope to return to Manchester on Nov 12th at Grand Central for another truly insane metal show!

The bands we played with on sat were:




Hayabusa
A 3 piece rock/metal outfit hailing from Manchester, I personally thought that these were the best band on for the evening, without the obligatory love for us of course; the guys used a mixture of backing tracks, retro and bizarre effects to create some nice & bouncy tunes, and reminded me of a lot of early Incubus, rage against the machine stylings and old friends of ours Number One Son.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/hayabusaband?ref=ts
http://www.myspace.com/hayabusaband



Odins Blood
Now before any gig we like to check out the bands we play with on myspace etc really just to get a feeling of how the night is going to go etc, and I have to admit I was looking forward to this band. The music is entertaining and I kind of like the angle they’ve gone for , haIling themselves as epic power metal I was expecting fun & frolics but I can’t help but feel this band take themselves a little too seriously. Check em out none the less.
http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=odins+blood&init=quick
http://www.myspace.com/odinsblood


Whats next?

Well it’s the Zombie Apocalypse of course, should be good, we seemed to have brushed away the cobwebs with the Mnchester gig and the weaponry is sharper than ever , see you in the next life scums!!

Zombies on Chapel Street & Southport Zombies

The warning signs of the next few weeks are starting to appear and the hard work we have put in is starting to come to light. the viral campaign for drakes is kicking off and after our zombie attack yesterday everyones a chatter with the happenings on facebook and on a local website called Southport GB.

Zombies in Southport and Zombies are everywhere good job the men in white suits are hear to clean it up!!

Sa-da-ko and the art of Zhang Peng

Sa-da-ko has always been about the art just as much as the music, with that in mind, every so often I stumble across some kind of art or media that strikes a chord and either inspires or makes me think that’s what our music looks like. So I’m mooching around on the internet updating my statuses etc with the usual bullshit and I stumbled across some amazing art work by a Chinese artist called Zhang Peng, I took one of the images you see below and posted it in my last blog but I thought I’d put a few more on here just to share it with you. Hope you like it......

What Does Sa-da-ko Mean?

Sa-da-ko`Sadako` is a Japanese name, used for females. Although written romanized the same way, the kanji can be different. It is comprised of the two parts `sada` and `ko`; collectively, they mean `chaste child`.Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako

SA-DA-KO AND THE DEPT OF DESIGN

I woke up this morning to the hellish screams of our cats hissing and spitting at a rogue cat who had climbed through the cat flap, not the best thing to happen with a class4 beer hangover, but ah well this sunday and so I check all the usual SN messages and catch up on few missed status updates.

Then I turn to my email and low and behold my old friend Mr Ruauri from the Dept of Design has been kind enough to send some of the touched up photographs he had done for us.

I have to admit these pictures have far exeeded any of our expectation and hes really captured what we were after, in fact if your in a band, need a graphic designer or just generally looking to have a creative mind on board with a project I would strongly recommend this guy to you, just look!!!

Sa-da-kO - Rotten Alive in Manchester

Just had a bit of good news!! Were confirmed to open for Odin’s Blood at Manchester academy on the 24th October, this will be an awesome addition do our deathly cold winter shows, very apt!!

We’ve created a number of various events on the on the SN tree, keep your eyes peeled, Tickets can be bought either from the band, or be clicking this well know saying…

“I like metal so much I would stab my Nan just so I can see Sa-da-ko Live in its rotten flesh”

The Day we all Die

Ive had to stop recording the album, it hardly seems worth it now, we must fight to survive!

Ive sent this to the other survivors today:

More and more Survivors are joining the fight and things are gathering momentum for the night looks like there could be a war on the horizon, but how do we combat them?
On Friday head down to Drakes, dress as one of them crazies it’s the best way to sneak passed them, their aggressive but dumb as hell. We’re going to need to check you for infection when you get here, it’s just a precaution but if we’re going to beat this we’ve got to be able to get rid of any chance of the infection spreading.

Saturday we fight back!!! we need combat gear and weapons, lots of weapons! Doesn’t worry the drink will make you stronger, we’ve got the old man mixing up a cocktail of cure and adrenalin, and I’ve had some it makes you feel like you can take on elephant.
Signs are beginning to show as we slowly edge toward Armageddon. Last week there was an article in the champion about swine flu on the rise, the lies are starting and the UK is starting to crumble, I will try and contact you again but the web is unsecure, look for the man and the sandwich board for more information.

http://www.sa-da-ko.com/

I pray this is taken seriosly!! Im going to scope out the safe house tonight and look for places to hide, the man with sandwich board will be the key!!

Aku, Zombie & Sa-da-ko Metal Night!!

New media to be released, as part of our Zombie evening!

Flyers should be with us in the next 2 weeks and we intend to pass them out within the next month, The night is shaping up and we intend to have a lot going on, I cant mention more than that im afraid.

More news soon!!!