Tag: Crusader

I’m still here!! honest! Crusader Full Length Album in the Works!

Crusader - August 2012
Crusader tearing it up at Glenwood Arts Festival

OK, i’ve been a bad blogger… but in my defense, work, school and prepping for a destination wedding have taken up my life. Things are levelling out a bit now, so I can get back to the blogosphere. I have lots of things to share with you all, but it’s going to take a few posts to bring it all up to speed, which I intend to do over the upcoming holiday weekend.

I would, however, like to bring your attention to my band, Crusader. We are currently starting work on recording our full length album ‘Onward To Battle’. Now, as most of you will realize, recording is a lengthy, and costly process. If I remember correctly, the final cost of recording/artwork/pressing our debut EP “Rise of the Templars” ended up being about $3000, and that was for four songs… so, needless to say a full length album may well be a tad more expensive.

This is where I humbly reach out to you, dear readers and fans of Crusader, to reach into your pocket and see if you have a little that you can donate to our Kickstarter fund to help us get this album done! We have been saving all our money from the shows we have played but have fallen short of the amount needed.

Dethtron, or Colin to those in the inner circle, has jumped through all the necessary legal hoops to get us our very own Kickstarter page, which can be found here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1475857858/crusader-onward-to-battle

There are different tiers of contributions, and what you get for them. Donations start at a mere $2! I may even look into a WCF exclusive gift for those that donate as a result of this blog post…

So, for those that need a soundtrack to the 41st Millenium (Thunderkill?? Asgard’s Fire???) those who need a theme tune while you’re beating the piss out of a horde of greenskins or Eldar, please help out some fellow gamer metal heads… we will indeed salute you!

In battle there is no law…

Hoagy.

Crusader, Adepticon, oh, and some Sisters of Battle news…

Ultra quick post today my lovlies…

After what we thought was going to be a big shit dump of a mess, no thanks at all to Brauerhouse in Lombard, We’ve actually managed to secure a spot on a show for this saturday night for all those people at Adepticon who want to listen to some heavy metal. So,  Brad, our He-Man-esque guitar player, whose pastimes include playing guitar for us, and wrestling dragons, managed to get us on the bill with She Likes Todd and Situation red. The best bit is it’s f*cking FREE to get in,  and only a 10 minute ride from the Adepticon venue. For more in depth details on how to get to the show from Adepticon, be sure to swing by Dethtron’s blog, Dick Move, to get the information. So, come along, hang out, have fun, drink some beer, and pick up our brand new release EP – ‘Rise of the Templars’ for a mere $5 🙂

In other news, I found out yesterday, with thanks to the Blood Of Kittens network, that we have a little taster of what is to come for Sisters of Battle! HELL YEAH!! It appears to be a page from the upcoming new codex… Looks like Sisters will be ‘losing’ acts of faith as an ‘extra’ , but gaining some of them as standard special rules. I’m wondering if different slots will have access to different AoF? AND we see that Repressors are included as vehicle options. Could this possibly mean a plastic kit??? and WTF is an ‘arcaballista’? Anyway, i’m very excited, and you will be too, when you see the image by clicking here! 

If you haven’t already, I urge you to join up with BoK, it’s a great network for fellow 40k bloggers.

Thanks for listening, and see you Saturday night!

Paul

Tomb Kings and other asshattery.

It was a busy weekend this last week. Hell, it’s been crazy the last few weeks. I started a new position at my job, so that has been sucking up a lot of my time. Now I’m getting into the ‘groove’, I should be able to start posting again, many apologies for my lack of new stuff since ‘Old Stuff Day’, which is not even really new stuff, its old stuff. I think a rip just opened in the time/space continuum.

Played a show with my band, Crusader, on Friday night, at some hole-in-the-wall place called Mikes Luv N Music on the south side. I couldn’t quite make up my mind if it’s supposed to be read as ‘Mikes Love and Music’, which would instantly call into disrepute the nature of the place, ‘Mike’s Lovin’ Music’ which would make me think of Barry White for getting your girl in the mood or ‘Mike’s Loving Music’ as in he really digs music. I’ll go with the latter, although I’m still not sure. Anyway, beware, as me and Mr. Dethtron feel that they may have an infestation problem, in which case, it would be option number one in regard to how to read the venue name.

The show went OK. Maybe a couple dozen people were there, but it opened up a gateway for playing shows at a venue in the city, so it was worth it. The sad news, it appears, is that Crusader will not be playing the weekend of Adepticon. This is in no way anything on our part, but on the part of a venue owner who offered us the night of the 2nd April, ignored my numerous emails for about a month, only to be told last week that he had a ‘booking conflict’ and that it ‘wouldn’t work’. Well, f*ck that guy and his shady business practices. We are still looking for an alternative, but I’m not hopeful at this juncture. Me and Dethtron will be at Adepticon though, and I will have a small amount of CDs and shirts available for those interested. Don’t forget you can hear a couple of tracks from our EP on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crusader/172112556153977  and can also buy our merch from our newly created Big Cartel hub: http://crusader.bigcartel.com/

Saturday saw a game between Dethtron and myself, with me fielding my Black Templars against his Tyranids. We were playing 1500 points, and I was wondering how the game would end. We were playing for kill points and Dethy was leading the way by about 5 points through a good portion of the game, but I managed to squeak out a victory by 1 kill point. The Emperor saves! Especially in the case of my lone Templar with a flamer who was the sole survivor of his 10 man unit. He just refused to die. His crowning moment was when he took 8 wounds in one go, which I was sure he would die from, only to save on all of them, much to the disbelief of Dethtron (and me!).

