METEOR CITY intro

When Welcome to MeteorCity came out, I tried to get a distributor called Bayside to buy it. It featured the first released songs of a lot of bands no had ever heard of before: Goatsnake, The Atomic Bitchwax
“The Atomic Bitchwax?” the executive on the phone demanded of me.
“Yeah. Have you ever heard of a band called Monster Magnet? The gui“
“The Atomic Bitchwax? No one will ever buy a band called The Atomic Bitchwax! Who would say that name in a record store? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, it’s a new genre called sludge rock, stoner rock“
“What is it like?”
“It’s heavy, downtuned“
“Like heavy metal?”
“It has the same influences. Black Sabbath, for example“
“Heavy metal’s dead. No one will want that. What’s your label called again?”
That distributor is now one of the two official distributors of Man’s Ruin.
Yes, my friends, they mocked us, they reviled us, and now suddenly everybody wants to get involved.
It’s a hard transition to make. We used to belong to an obscure musical cult, and now bands we like get radio airplay. How does MeteorCity respond?
We’re doing what we’ve always done. We’re ignoring the trends, refusing to go back over the ground we’ve already covered, and searching the world, as always, for the coolest new music (cosmic/sludge/groove/doom) no one’s listening to, getting ready to unleash it on an unsuspecting but already whiplashed world. And damn, do we have some cool things in store for you this year. It will be like listening to Welcome to MeteorCity all over again.

Most notably, we’ve finally done something worthy of our reputation, which takes a huge load off our shoulders. Yes, we’ve saved the worldor obliterated it, depending on your philosophical perspective. We’ve released the first album from Solace. Thundering riffs, haunting melodies, clobbering jams and stunning lyrics. The Web’s premier heavy radio station has added it to rotationgo to HardRadio and check out the Hard Music page (http://www.hardradio.com/hr3lead.html). And Mjuice.com has just put up an interview with Tommy Southard, Solace’s guitarist, along with lots of MP3’s (http://www.mjuice.com/mjuice/showcase?id=solace). We’re getting excited phone calls and email messages from people all over the world about this album. But, what’s most thrilling to us is that Further (their CD) contains no cute pop tunesthese are raging songs lasting an average of 7 minutes each, and somehow they’re catching on anyway. Solace has done absolutely nothing to change themselves to appeal to the world: the world is changing to reach out to them. Hell yeah.
A lot of people, needless to day, are upset about the delay our albums are experiencing getting released in the rest of the world. MeteorCity customers get them first anyway, so no problems thereif you’re getting this message, you’re probably getting our music before its official release date anyway, so you don’t care. But, just so there are no hard feelings, we’re giving those of you outside of North America exactly what you deserve: both Solace and Lowrider are going to be getting killer, amazing, double gatefold vinyl releases in Europe and the rest of the world outside of North America. (Select stores in North America will be carrying some on import.) And, we know we’re really, really late on getting you Spirit Caravan’s Dreamwheel EPso to make you feel better about that, we’re making a Dreamwheel 10” to complement the CD.

Right alongside Solace in terms of quality (and song length) is Eternal Elysium. We used one of their songs for the upcoming I Am Vengeance movie soundtrack, and we were literally overwhelmed. If you want to know why we keep on working at MeteorCity instead of moving on to higher paying jobs, the possibility of being involved with something like Spiritualized D is the answer. This Japanese band offers sludge-filled riffs; massively plodding doom rhythms; slicing, soulful, raging vocals; psychedelic, jazz-filled leads; sweeping jams and driving grooves: every song is epic and raw, each note unforced and shuddering with power.

In addition to our long-publicized 2000 releases (The Quill, Eternal Elysium, Solace, Slave to the Power, and the forthcoming Lowrider: Ode to Io and I Am Vengeance CDs), we’re in the process of signing two awesome new bands that we are certain will have a huge impact on the scene. We hope to have an album out from Abdullah by the end of the year. Stoner Rock Rules! (through reviewer Mike Knecht of Warhorse) writes, “Without hesitation or doubt I can say that Abdullah are one of the best bands I’ve heard in a while. …You really have to hear this thing to really appreciate what I’m saying... no question Jeff and Alan are producing some of the most interesting, honest and well written doom inspired heavy rock around.” We’re very, very proud to be able associated with these guys, and we’re also amazed that we’ve been able to keep finding so much great music. Abdullah’s Snake Lore demo, which has gotten rave reviews at a huge host of sites, will be released in a limited edition on the Rage of Achilles label. We encourage you to check it out once it reaches our All That’s Heavy section, if you haven’t already obtained a copy through the demo-trading rounds.

