A Financial Distress Call from your Friends in URIZEN

Gather 'round, children... We have an impure tale to tell.

These are dire times, and certainly not times to beat around the bush, so let's just come right out with it: WE NEED MONEY.

Okay, well... that's a little too direct. Let me offer up some context. I want to be completely upfront and honest about things here, so bear with me as I present you with a lot of text all at once!

Backstory
In September of last year, we were approached by the chairpersons of a convention and offered an invite to perform at their event during Memorial Day weekend 2012. We love cons, so of course we said we would absolutely do this thing. Deals were negotiated, contracts were signed, e-handshakes were exchanged, and all was well.

From there we thought, "Hey, this is some good money we're making with this convention, why don't we throw that money into our gas tank and put together a summer tour?" And so it was done: this convention would be the kickoff of the tour and the funds thereby acquired would keep us afloat on our merry journey across the US. And the villagers rejoiced!

Fast forward to last Friday... *foreboding ellipses*

Long story incredibly short: The convention is canceled. The money we were promised no longer exists. The UriMen are sad pandas...

Logistics
Fact: The Flight of the Boxmen tour will require over 4,000 miles of driving across these United American States.
Fact: The Macho Van, in all of his fuel-inefficient glory, will require over $1,600 in sweet, sweet unleaded gasoline to make that trip.
Fact: The now-evaporated money from the convention was to account for EXACTLY HALF of the overall money we will need to make this trip without losing our asses.

The Solution
Look... we're doing this tour. No matter what. Don't even act like we're not gonna, cuz we so totally are. But we definitely need your help to make sure that we can afford to have homes and food and things when we get back from the road. So here's what we decided to do:

Step One: Release A Single
As you know, we're releasing a new single, "Boxmakers," on Tuesday May 22nd. It's a rad fuckin' song, you're totally gonna like it.

Step Two: Beg For Money
"Boxmakers" will be available at http://urizen.bandcamp.com/ as a free stream. Listen to it as many times as you like, we hope you enjoy it! But if you really enjoy it and want us to be able to continue making music-y type thingies into the future, we encourage you to purchase a download. The download will be priced at a $.99 minimum. However...

Step Three: Count on the Generosity of Awesome People!
The minimum purchase is $.99, but if you want to throw a little extra love our way, you are free to name your own price and really make us feel like champions of the universe! Every little bit you can spare brings us a little closer to being able to fill the gap left by the canceled convention, and for that we will be forever humbled and grateful and appreciative beyond anything I can adequately express in words!

Long Story Short

• We had a big chunk of money reserved to fund the Flight of the Boxmen tour
• That money went bye-bye only one week before the tour is set to begin
• We need you to go to http://urizen.bandcamp.com/ to buy our new single, "Boxmakers," so we can put gas in our Macho Van and tacos in our Mexican

It doesn't make us feel particularly good to have to beg for mercy like this, but we love what we do, and we want to keep doing it for you for as long as is humanly (and economically) possible. We hope you give what you can, but more importantly, we hope you enjoy the new single and come see us on the Flight of the Boxmakers tour (click here for dates) this summer!

2.3 Billion Thanks To You All,
URIZEN

URIZEN Joins the Dallas Lineup of PAGANFEST 3

More details on this show coming soon. We will be selling presale tickets at our webstore so keep your eyes open and prepare for Pagan warfare!

2011: Like a Robot Walking into the Sunset...

2011 is coming to a close, and as is the tradition during this time of year, we stop to look back on our achievements from the previous year before diving headlong into the next! 2011 was arguably the biggest year of URIZEN thus far, and 2012 is going to have to put on its big boy pants to top it.

Though there was no official new release from us this year, I like to think of this as the Year of Universe:Red. Officially releasing in December of 2010, Universe:Red was our vessel for adventure this year, and what a vessel in which to ride! Perhaps most monumental (for me anyway) about the release of Universe:Red was that it gave way to the Expanding Universe tour; the first proper US tour in UriHistory!

 

 Touring has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember, and despite the massive amount of work, money, frustration, and auto repair that went into it, I can very honestly and legitimately say that it met and exceeded every one of my expectations. Most people would look at our very modest tour and not see what the big deal was, but for us, it was a personal triumph and the fulfillment of a lifelong goal. For those of you who attended, helped us book and promote shows, shared the stage with us, or donned jumpsuits and monster costumes to help us bring our show to life, you may never know how much we appreciate you. It would have been entirely impossible without everyone's help, and we are indebted to you all!

