Industry Observers

WHAT THE F*** IS UP DENNY’S!

You remember that viral moment of [insert hardcore band name] playing at Denny’s? Good times. It brought attention to the hardcore scene, which is a good thing. That’s what I wanna talk about today: bringing attention to the scene. 

Turnstile just won some Grammy’s. That’s sick. I cannot imagine a world where there’s anything wrong with TURNSTILE WINNING A GRAMMY! Yet, it seems like the online discourse is mad about them being industry plants or not being metal enough or whatever. Get over it, guys. Straight up, who cares. There’s a saying… like… a rising tide raises all boats. Or something like that. It’s mostly true unless you are The Undertaking! In that case, there’ are holes in the boat and/or the anchor is too heavy. BUT, it mostly applies to the industry. Attention for our little niche is great. Spiritbox played on the Grammy’s pre-show thing. THAT’S AWESOME! 

But there’s something off with the industry. Maybe its always been off. I’ve talked at length about it here and with some of you in person, but I really liked what Johnny Grimes did last week. Johnny, one of the Furnace Fest CEOs or whatever you call yourself if you run an independent festival, hopped on Facebook and opened up a discourse about the state of the industry. The answers were shocking!***

A lot of responses were kinda troubling. There seems to be a ton of uncertainty in the music industry these days. I’d venture to guess there’s always been uncertainty but the responses seemed different to me. A lot of “there’s  a struggle” but with no clean/clear answer. Top to bottom it seems. Bands, Venues, Promoters, everyone is not really sure how to succeed in the DIY space. It’s like there’s been a massive change but no one knows what the change was and no one communicated the changes to anyone. The things that used to work for solid shows don’t work anymore. The way promoters would push shows don’t work, etc. 

Here’s some observations we’ve seen from the band POV

1. Online response - organic or not, I’m not certain music listeners are really looking for new bands. Take Turnstile or Spiritbox or Sleep Token for instance. For every new fan, there’s 10 people complaining about them. We’ve seen a lot of people wait for certain online influencers to back a band before hoping on board, but that’s problematic because of a lot of said influencers only do react videos or only cover the band on their stream if the band pays money. I think some dudes are asking for $250+ for react videos. WHICH IS INSANE CAUSE THERE’S NO WAY THEIR REACTIONS ARE AUTHENTIC IF THEY ARE GETTING PAID TO REACT. NO CHANCE. We saw a nice authentic response from Reddit with our OLATSTE release. We didn’t push the songs to via PR to react dudes or blogs but saw it organically pop up here and there. That buzz fizzles pretty quick but it’s still nice. (Oh yea, paying for playlists sucks too…)

2. Tour packages - Post COVID, touring was too big of a risk for bands. So they took all the A bands and packaged them together. Two examples I can think of…. A couple years ago Fit For A King, Prada and Counterparts all toured together. What should have been 3 separate A-band headline tours, became ONE super star show. Instead of 3 separate headliners taking out 3/4 smaller bands, you get one show for $50. Converge, Barbarians of Cali and Poison The Well should be 3 separate tours but they just announced a big run. I’m going to that show, by the way. Haha. Rad show, but it feels like all three of those bands should be headlining their own tours with the opportunity to take out a bunch of smaller bands with them. Did the risk and expense of touring get too big?? 

3. Without speaking out of turn, to elaborate the point above, small bands aren’t getting the opportunity to go out with bigger bands. We’ve sat back and hoped that one of our BFF bands would strike a big opportunity and go out on a 3 week tour and get huge, but in reality none of our friends are popping off. Do we need new friends????? hahahaha. Maybe it’s happening and we aren’t noticing. Back in the early 2000s, it felt like shows were an opportunity for discovery but that doesn’t happen anymore when doors are at 7 but people don’t show up til 9:45 to catch the headliner (looking at you San Diego!). 

4. People in the industry need to change how they reply (aka don’t reply) to messages. As a small, mostly DIY band, I’ve seen out hundreds of messages and I probably have a 2% response rate. Is that industry standard? Kinda sucks if that’s the case. Imagine the boss saying to interns on their day at work - “okay, so if you get an email from a band, the best thing to do is NOT reply.”

5. Promoting shows: We’ve always been over achievers when it comes to promoting shows, but holy cow, it’s so strange when we play with a band that doesn’t re-share the show flier. Or post it at all. Or how about the venues that don’t post the show flier. What’s that about?!? One venue said that a show was from an outside promoter so they didn’t need to push it from their socials. That’s straight up BS. So you’re saying there’s a show at YOUR VENUE TONIGHT but you aren’t posting it cause it’s an outside promoter? Apparently we don’t want to win. Over the course of our history, we’ve probably played 10 or so shows where the venue didn’t post the flier on their socials or story or anywhere. Weird behavior. (I can hear you shouting NAME AND SHAME NAME AND SHAME!)

6. I need to be VERY VERY VERY clear that I’m complaining. These are just some observations we’ve made over the last 7 years of being a band. 

7. Our Response to it all - we’ve had ups and downs as a band and the reality of it all? We just gotta keep our heads down, stay focused and continue to have a blast creating music with our friends. The album we’re writing right now? It won’t blow up but it’s gonna be the best thing we’ve ever created. And we’re going to have fun in the process. 

All this Industry talk and I haven’t once mentioned the HBO show that started its third season last month. 

Go watch A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It’s pretty solid. 

Marvel update - we paused on the proper MCU timeline to watch a couple Pirates movies and we’re cruising through X-Men: The Animated Series. Show rules so hard. Henry laughs every time someone needlessly destroys a building. There’s an episode where Cyclops (try-hard) is showing a kid that he’s a mutant so he blasts a massive hole in the side of a random building. Or how often Rogue blasts a hole through the side of a building while trying to fly away. So much property damage!

I still can’t believe I haven’t leaked the idle threat album yet (oh…I just learned it’s all lowercase. They don’t capitalize anything)

SONG OF THE WEEK

With Love and Courage, The Undertaking!

***Editor’s Note***

After writing this, Johnny posted on his socials that he is no longer an owner/ceo or whatever. It appears a bigger corp bought Furnace Fest. RIP DIY Festivals. But emo never dies or will never die or can’t die, so I’m sure someone will put on Furnace Fest ‘26 and I’m sure it’ll be a good time. Glad we got to play with the former owners. Rad group of dudes.