Metal 2 the Masses and UK tour!

M2TM

On Tuesday we once again competed in the Metal 2 the Masses competition to play Bloodstock Open Air. And we only went and won the heat!

Last year we got through to the finals in Preston, only thwarted at the very end by the unstoppable brutal catchiness of Sa-Da-Ko.

This year we are competing in our home base of Manchester and the first heat saw us pitted against Our Fatal Legacy, Sacrament, DamageScape and Repulsive Vision, with RV scoring the runner-up position and making it through to the semis.

Fuck a Duck! The line-up was intense and every band put on an incredible performance. I know for one I'll be checking all these guys out again in the future. To be honest I don't think any of us thought for a second that we would make it through the heat, let alone take first place. A massive thanks to everyone who made the night possible and to all our friends and fans that came along to support us – it was an awesome night!

Anyway, we're competing in the semi-finals on Tuesday 28^th May, there's a date for the calendar! Let's see if we can make it to the finals again!

What we learnt:

• We should probably practise before big gigs like this.
• New songs have new lyrics. This means Russ has to learn them.
• Footprints fans WILL get naked.
• Whitty will fuck up if he thinks he's fucking up, even if he isn't fucking up.
• If Paul does something wrong everyone has to stare at him to make him feel small and unloved.
• Ross's arse is mesmerising.
• Ian can have two hours sleep, get drunk and play everything wrong, and no one will notice.
• Truly awful, undeserving bands, can be winners too!

Tour

Now is a crazy, exciting and stressful time in the Custardverse. Tomorrow we embark on our first UK tour, alongside our pals Scumface.

The amount of planning and effort that has been put into this (especially by Mike and Ian) is ridiculous. I certainly have a new-found respect for mid to low-level touring bands, not only is there a lot to organise but it's bloody expensive!

Having said that we absolutely cannot wait to get on the road (providing the transport all works) and kick some serious arse.

Whenever we find ourselves with some spare time and WiFi I'll write a blog update to log how much is going wrong and how much we all want to kill each other.

Tour dates are below:

FEB
Fri 22nd - Nantwich - The White Horse
Sat 23rd - Glasgow - The 13th Note
Sun 24th - Arbroath - The Millgate
Tue 26th - Preston - The Ship Inn
Wed 27th - Huddersfield - Bar 1:22
Thu 28th - London (Camden) - The Unicorn

MAR
Fri 1st - Birmingham - Scruffy Murphy's
Sat 2nd - Manchester - Retro Bar
Sun 3rd - Eccles - Wangies (w/out Scumface)

New Shit

Oh and, if you haven't noticed yet, our split EP with Scumface is now available to download. You can get 'Gone Fisting' and 'Good Honest Scumbags' here for just £3.

The pledge was a complete success, raising £1416 to help pay for production costs and car rental for the tour. Thanks to everyone that was a part of that, we will hopefully be sending everything out before we go on tour, providing it all arrives!

For anyone that missed out on the pledge we will be selling physical copies on tour and we also have some rather sexy shirts to flog.

Basically wrap your ears around our music, get your arse to a show and buy all our lovely stuff so we can eat and drink on tour!

Fucking A.

FitC xx

The Bobbin, Lancaster - 10/01/2013

Thursday saw FitC's first gig of 2013. With so much effort being aimed at getting the EP and tour on the right track, we'd barely even given the gig half the thought we should have. It was doomed to be a bit of a mess. And what a fantastic mess it was :)

We all had a fucking incredible night all round. First off the turnout was far greater than any of us had imagined and a good number of people there were there to see us. Turns out we have a small following in Lancaster, despite never actually playing there before.

The set

We winged it. I'm not sure we'd all been in a room together since November so we just scribbled down a few songs that we thought we knew best and went for it. Obviously it could have been better but I think we pulled it off. Either that or the crowd were too pissed to care. Either way works for us.

As always, seeing a room of people realising the lyrics to Swallow (Or it's going in your eye) as you're playing it is hilarious. Followed by everyone joining in for a chorus of "Swallow my jizz!" Epic.

I feel I should probably apologise to the guy from Above the Waves who got a face full of my crotch at some point. When I pulled away I wasn't sure whether he was going to laugh or cry... I don't think he was either.

All-in-all it went a lot better than any of us was expecting and that's all down to the crowd reaction. We'll be back soon Lancaster, mark my words!


Shout outs

The other bands: Bit shouts out to Ark, The Fighting Keegans and Above the Waves. Unfortunately we had to leave before AtW so that we could all get back to Manchester but what we saw of the other two bands rocked!

Ewan: Big shout out to Ewan for putting the night together despite his limited experience in doing such a thing!

The bar staff: Big shout out to the Bobbin's bar staff, who helped to make the night as fantastic as it was by making sure everyone was lubed with booze. Especially to the dude I dedicated Every STD in the Book to. I think he took it quite well.

And a bit shout out to the chaps from Bloodyard and Vandal Hearts who came out to see us too :)

Journey home

The journey home was hell! First of all Paul missed his train after it changed platforms without an announcement. This meant that we had to get all five members of the band, plus equipment, into my little Peugeot 206. We managed to cram everything in...just.