Aside from our main tour, we had so many great opportunities to hit the road and perform with awesome people for even awesom-er fans. We continued our beloved tradition of con performances at All-Con in Dallas and Omnicon in McAllen, and had the time of our lives doing a mini-tour of Texas with our good friends and greatest source of career-based inspiration, The Protomen. On top of all of this, we also manged to squeeze in some local shows along the way, and even resurrected the aborted souls of NEZIRU on Halloween.

2011 also saw the departure of two UriMen from the group, but in their absence we had the opportunity to share the stage with a couple of very cool and talented dudes: Dan Sandberg and Cesar Gonzalez. Thank you both for donating your time and talents to us, this won't be the last time you'll be seen on a URIZEN stage, I guarantee it!

Thanks are also in order for the bands that helped us during the Expanding Universe tour: The Protomen, Bat Castle, D&D Sluggers, Children of the Reptile, Earths Collide, Brazen Angel, Prime Mover, Centura, Come See My Dead Person, Broken End Stereo, and every other band that we shared the stage with along the way. Independent music cannot exist without a strong community of musicians, and every one of the people in these bands did us favors that we will happily return anytime they need it!

Thanks also to the people that made our lives a whole lot easier during 2011: Joshua and Loyal Family in St. Louis for your generosity and hospitality; Hoyt Parris and Pathfinder Promotions in Atlanta for your tireless dedication to metal music; Todd at All-Con and Mark at Omnicon for putting a shitload of oft-thankless work into these conventions that we love to play and attend; Rustin and the staff at Tomcats West for giving us a homebase, a great sound system, and a pay scale that helps us keep gas in the Macho Van; and of course the Damask family, who provided us with a home and a family in North Carolina and asked for nothing in return.

Perhaps the biggest thanks of all goes to our friends and family who piled into our stinky (often AC-less) Macho Van to travel great lengths for no pay with nothing provided, all for the greater glory of bringing a robot, goo monster, Kuato, and more to life every single night at every show this year: Gabe Castañeda, Casey Drinnen, Gus Ruby, and David Cerezo, there would have been no URIZEN this year without your help!

 

So how will we top such a monumental year? Simple: More tours! More conventions! New stage show! New album! Maybe even a stop at a little music fest in Austin called... umm... Something By Somethingwest? 2012 will be bigger and URIZEN-ier, so don't take your eyes off of us for a minute. 

Thanks again for making 2011 a year that will live on in our memories forever!

Daniel // URIZEN

P.S. We played with Green Jelly this year. Green. Jelly. Seriously, what an amazingly cool fucking year this was!

URIZEN to Perform 'autocratopolis' Album from Start to Finish

2011 is coming to an end, and with 2012 fast approaching, we here at URIZEN are bracing for in influx of newness: new album; new stage show; and lots of new shows in new places with new fans.

But before we step forth into the future, it feels fitting to look back at what brought us to where we are today, and it all started with Thomas, Julio, and myself growing together as musicians as we created autocratopolis, our first full-length release.

To honor the past before welcoming the future, we have decided to play autocratopolis live, from start to finish, at Tomcats West in Fort Worth, TX on Saturday, December 10th.

This is the first (and likely only) time we will ever perform the album in its entirety, so this is definitely a special show for us. This show will mark the first time we have ever performed the songs “a shift in the weather” and “or 3 steps” (aka “Neon pt.2”) in a live setting, and will be a chance for you to hear rarely played songs like “streetlight” and “oh, the humanity!” along with crowd favorites such as “never felt so dreadful” and “barren winds.”

Because we are still hard at work on our new stage experience, this show will also be rare in that it will feature URIZEN in an “au natural” setting. No jumpsuits, no armor, no monsters. Just three musicians sharing their work with people who appreciate it for what it is.

Joining us for this experience will be our very good friends in Lizard Professor, and our fellow Do For It Records pals The Spectacle, along with more bands to be announced. This will be a nightlong celebration of hardworking DFW musicians and uniquely crafted music, and we’re excited to be a part of it.

So join us on Saturday, December 10th at Tomcats West at 3137 Alta Mere in Fort Worth. Ages 17 and up are welcome; $10 over 21, $15 for under. This will be the last time you see URIZEN onstage in 2011, and it may be the last time you ever hear some of these songs from autocratopolis performed live, so mark your calendars now!

