SWITCHBLADE promotes download - Label disappointment

SWITCHBLADE has today released a 2009 end of year wrap-up where they talk about their journey as a band from doing no shows in 2008 to highlights such as opening for Slayer & performing along side other several acts across Australia in 2009.

As part of the release in what appears to be another industry disappointment with label AMPHEAD MUSIC their album INVICTUS INFINITUM which has been released for several months was shortly commercially canned. According to SWITCHBLADE in their statement "No money from those sales has been passed onto the band, no sales from iTunes have been passed onto the band, no explanation, no warning, no nothing. We actually didn’t even get told, but found out through another prominent Australian metal band in the same situation."

To make matters worse SWITCHBLADE are stuck in a difficult situation with them being unable to re-sign the album for release due to AMPHEAD MUSIC owning the rights over the material and being so far in dept they have no idea when the rights of the album will be returned to them for a re-release.

While receiving such a major backlash SWITCHBLADE has stated that they will not give up and will contiune the distribution of INVICTUS INFINITUM which you can purchase directly from them. Just like other artists such as DOUBLE DRAGON and NINE INCH NAILS ... SWITCHBLADE has also decided to team up with technology and publicly promote their album to be downloaded.

Visit www.switchblademusic.com.au

You can read the release below in full:

"Hey everyone,

Well I guess it's time for us to do the obligatory "end of 2009" wrap-up! I don't think we've ever felt the need to summarise a year's worth of events before, but to be honest we have never had a year as jam-packed as this one was.

So we basically would like to thank a few people that have made this year possible for us.

2009 was off to a very strange start for us, right off the bat. Switchblade had not played a show since October 2007. We made the decision to take as much time as we needed to work on our second album, after making little progress trying to write AND tour at the same time. Too distracting.

So in 2008 we forgot about shows, and started writing. By August we were in the studio with ex-Cryogenic drummer "jENK" laying down the tracks. The next few months were spent recording here in Sydney, and talking to engineer extraordinaire Neil Kernon in Chicago USA, about mixing the album.. which... given the horrible economic timing turned out to be a lot more expensive than we had planned! But given Neil's results and total professionalism, worth every penny.

We played our first "return" live shows in January 2009. Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. You guys loved the new songs and we must thank each and every person that came to the shows and didn't forget about us in our 15+ months away from the live scene.

"Invictus Infinitum" was released a few months later. A much more "refined" effort than our debut, if we may say so ourselves. We would like to thank "jENK", Neil Kernon, Alan Douches, Sheri Tantawy and Jeff Loomis for your help on this album. It was amazing enough simply getting this album out after working on it for so long, and to have such an amazing TALENTED group of people help us out and make this album the best it could be is one of the definite highlights of this band's 6+ year run.

So then we hit the road again, and played more shows this year than this band has ever done in any single year. We'd like to personally thank the guys from Our Last Enemy for sharing a fair bit of the road with us along the way, and to all the awesome bands we’ve played with. Daysend, Lord, Psycroptic, The Amenta, Dreadnaught, Black Asylum, Frankenbok, Double Dragon, Truth Corroded, Segression, One Shot Kill.. and all the rest we've forgotten, Thank you!

There is however one show that stands out from all the others… You probably guessed it… Opening for the mighty Slayer. Probably the only gig of the year where the excitement level is matched only by the sheer intimidation of the dreaded “Slayer crowd”. But we didn’t get that at all, maybe being the “home town” boys got us off the hook?, whatever it was, thanks to the awesome crowd, and Blue Murder touring for giving us the priceless memory of playing on a stage loaded with 36 Marshall cabs.

However there can be no highs without lows, and the past year for us is no exception.

Three months following it’s release, after a year of planning, hard work, dedication and almost financial ruin, our latest album “Invictus Infinitum” was for all intents and purposes, commercially canned.

Not by us (of course) but by the label it was released through. To cut a long story short, the label had been selling the album for 3 months (June – August 2009) and then, bit the dust.

No money from those sales has been passed onto the band, no sales from iTunes have been passed onto the band, no explanation, no warning, no nothing. We actually didn’t even get told, but found out through another prominent Australian metal band in the same situation.

Normally this would not be such a big deal.. we could just turn around and sign another deal and move on.. Right?… Wrong. The label in question is currently so far deep in a legal battle with all it’s clients, that at this stage, we have absolutely no idea when the rights to this album will be returned to us, so that we can release it again, to you.

What that means is that if your local CD store does not have a copy of our album, we know. And they can’t even order it for you. And there’s not a thing we can do about it.

And if you or a mate DID happen to buy a copy from a shop, we absolutely thank you for supporting us and hope you enjoy the album, but financially we got absolutely nothing for that. The only thing we DO know is that we are owed a few thousand dollars, which we will never see.

A few thousand dollars might not sound like much, but I guarantee you it’s enough to keep a band like us going for YEARS to come. Merch/touring/more CD’s, new gear – These things don’t pay for themselves, as we’re sure a lot of you guys know!

Now… what does this mean?

We absolutely know that this might be a very strange, almost defeated attitude for a band to have after such an otherwise great year, but we have always prided ourselves on doing things our way, and being the direct contact with our friends and fans. We are our managers, we are our booking agents, and we want everybody to know that despite the awkward situation we are in right now, we didn’t work our asses off for 6 years to get where we are now, and let some fat corporate fuck ups ruin us.

So fuck the stores, fuck the CD sales. That shit will sort itself out in time.

If you want to get a hold of our latest album, download it. Burn it for your mates. Let people know about it! And if you like it, support the band by buying a t-shirt, or grabbing a real copy of the album directly from us. That way you’ll be dealing with us, talking to us, and we will appreciate that a whole lot more than some sales figures on a sheet of paper.

Upon the release of this album back in June we had a HEAP of people overseas purchase this album directly from our online store. We shipped CD’s all over Europe, the US, Asia, everywhere! All were personally packed, shipped, and usually some free stuff was thrown in. And that’s the way we like it. We’ve been hands on and DIY since the “Incoming” Demo back in 2003, and we haven’t forgotten those days, and we certainly aren’t above doing it now!

So guys, in summary, we would like to thank you all for your amazing support this year, and to all the people who we may have left out, you know who you are!

“Invictus Infinitum” may not be available in stores right now, but we didn’t start making music for it to sit on the shelf at CD shops, we made it for people to enjoy. So download it, share it, burn it, do whatever the fuck you want with it.

Enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it.

We’ll see you all next year.

Switchblade

Mat Piccolotto
Andrew Najdek
Gerard Dack
Anthony Delvecchio
Adam Helmrich"