The Fox N Goose - Zombie Apocalypse 2, Sa-da-ko tour diary

Picture by John Liot Photography

Flesh eating fun, and bone crunching

metal!!

Another Halloweens gone by, which means only one thing as far as Sa-Da-Ko is concerned, another night of face paint running into stinging eyes, fake blood getting all over guitar pedals, trashing shirts and rotting flesh, all in the name of the Zombie Apocalypse!

This is the second year running for this Southport based event, so its still very much in its infancy, but in age only!! This years event was bigger, better and definitely louder than last years, with more zombies, more blood more

chainsaws and even a smurf and Kick Ass thrown into the mix!!
The Fox and Goose was the venue this time around, dark, dingy and cobwe

bbed, with bloodied medical apparatus hanging from the ceiling and skulls and skeletons dotted about, it definately set the scene for the carnage ahead.

As the crowd slowly grew, it was Stormcorporation who had the task of kicking things off, and kick things off they did, with a set to knock the skin off any decaying corpse!! I must make mention of the Storcorp costumes at this point, with a pirate, zombie, american footballer, Russian communist zombie, and Jedi, which appealed to the geek in me, (I

need those robes dude!!) Once again, Sa-Da-Ko recomends the FREE download of their debut album!!

Stormcorporation piccy by John Liot Photography

Next up was a band relatively new to the scene, this being only their second gig, Skyline Ablaze!

I cannot enthuse about these heavy metal bruisers enough, they tick all the right boxes delivering filth by the bucketload straight into ya lug holes! The guitars are faultless, goin from breakneck runs up the fret board, to beatdown effortlessly, defo ones to watch!!

Skyline Ablaze Picture by Chloe Simpson

Big respect to all who came down and got involved you bunch of mental bastards, I think the Fox will need to invest in new crowd barriers, as the one in place was no match for a Sa-Da-Ko crowd!!!

The Halloween weekend was, unfortunately cut short at this point however, as our Guitarist, and driver of our trusty white van "The Cougar Hunter" dropped some of the P.A. on his foot whilst we were packing up... We were due to play the Manchester Metal Collective Weekender the next day, sunday, but unfortunately had to pull out as Jay had severely damaged his toes and was unable to drive the band and gear down :( We really hate having to miss gigs, and our apology's to everyone concerned, especially Eyton, the organiser, but with more metal bands than you could shake a stick at, Im sure it was an awesome day none the less!!

So anyway, next up is the Vanilla Lounge in Wigan this Friday, 05 November at 18:30, withSynthetic Ecstasy courtesy of Make More Noise, hope to see you there... lets hope we get our driver back soon!!!

Keep it dirty people, inabitch!!! x

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 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!!!

Just a bit of a Sa-da-ko Update

Ok, so we are about midway thru recording the album at the moment things are in full swing, I still can’t issue a release date though but what I can tell you is that we still aiming for the end of October.

Which brings me on to the weird bogs I’ve been posting, we are currently organizing a small gig in our home town for Halloween so I apologies if the blogs are a bit random, but it’s just my attempt at viral marketing.

We’ve got quite a lot planned for the night including zombie related prizes, cheap drinks and a few surprises, as soon as I can say more Ill post it on here.

What about this bloody video?

Ah I’m glad you asked, we gathered together just before the weekend to see our 2nd to last draft, all is looking great and were really happy with the results, it’s just down to Tim at Dunloe productions to do the final tweaking and we can start rolling it out and show everyone the fruits of our labor.

Rauri from The Dept of Design is still away sunning it up in a far away land, which means we’ve had to bite our fingers patiently for our photographs, I have planned to meet him next week and go through the pics with him, as you can probably guess the next couple of week are going to be rather busy for Sa-da-ko.

Anyway that’s about it for now, can’t really give you much more info as a lot if it is a bit hush hush.

TA TA!!