Speaking of demos, we’re a small label, and even though there are a lot of other great sludge/cosmic rock labels out there, there’s just no way all of us combined can release all of the good music in this scene. Added to this there’s the fact that Jadd and I decided recently that we’re no longer going to release any band we don’t both absolutely love. One of us loving the band, or both of us liking it a lot, is no longer going to be good enough for us. (Among other reasons, we simply can’t promote every band we’d have to release otherwise.) That means that we’ve been unable to release some music which really deserves to be heard. That led us to think about how unfair it is that record labels, including us, get to decide who gets heard and who doesn’t. So we’ve started something which we hope will get even more good and hard-to-find music heard. We’ve started an Demo Marketplace, where listeners can find out about tons of unreleased new bands and get demos from them at the same time the record label execs do. Go to our website and look for it in our Message Boards section. There’s already a whole lot of music there.

Another new feature of our site is the MeteorCity Affiliate Program. (The Meteorite Program? We’re still considering names.) Everyone links to us anyway, so now we can thank you by paying for the link! You can promote the world’s coolest music and get paid for it. We’ve tried it before, but we’re using better technology now, with a real-time affiliate tracking program that you can look at whenever you want to on our website to find out whether anyone’s followed your link recently and how much money you’re making. This system is actually working right now, we’re just making sure it works without flaws, and then next week we’ll unveil it on our website.

For anyone who hasn’t been coming to our website recently, we’ve also added a few other cool features. One is our customer reviews. Obviously, everyone has different taste, and different ways of describing music. So now, you can tell everyone what you think of the new full-length albums we sell, and find out what other fans think. We add new music constantly, and most of it is unavailable almost everywhere else, so this will help you to decide which you’ll like (or dislike) the most.
We also now have two different music trading pages. One is very sophisticated and lets you search by band or trader; the other lets you just scroll down an alphabetical list of music traders and red their descriptions of what they want and have to trade with you.

In All That’s Heavy news, we’re also selling a lot of Atomic Bitchwax vinyl. We have new purple vinyl 12”s of their album (one, mixed in randomly with our stock, is signed by the band), and we’re giving away a signed Atomic Bitchwax to poster to each person who buys one of the black vinyl 12”s. And don’t think that’s the last you’ll hear about this band from us….

One last note: for those of you who are overwhelmed by all of our new stock, it’s because we’re finally adding all of the fundamental sludge/cosmic releases to our catalog. Partly, this is because we were getting embarrassed about always having to explain why we didn’t carry the main Monster Magnet and Kyuss albums. The answer was that our fans already had every Kyuss album; they counted on us to sell them Sons of Kyuss and the One Inch Man single. They already had every Monster Magnet album; they came to us for one of the Cage Around the Sun singles. But there’s a better reason for us to add the other main albums. A lot of people are coming to MeteorCity who have just heard someone mention “stoner rock” in a record store but have never even heard 25….Tab, and we’re realizing that the days when all of our customers came from Jay’s Kyuss Trade Page are dwindling fast. So, just above the Red Sun compilation (our second shipment just got in) and new sHEAVY: Celestial Hi-Fi import (our first shipment just sold out), we have a list of sludge/cosmic rock classics we’ve just added.

Oh yeah, we have a print catalog now, too, since some of our customers simply refuse to go online. But you can get it too. We’ll start working on the third issue soon. It’s called Smoke Signals, and the last issue had an interview of the Blood Farmers by Drew (they’ll be on the I Am Vengeance soundtrack) and the second installment of Neddal Ayad’s description of playing this kind of music.

Thanks again for your continued support of MeteorCity. As always, we look forward to your comments, suggestions, questions and advice. And if you have any complaints, send them to Jadd. His email address is .

aaron

MeteorCity http://www.meteorcity.com
P.O. Box 40322 aaron@meteorcity.com
Albuquerque NM 87196 011 (505)254-4872
USA