Yesterday saw me and the family running about hither and yon over suburbialand visiting various stores (including a Borders that is closing down – 40k books SCORE!) and also a brief stop in at GW in Orland Park. I marched in and picked up the new White Dwarf to have a peep. Yeah yeah, Grey Knights all over the place, Gundam walkers aplenty and orangutans flinging poop etc etc. Sod that, I went straight to the back page, and there was a picture of a Tomb King, with confirmation that April will in fact, belong to the dead. I spoke with the Black Shirt in there to see if I could glean some info about Nehekara’s finest and this is what I managed to get:

• The skeleton box set will NOT be re-done (booooo! Vampire Counts SUCK! – literally).
• Chariots will also remain the same, although these look good as is, I feel.
• Looks like Ushabtis will be in plastic, probably 3 in a box with load out options.
• Bone Giant redone (thank the gods) and in plastic, again, with different weapon options.
• New character models in metal, although not too sure who.
• Mention of a heavy cavalry? Something about riders on giant snakes? This sounds a bit lame to me, but I reserve judgment to see it in the flesh before punching any kittens.
• Most likely that mummies will be in the list now. Really? Mummies in an Egyptian inspired army? That’s LUDICROUS! I mean, they obviously are better suited to a mid-European style Vampire Counts army*
• Big Beastie. Every army has one, maybe even two. Much speculation surrounds this, but consistent themes that pop up are some kind of Sphinx based monster.
• New Liche Priest minis. HELL YES! I refused to buy those other pieces of crap they had because they looked completely out of place with the delicate detailing of the other models. Well done GW!*

That’s all I got. I kick myself now for not asking about war machines ala the Screaming Skull catapult, which, while being an awesome item, is an utter worthless piece of shit to put together. Oh, he did mention that the TK book would also be hardback, and $39… Please bear in mind that this was all info from a Black Shirt, so take it with a large pinch of salt (except the book price), as I think the general public is more informed than they are sometimes. But, we only have to wait a little over a week to find out. I expect an ‘INCOMING’ email from GW any second now.

On a completely unrelated note, it would appear that the traitorous forces are targeting children in order to swell their ranks by making toys like this:
Defiler, anyone??

Until next time…
(* in case you were wondering, this was sarcasm.)

For those about to rock – Take a leadership test or suffer a ‘perils of the warp’ attack.

Since time immemorial metal (as in HEAVY metal) has been synonymous with dragons, warriors, warlocks, and general fantasy or sci-fi themes. On the one side you’ll have bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Bathory, Black Sabbath etc, and then you’ll get bands like Thor and Manowar on the other.

Leaving furry codpieces and fluffy boots aside one only has to browse the metal section of any music store (if there are any left) to see images of desperate warriors cleaving through ranks of the enemy, or maybe some lone figure on a quest or calling upon the arcane magick of the underworld (you get the idea).

 Games such as Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 are a veritable smorgasbord of inspiration and lyrical subjects, and the imagery certainly helps to inspire. Look, for example, at bands like the mighty Bolt Thrower and also Sabbat, both having released songs or whole albums that are firmly rooted in the universes created by Games Workshop.

 Anyone who has seen my lyrics will probably know straight away where I get about 50% of my inspiration from… and I quote:

‘Sons turned against their father,
And the Imperium of Man,
Siding with the Chaos Gods
The lost and the damned.
The clash of mighty beings
Is written upon the stars,
As he hammers forth his justice
In the bloodiest of wars…’

Taken from ‘Thunderkill’.

All it really boils down to is that we are able to take our nerdism to the next level 🙂

 This weekend saw me and my buddy Dethtron and our band ‘Crusader’ head into Bombshelter Recording Studio to begin the arduous task of recording our EP ‘Rise of the Templars’. We spent 3 days working closely with Dan ‘The Man Who Can’ Precision, who was the founding member of ‘Rise Against’ and also has ties with ‘88 Fingers Louie’ and ‘Ryans Hope’.

It was a blast going through the process and although some of it was repetitive and boring, we found ways to amuse ourselves and pass the time. I have still yet to lay my vocal tracks down, as some gremlins in the machine put us back a little on Sunday morning.

The EP will be a 4 song affair, and I have to say, I’m very excited about it. We’ve put our 110% heart and soul into this and I think it’s really showing. Dethtron has gone that extra mile to add some synth effects into a couple of the tracks to add another shovelful of epic awesomeness onto the mix. You can hear some rough stuff at this site, which Dethy graciously uploaded the WIP tracks to.

While we were there, I spied a copy of the old Talisman game by GW. Turns out that Dan was a bit of a gamer himself a while back… Me and Dethy popped the boxes open to find them full of old Squat minis, and some Chaos Renegades and a ton of old skool plastic Space Marines!

I’ll bring you more info as developments unfold. Including our first shirt design 🙂 All of this stuff will be available to buy through When Cannons Fade as soon as its ready to go.

Throw the horns!

Paul.