The Setup

07.03.2005

Dear All

After two and a half months of hard work, we can officially say that The Pretense of Normality is finished. We easily could have worked another month on this record, but thank God there are deadlines and recordlabels that force you to finish it, because otherwise we for sure would have gone down in history as the band that never released its first full length. It’s no joke, maybe if I find the time I ‘ll write everything down that went wrong during these recordings to give you an idea about the curse on this record. I guess, one of us probably did something wrong during a previous life, because it wasn’t funny anymore. I don’t know who it was, but I think it was Dries and some unfinished business with a girl.

However, the result is amazing. Ace Zek did a great job and we are all pretty proud about it. GSR will post an MP3 in the near future, so be on the lookout for that. The official release is the 12th of May, but we’ll already have some copies when we’re on the road with Ringworm and definitely when we’re playing Groezrock, so start saving some money.

Artwork was done by Dennis Sibeijn and it’s really good. If you don’t know him, we strongly suggest you to check out his work, because the guy is really talented. It fits the music perfect. He basically created something based on some lyrics which is really cool. Don’t expect some sacred hearts nor any other typical live picture because it’s a piece of art we’re talking about here. Seriously, I love sacred hearts, but stubborn as we are, we tried something else and we love it! So even if you don’t like it, lie about it and say you think it’s great.

Back to the music now. The record lasts 33 minutes and has 10 songs and an instrumental outro. Guestvocals were done by Bjorn from Rise and Fall and Klaas from Think it Through and they both did what we wanted them to do. Also check out our instrumental outro. I really love that track…Jan Vermeerbergen came up with some pretty sick samples and Ace gave it the treatment it deserved.

On the personal side. Benjamin came back from Mordor and The Shire. He’s a married man now and he managed to keep his ring on his finger which is good. Last weekend we played three shows with him and it felt good to have him back.
We thank Serch for all the excellent performances he gave during the last couple of weeks. It’s good to have the attention back on the band and not only on his excellent drumskills. All you ladies don’t have to panic, because he will keep on going on the road with us whenever he has the time
and if you want to see him more, keep checking Minus 45degrees.

This thursday, we play the Melkweg in Amsterdam with Converge and Modern Life is War. We obviously open the show, but we hope to see some familiar faces on this awesome show.

That’s it for now: we have a lot of shows coming up to get us ready for April and May. So keep checking the shows-section and expect some new merch in the future. We’re also working on a new website, so don’t be surprised when all this will be slightly different!

Before I forget it. One last shout out to Vince from the mighty Amen Ra to help us out with the mastering; we owe you a lot!

Later!
Andries