Expanding Universe Video Journal: Part Two Ready and Willing

The video journals keep a-chuggin' along with Part Two: Gateway to the East. And remember, each video diary more-or-less corresponds with one of the original blog entries we posted from the road, so if you want a little more context, or a little more info about what happened on the tour during those particular scenes, don't forget to check 'em out. The St. Louis-related blog is right here: http://urizenonline.blogspot.com/2011/06/expanding-universe-onward-to-st-louis.html and you should be able to find the rest easily enough by using the "Expanding Universe tour" tag.

I will say that editing this video was tough, because there was a lot going on in that hotel room that I personally found to be quite hilarious. The challenge in assembling these videos, however, is realizing that not everyone finds you as hilarious and interesting as you find yourself, so sometimes you've gotta pull back a little bit. But who knows, if there's enough interest, maybe we'll revisit these videos in some sort of "director's cut" version, eh?

No?

Awww... c'mon!

Expanding Universe Video Journal: Part One Now Posted!

Hey, remember that thing we did this summer? You know... that thing where you drive around and play music and do fun stuff while losing lots of money? Oh yeah... touring! That's the rub!

 

Well, while we were touring, the camera was rolling... a lot. We ended up with hours and hours of footage (thank you, digital camera with built-in hard drive!), and now we're trickling the juicy bits down to you a little at a time, starting with the video above!

 

In the video above, you'll see what happened during our first night of the tour in our hometown of Fort Worth. If you kept up with the original tour blogs, you already know that our mode of transport, the Macho Van, was in desperate need of a radiator transplant, lest our entire tour be effed in its stupid A. Now you can live the experience as if you were standing around with us, watching awesome dudes save our tour and our asses! (For the full experience, watch the video while sniffing a nice stinky bottle of coolant.)

 

Part Two is in the can, and Part Three is already underway, but frankly, the only way I'm going to know if you guys are actually enjoying these videos is if you tell me so! So if you're enjoying what you're seeing so far (and I hope you do), and you want to see more, just let us know by commenting on the YouTube page, or on Facebook, or even here on the blog.

Stay tuned for more, and if you haven't already, make sure to head to our YouTube Channel and click that big, tasty "Subscribe" button so you don't miss out on any shenanigans! SHENANIGANS!!!

Download the Entire URIZEN Catalogue Now... and Name Your Own Price!

Hello friends!

As we here at URIZEN HQ crawl into our dank cave to begin earnest work on new music and a revamped stage show, we felt it would be nice for all of you out there to have plenty of UriGoodness to fill your heads with in the meantime. And to that end, we have offered up our entire musical career on Bandcamp.com... for FREE!*

I need no further details! Let me at that bounty!

The more observant among you will notice the asterisk after "FREE!" and assume that we don't actually mean "free" (which is, admittedly, a valid concern). The good news is that, yes, we do actually mean FREE! (freefreefreefreefreefreefree), but what that little butthole-lookin' punctuation mark is trying to tell you is that it doesn't necessarily have to be free. "Free" in this scenario actually means:

*name your own price

So yeah, if you want it all for free, do it to it, boss! If you want to give us a few bucks for our trouble, even better! You decide if and how you want to support this project, because hey, we're doin' it for you, chums! But, as a gesture of good will, there are two things I would like to ask of each of you:

1. Join the Mailing List: When you download any of our stuff from Bandcamp, you'll have to put in an email address. We'll then take those email addresses and add them to our mailing list, so we hope you don't mind. We promise not to spam you too much, but sometimes you come across a deal on generic Viagra that you just gotta share with the world.

(And hey, if you want to just join the mailing list anyway, more power to ya! Just click here: http://eepurl.com/fwjtY and let the magic of the internet do the rest!)

2. Share with your Friends: The goal of this whole thing is to share our music with the world. That's what we want! But we're only three guys, and we only know so many people, so that's why we're asking you to spread the http://urizen.bandcamp.com/ link to your friends and family and anyone who might enjoy what they hear. That way we can all rock out in unison next time we see you on the road!

Again, our goal as a group of musicians is to have our music heard by as many people as possible, and we really feel that this is a fair way to do that while still benefiting both parties. And keep in mind, all songs are streaming in full at the Bandcamp site, so you don't even have to download anything if you don't want to! With your help, we'll raise URIZEN Awareness by 48000% (estimated) by the time the new album and tour are ready to launch, and then, my friends, it will truly be a party!

Oh, one more thing... "free" (as in "no money exchanged") downloads are limited to 200 per month, so act now if you want to get in on some of that sweeeet non-monetary goodness.

And don't forget, for you old-schoolers out there, we still have plenty of flesh-and-blood physical albums for sale at the URIZEN Online Superstore!

Now go! Listen! Enjoy!