Terrorizer are currently putting together a Thrash Metal Special and the plan is to have a covermount CD featuring the best in new Thrash. Each of the bands will get a write up inside the mag and readers will be invited to vote for the New Big Four, the winners of which will get another feature in the regular Terrorizer, so there is some chance of serious exposure.

The downside is it'll cost, about £400 per band (although I think Earache should pay for the entire fucking thing and dish out free slots to the skint bands out there, but that's just me). If you are interested please email me at ianjohnwebster@gmail.com. Deadline is 27 May, so be quick.

Spread the word too, tell your thrashing contacts as this is open to bands worldwide.

Thanks for your time.

Ian

First of all, Ian, this is in no way directed at you, I know these aren't your rules and I'm certainly not criticising you.

Second of all, I think this is a great idea and I know Terrorizer has done a lot for the uk thrash scene over the past few years. Its good to see Terrorizer willing to give some attention to what I think is a great scene full of fantastic bands.

BUT!

I still don't like how much Terrorizer charge to get on these CD's. Particularly since I'm pretty sure it says on the back of the CD "all bands have been paid the required royalties" or whatever. I have two main reasons why I don't like this system, both from very different angles:

As a band, its a fucking lot of money! We spent half that recording an EP! If it came to it, and we had to choose between being on the Terrorizer CD and recording another CD, it'd be recording every time. I know "money talks", and its competitive out there, and I know if you want to get out there you're gonna have to spend money, but being a skint thrash band, you've gotta ask if its the best way to invest in the band.

My second reason is from a consumer's point of view. Do I want to hear about 15 of the very best thrash bands in the country, or do I just want to hear about the ones with enough money? Ultimately, this system will lead to the latter. We would struggle to justify investing £400 in this, and there's countless other fantastic thrash bands that would feel the same. And if a lot of these bands don't participate in the feature, what you'll end up with is a false representation of UK thrash. Which is the last thing we want, am I right?

I think Earache should sponsor this as well. Heck, the amount of money they're throwing at promoting Evile I'm sure they've got a spare £5000 to finance this, since these are the future bands of Earache and they'll probably make their money back on it .

Kemakil would love to be involved with this, (if enough people deemed us important enough on the Uk thrash scene, of course!) But as long as its coming with that price tag, I don't see how we can be involved. That's maybe partly down to the principle of it, but mostly because we really just can't afford it! If it was half that, we might be able to manage it, but when you're four guys all with families to support, its hard to come up with this sorta money at the drop of a hat. I hope the feature goes well, though. There's certainly 15 thrash bands out there that are better than us, so I'm sure it won't be the end of the world if we aren't in it! :p

Out of curiosity, how does all that money get spent? I would imagine that with the sort of mass production of this kind, and the fact that the cds are just in card sleeves, I'm sure you could duplicate them very cheaply (25p each?), which considering the mag is a whopping £4.25, it seems a bit much to expect the bands to finance the CD. In fact, if I'm honest, I think its pretty terrible!

That's all I have to say about that. Thoughts, anyone?

Yep £400 is a lot of money and yep everyone would love to do shit for free but lets looks at it another way.

Terrorizer has a circulation of approx 24,000 so that's 24,000 set of ears that 'could' listen to your most excellent thrash tune de jour. That's £0.016 per person.... or 2p. That's VERY cheap.

Of course lets imagine only half listen to the Extra CD, that's 4p an person... still not bad.

Now lets say 1% of the 12,000 give a fuck about your band, that's 120 people ouch, that's £3.33 per person, you better have something to sell them for more than £3 otherwise you wont make your money back.

That's a very narrow economic view of paying over the dosh. Business is about spending money to make more money. You might (and probably should) take a more long term position and say it's a loss now but it raises your profile enough that in the long run you'll make the money back.

I've never met a band that said "Yep made the money back that weekend, we couldn't make tshirts, CD's, lava lamps and embossed condoms fast enough!" so I guess it's a long term thing.

Remember Terrorizer isn't a charity.... and neither are you guys.

That's a very good argument, and explained very well. I suppose it depends on how eager you are to make the required investment to get your band where you want it to be. In that respect, there are quite a few very good thrash bands who will be able to stump up the price as an investment, so hopefully it should be a very good feature. I certainly look forward to reading it! Unfortunately, it still means that we wouldn't really be in the position to partake, due to us all being skint bastards! Unless we set up a paypal for fans' donations (or sell 100 CDs in the next week! :p). That said, the strength of UK thrash should hopefully mean we aren't missed! I can think of plenty of bands off the top of my head that I'd like to see in there ahead of us.