I have never driven in such fog...Seriously we could not see anything for most of the way home. We were just blindly following streetlamps in the directions Whitty's SatNav said we should go (and it didn't have a fucking clue).

When we FINALLY got back to Ian's we realised something that made us all feel a little sick inside... The boot hadn't been shut the whole time. And I don't mean it hadn't closed quite properly, I mean you could lift it open quite easily. By some miracle none of our gear had fallen out...

What we learned:

• We can play a classics set with very little practice with very little going wrong.

•  We can fit ever member of the band, plus our gear into a cramped Peugeot 206 if the need arises.

• We can pass for a signed band! Who would've thought that?!

• We can do 70 miles an hour down a motorway and realise only when we get back to Manchester that the boot wasn't shut properly. Thank god for the lack of speed bumps.

• Lancaster girls are sexy.

Positive all-round!

Next up! Salford on Friday with our good friends in Shades of Avalon!

Happy New Year!

Okay, 2012 was our biggest year yet. No doubt about it, we owned that bad boy. But now it's gone and here we are facing 2013, still vaguely hungover and wondering what the hell happened and where that unusual stain came from.

New EP and UK Tour

This year is lining up to take 2012 by the cock and jerk it so violently it gushes a custard fountain of awesome. On Sunday we're going to lead Paul into a room with a drum kit and explain to him that we need him to hit them a lot, much like he would on stage, but without the rest of the band. And that we're going to record it.

Assuming of course that he understands the hieroglyphs we draw for him, we will have the drums recorded for our new split EP with crap punk band Scumface. We have five exciting new tracks to insert into you when we're done. I'm not sure if the boys would allow me to tell you the track names so early in the game but they're not here and I'm the front man, which makes me the best, so fuck them.

Here are the track names (in no decisive order) to whet your genital buds on:

1. Wasted
2. Taking the Black
3. Blue Waffle
4. Heat of the Moment
5. Jizzbolt

We're on a tight schedule to bang this out quickly and effectively, something that a handful of girls and a rabbit will contest that I'm not very good at. "What's the hurry Russ?" I hear our purely hypothetical readers cry. Well we're going on tour in support of the EP this February, that's what!

Our first UK tour! Only six and a half years after we formed! Aren't we doing well? Yes, we will be cramming into a car and a van with Scumface and heading out around the country to spread our noise, much like an STI might spread from waffle to waffle in a brothel's scissoring marathon. Assuming they exist.

Locations aren't fully confirmed but it's looking a little bit like this:

Scumface + Footprints in the Custard. The 'What a Mess' tour 2013

February 

22 - Leeds - ?
23 - Glasgow - 13th Note
24 -
25 -
26 - Preston - The Ship Inn
27 -
28 - London - The Unicorn

March
01 - Birmingham - Scruffy Murphys
02 - Manchester - The Retro Bar

03 - Eccles - Wangies

If you have any ideas on how we could fill the gaps above (bear in mind the locations and travel feasibility) then please do get in touch!

I saw the tour artwork last night and it looks sexy as hell! Expect posters, T shirts and the like to be flying at your face from all angles in the near future. As well as updates on how the recordings are doing, perhaps studio diaries. It all depends how sober or awake I am at any given point.

Speaking of T Shirts... We'll be setting up a pledge shortly in order to raise money for the tour. As you can imagine, driving up and down the country is no cheap feat. We'll be selling T shirts and the EP, along with other merch and bundles. Not sure how much he knows about this, and I don't really care, but we're going to sell Ross out for blind dates. He's our sex mule now.

The Rest of the Year!

When the tour's done we'll probably die. But assuming we don't we've got a lot of exciting things planned for the rest of 2013 too. SCARfest in Stoke springs to mind! Three days, two stages and over 80 bands! We're playing the same stage and day as Lawnmower Deth and Evil Scarecrow. That's enough to get a raging chuff-on, even if it's not until August!

What else... Oh yes! Last year we got to the finals of Preston's Metal 2 The Masses, only missing out on the spot at Bloodstock by a brutal set from Sa-Da-Ko. This year we're getting involved with M2tM again but this time in Manchester! Expect to see us spunking ourselves dry at Grand Central sometime soon!

In fact we're seemingly quite determined to play Bloodstock this year. You can also vote for us to play on the Wychwood website here.

We're also working on putting together a live record. We've already began collecting live material from various shows we've done in the past year and we'll be looking at building on that and picking the best ones to stick together. We're also amassing a surprising number of B-Side tracks that haven't quite made it onto our albums or haven't quite been finished. Expect a possible B-side collection to emerge later in the year!

Oh and let's not forget we're beginning work on album no. 3! But let's not jump the gun just yet ;)

But First!

But before all that, we've got a few gigs lined up to get us into the 2013 swing of things. Thursday 10th Jan we're playing in Lancaster for the first time ever! That's at the Bobbin. Friday 18th Jan we're playing in Salford for the first time ever, with our mates in Shades of Avalon. That's at The Crescent. And last but definitely not least we're playing Grand Central's Metal Rites festival on Sunday 20th Jan, joining Shades yet again, as well as old buddies in Sa-Da-Ko and loads of other great Metal bands.

My balls are like raisins after all that. Let's make 2013 the Year of the Weasel!

BOOM!

Love you

Russ xx