PRESS RELEASE: “FUCKING EVERYBODY STILL SIGNING WITH E1″
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 10:50am by Axl Rosenberg
It was back in December of ‘08 that my man Vince first observed that E1 (then still called Koch) was signing every fucking metal band in the world. At that point, the label had recently made deals with or released albums by In Flames, Hatebreed, High On Fire, Satyricon, Otep, Throwdown and Straight Line Stitch; now there’s a rumor that they’ve added Black Label Society to their roster, too.
What I find kind of interesting is that, with the exception of Straight Line Stitch, these are all acts that were already established prior to joining the E1 family. That means none of the perks of developing young artists (e.g., 360 deals), but it also means that there’s less work, and less risk, for the label. I’d imagine that bands like these are probably good for roughly X number of units moved pretty much no matter what, because their followings are so fanatical. What do you really need to tell Hatebreed fans other than “There’s a new Hatebreed album coming out on such and such a date?”
Of course, an even wiser business strategy than signing Zakk Wylde to E1 might have been to just purchase an album from BLS’ back catalogue and re-release it with new cover art. No one would have been able to tell the difference anyway. But I’m not a record exec, so what do I know?
-AR
That is one UGLY guitar.
DONT YOU LIKE GUN METAL?!?
Gun metal is ok I suppose, that brown/orange sucks.
Dude, thats a zemitis (not sure of spelling) they are some of the best made and most expensive guitars in the world. Who cares about color. Can tell that you dont know anything about guitars if you are only worrid about the color.
Get a pet monkey.
E1oe Koch is a smart label because they don’t limit themselves to the mercy of only signing metal bands. They keep their portfolio open with a wide range of genres to keep their money flowing without taking big chances on upstarts that they could potentially lose a lot of money on. It’s just good business.
They make all of their money off of hiphop. They just recently got back into metal because that was part of their “roots” and they realized there was a market to pick up bands who’d recently been dropped or whose labels folded.
Yeah, they have a huge Hip-Hop roster and that shit sells.
BLS certainly didn’t have a happy long marriage with roadrunner did they? boy do I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall in a room when those bigwig corporate dickheads tried to tell Zakk what to do with his band. heheheh.
I’m sure he didn’t even know what was going on and obviously, neither side really gave a fuck.
they should have been telling him to break the band up. BLS fucking blows and zakk wylde is a boring fucking guitarist
Wow, that is possibly the shittiest list of bands that a label could sign.
clearly you have no idea how a record label operates.
and yes i work in the music industry
wow, i didn’t mean to sound so douchey in my comment
cRAP artists & Metal artists on the same label………………..fucking lame!