I still think that at £4.25 a copy, and with the dirt cheap deals you can get on duplication when you're talking 20,000 CDs, having the CD wouldn't completely eat away at terrorizer's profit margins, but then obviously I don't know what their costs are like. Yeah, Terrorizer isn't a charity, but I'd also say its not a magazine that leans as heavily towards thrash metal as it does other genres of metal, so doing a thrash special is likely to convince a lot more thrashers to buy the mag that month. Surely there's an argument for the bands on the CD doing their bit to increase sales? Looking at it completely black and white, surely that is in some form payment?

I'm just playing the devil's advocate here Ultimately this is a very good thing, as was proven the last time they did it. It will lead to invaluable exposure for a lot of deserving bands. It would just be a shame to see some fine thrash bands miss out because they cant afford to be involved.

Of course, they could whack the price up of the magazine to £4.50, the extra 25p per magazine would pay all of the bands' share :p

To play devil's advocate to your advocate: Imagine if it were free. Terrorizer would be flooded with every half arsed bands shitty demo tapes of 'totally awesome new direction for thrash' which turns out to be a lame arsed metallica-bangra-dubstep-folk cross over band.

By putting the price tag on the application they filter out most bands leaving only the most committed and giving them a chance to sift through the candidates. It also adds cache for any band that does appear. Any promoter would think "hey these kids mean business as they stumped up mucho deniro to get on the terrorizer cd and must be real committed and will probably work hard to get people to turn up to the amazing gig I am gonna put on and have personally stumped up £2000 to put on and shit I really need my money back I wanna work with those guys"

The downside is that it also filters out the committed but financially strapped bands..... which is pretty much every band as they routinely get arse raped from all sides

I'll agree with that. Another very well made point. I guess with things like this, you have to put your money where your mouth is, and if you're good enough it will pay off. I suppose if we really wanted to, we could all get together and put together our own "UKTHRASH.CO.UK" compilation of all the bands we like and see if we could get it released, but that is likely to cost each band just as much, if not more, and it wouldn't get nearly the exposure that Terrorizer is offering, so really £400 is probably a pretty good deal! Hopefully all the bands we would want to see in this feature will stump up the cash, and maybe even a few bands we weren't aware of as well that really deserve the attention. We might even learn a thing or two

Out of interest, who do people wanna see in this feature? I would imagine there are several bands such as Mutant and Seregon who will definitely feature (and rightly fucking so! two fantastic bands!), but I for one would like to see Thrashist Regime (absolutely owned FTA '11), Shrapnel, Mutually Assured Destruction (ridiculously talented and underrated band!) and Crypsis. I'd also like to hear about some bands I've not heard from before, always looking for new thrash bands to get into. It's all very exciting!

I know who I'd like to see in the feature but I'm not writing it.

As a freelance writer I have nothing to do with the financial side of producing a magazine, however knowing the Terrorizer crew as I do I wouldn't say this CD was a money making venture. Chances are that it costs £400 because that is the going rate for this number of discs and sleeves.

As I said in my original post I'd love to see the big labels stumping up the cash to fund the entire thing and free slots being given away to worthy cases.

Some great hangover reading there, what a very mature & consise case everyone put forward.

We'd love to do this (& we've done it in the past with sexy results) but it comes down to either funding the recording of new music or funding exposure for the existing stuff. Breaks your heart a bit as we've made ourselves skint making sure everyone can have HoD's music for free!

To lower the tone a bit, tits & fanny.

I agree. Shrapnel ARE awesome

we paid £100 for our last track to be in Terrorizer. £20 each. the price we paid for the one before that was £220. £400 is crazy money to spend on something like that!

shrapnel wrote:we paid £100 for our last track to be in Terrorizer. £20 each. the price we paid for the one before that was £220. £400 is crazy money to spend on something like that!

Out of interest, do you think it was worth it in hindsight?

little mixed over that one! these haven't had a massive impact, you pay out for essentially not a lot. seeing your name on the CD and even n the magazine cover as we did the second time is great, if you don't a sense of pride or excitement over something like that your a robot. So in that respect it was worth what we paid. also £20 is not a lot, less than a night in the pub so it wasn't a tough decision to make.

Also we have had people talk to us and tell us they found us through the magazine CD's so they worked. even if you make 1 fan from something like that, its a fan you didn't have before. winner.

will we do it again? probably yes. would we do it for more than £100-150? NO its just not worth that much money to a band in my opinion. You can split it down into figures that make it look like its not a bad deal as above and when you put it like that it doesn't seem too bad but the fact is your still spending a lot of money that could be put to better use in petrol money and getting your ass in a van. £400 is a lot of miles, a lot of shows and probably more fans than you could get through that exposure.

Are we having a real conversation on UK Thrash?

Mutant are in the 'ones to watch' in this months metal hammer with no track on the CD!

which is the smartest way to go if you can get in one! no costs and the same amount of exposure. i should think just as many people check out a mutant track because of that than they do if they get the CD with the track on on it. plus they havn't paid to put a track on a free frisby or coaster