Hey Folks. Some big things are going on. God is doing great things through HXCChristian.com. We are officially hosting a tent at Cornerstone Festival this year. We were originally going to do an artists lounge, and setup a small tent to interview bands and meet all the cool people that grace the site and forum with their presence. However, God has much bigger plans for us. We are going to have an official tent, the HXCChristian.com tent. We are looking for bands that want to do acoustic sets, or perhaps spoken word/questions from the fans about life on the road, great stories about shows gone wild, or about how God has used the band to reach out to people that otherwise have never heard the gospel or maybe rejected it. I know that Call To Preserve, Debtor, and a few other bands said they would be down. So if you are interested in having your band hang, we would love to meet you, hang with you, and have you guys play an acoustic set or do a group spoken word, or just share stories of life on the road. Email me at Josh @ HXCChristian DOT com if you are interested. We don’t have a schedule or anything.
In other news East Coast Christian hardcore band TEN33 unofficially officially announced (to me at least) that they are doing a reunion show in the near future. If you know anything about these guys, then you know that they put on a great live show. I caught up with Stephen who sings for the band and asked him about the upcoming reunion. He didn’t have many details (he is currently working on setting up dates). He said that they are working on some shows for a weekend in the fall. It sounds like they may have a couple of shows. Interestingly enough, they are not going to be playing their hometown of Richmond, Virginia. They are trying to pick somewhere neutral to play because there is another well known band that is also reuniting to play some shows with them. Stephen would not reveal the details of who that other band is, but I have my guess (although he would not confirm it). I guess we will have to wait and see. So check back with Ten33 on the their Facebook page, that seems to be the best place to catch up with them and to find out more about the reunion show. I also asked him if they might be laying donw some new tracks “We may release a song, we may not. depending on recording studio time,” according to Stephen.
New Call To Preserve album is dropping on June 8th on Facedown Records. The name of the album is Life In Defiance. I was lucky to get an advance copy of the album the other day and have been listening to it non stop. There are so many great songs on this album and it is sure to please Call To Preserve fans and hardcore fans in general. Again, the band fuses together many styles of hardcore music and even slows things down a bit for one of their songs (still hardcore, just a bit more dark). The lyrics are spot on. The album was recorded at Warrior Sound here in North Carolina (the folks that did the last Advent album) and the production quality is fantastic. I won’t give away to much about it, but I can tell you that you will not be disappointed. If you want to hear a few of their songs, check out their myspace page.
Overcome is back together and has new material. According to the Facedown Records website, this was the first band that signed with Facedown. They disbanded a while back, but wanted to put out new material. They are also playing Cornerstone Festival this year. I am looking forward to catching the band live. If you want to check out their new stuff, go visit their myspace page.
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od & Ink Records released two albums the week of April 24th. Two great hardcore bands have albums that are a must have. The first is Thin Ice, we did an interview with them you can check out HERE. Thin Ice’s new album is called “Revelation Through Tribulation.” I really like these guys, they are a young band and I think that this is great starting point for them. The album is traditional style hardcore, they compare their sound to bands like Figure Four and Advent. The other band that put out their album was Dependency, the name of the album is “Convicted.” I confess that I don’t know a lot about these guys, however, their album is really growing on me. I don’t really know how to categorize these guys musically, but their base sound is definitely hardcore influenced, the vocals are pretty solid too. I highly recommend going to the B&I website and downloading both albums (they are both available for digital download, and for only $5.99 each, it is a steal).
Ever wonder what happened to the dudes in xLooking Forwardx? Well, look no further. Justin is leading up the band Carrying the Fire out of Maryland. Matt from the band posted on the forum about the band. Justin delivers his vocals in classic xLooking Forwardx fashion and the band is fantastic. I have listened to their free demo (which you can download from their myspace page) over and over. While the band doesn’t really claim to be “Christian” it is hard for Justin’s belief in God to know boil over into the bands songs. Matt also informed me that the band is looking to do shows out of state in the next couple of months, probably East Coast shows since most of the dudes in the band have families and kids. Go and get their demo, you will love it, plus it is free! Can’t beat that!