July 16th!

We're playing with a couple of awesome bands this coming Thursday @ Will's Pub. Constrictor are from Richmond and remind me of the Bronx a little bit which is rad. Andy the old bass player from Municipal Waste is in this band. The Products are from here in Orlando and we have yet to play with them, so I'm stoked about branching out and not playing with the same 4 bands all the time for once (Not that we don't love you Weapons to Go, Virgins, Monikers, How Dare You). So yeah. Come out! It's a Thursday, and we all know your boss doesn't expect you to do shit on Fridays anyways.

"Sick and Stupid EP" First Pressing is almost done.

So the word on the street from Paper + Plastick is that the first pressing of the "Sick and Stupid EP" is pretty much done. A repress is in the works for some different colors, so if you care about bragging rights on which pressing you have go to NO IDEA, VINYL COLLECTIVE, or PAPER + PLASTICK, to get in on it. There are probably some copies scattered about at local independent retailers as well. We still have some copies in our merch bin as well, so you can probably pick them up at a show around Florida soon or at Best Friend's Day in Richmond, VA in August if there are any left.

No Friends album stream and shirts!

I wanted to take this chance to whore out Richard and I's other band No Friends. Our new album is going to be out on No Idea Records in late July and you can stream the entire thing HERE. If you like what you hear we have a couple of shirt designs available through Shirtkiller. One of them Richard (aka Horsebites aka our drummer) designed and the other one was designed by Ryan Patterson of the amazing band Coliseum. Check them out HERE.

- Alex

GATORFACE now on Itunes!

Yo! So for all of you people who love convenience and don't care for vinyl, you can now get the Gatorface "Sick and Stupid" EP on Itunes. All of the proceeds from Itunes purchases go directly to our burrito fund! Not really, but that would be awesome. 

GatorFAIL!

So the whole concept of us updating this blog every day from the studio really went out the window didn't it? Are we lazy? Definitely. But we're pretty sure the songs turned out fucking killer. 

In the end all 13 songs got recorded, but we didn't end up

 leaving the studio with even a rough mix. We were tracking late into the evening Monday, and after 3 late nights everyone was kind of burnt out.

Good things that happened:

A.  Tons of Mexican food from El Indio. Killer Tempeh burritos. We ate there at least 3 times, possibly 4, but my brain was obliterated by the

 entire recording process and I don't truly remember.

B.  I didn't blow out my voice completely and managed to get all of the vocals done by spacing them out over Saturday, Sunday and Monday. 

C.  KILLER GUITAR TONES! I couldn't even possibly list the amo

unt of guitar amps we had to choose from at Crescendo. We used a little bit of everything

 depending on the situation, but the basic tracks involve Marshall JCM 800's, a Music Man, a

nd an Orange head. Nick and Quilty absolutely killed their guitar tracks.

D.  KILLER DRUM SOUNDS and BASS TONE! Since me and Richard recorded the No Friends record there in December of last year, we knew EXACTLY what we were going for and did our best to mimic that. Plus it helped that me and Richard destroyed all of the drums and bass tracks within 4 hours. 

(Richard has Addison set up his drums for him... He's too famous to do it himself.)

E.  Other tidbits. Some baritone guitar might surface, there might be a little bit of percussion going on in a couple pl

aces as well. I also got my wish of playing a part using James from Against Me's AMAZING G & L semi holo telecaster. It's my favorite guitar ever. He lets Derron keep it at the studio and I obsess over it every time I'm there. 

F.  Got to crash and hang out with our buddy Tony Weinbender that puts on the Fest all weekend and see some of the Young Livers dudes and Var from No Idea.

Bad Things that Happened:

A.  Didn't get to leave with a mix, so we're all (except for Richard because he's cool and collected about this shit) dying to get to hear it. It's haunting our sleep every night. 

B.  We definitely didn't get to party or hang out like we wanted to. Between trying to keep from losing my voice and geeking out over getting it all done this weekend we didn't really go out much. We'll be back Gainesville, and we will

 rage you. Hard.

C.  There's always a couple cool ideas that you think of for a record that you forget to implement when you're crunched for time. It's a bummer, but I think we hit every major idea we had. The other stuff that we might have added if we had more time is pretty minor and purely flavor stuff/extra instrumentation that we would NEVER do live. 

All in all, a very positive (yet mildly stressful) experience and I'm pretty sure we made a pretty catchy aggro record. I'll post more of Quilty's pics below. There might be a video coming too, although we suck at taking video footage. We'd rather live in the moment dudes... experience life and shit... Hippiez rule!

-Alex

Richard, Quilty and Nick

Getting bass sounds. 

We're convinced Derron only records bands so he can pretend he's on the bridge of the Millennium Falcon all day long. 

Quilty got to sleep with Eazy. 

The Gameplan

So we'll be heading to Crescendo Sound Studios in Gainesville, FL tomorrow to record our first full-length with our buddy Derron Nuhfer. We recorded the "Sick and Stupid" Ep with him as well as Richard and I doing the self-titled NMDS and No Friends records there. Oh yeah, he's also done a few smaller bands like Hot Water Music, Against Me! and (jesus fucking christ) The Bloodhound Gang. He's a good friend and he loves to eat sandwiches more than anyone I've ever met. We'll talk about what label it's going to be on soon (but as of right now we're waiting for the "official" announcement). I'll just say this, we're stoked to be doing something with a great label who are longtime friends of ours. 

Anyways, the plan is this. We have 12 new songs. We actually wrote more like 15 in the past year, but have axed a few that just didn't feel right (or that we sucked at playing). We also have a cover song worked out that we've been playing since Harvest of Hope that we might do a vinyl-only deal with. All in all it's definitely more punk than the "Sick and Stupid EP" but I think it ended up being catchier too. We ripped off the Ramones, Descendents and Adolescents to the best of our abilities and there are some flashes of bands like Screeching Weasel and Bad Religion thrown in there. The record is going to be called "Wasted Monuments" and here's a tentative tracklisting:

1. The Cleaner

2. Receivers

3. Luxury Lost

4. Not Scientists

5. Wasted Monuments

6. Armageddon at Eleven

7. Kids Stealing Kids

8. More Harm

9. Burning Crosses

10. Straw Bridge

11. Fuck Florida, I'm Moving to Brooklyn

12. Thanx!

All of this is subject to change because the studio is an unpredictable place where things go wrong. We're pretty prepared though since we've been playing half of these songs at shows for a while now. Stay tuned. We'll let you know how far we get tomorrow. Our hope is that we can finish drums, bass and get Quilty's guitar at least half done. 

-Alex

WASTED MONUMENTS Recording Starts in 2 Days

Updates / Photos to come.