The new Vision of Disorder album comes out on November 13th, just three years after their debut with Candlelight Records. That said, Razed to the Ground is a miracle given everything the band went through back in the mid ’90s. In a new interview with Eftmega, bassist Mike Fleischmann gives the gory details of some of those early deals with Roadrunner and TVT:
Said Fleischmann on the deal with Roadrunner Records:
“The deal ended up being 5 records plus a small advance to buy gear and an advance of $1 for our publishing, $1 for our merchandise – they got pieces of both whether you wanted them to or not. After a month of our lawyer negotiating they bumped it up to $500 for the publishing and $500 for the merch. And we had to use them to produce all our merch, we weren’t allowed to make any products without Roadrunner and they charged us a ridiculous amount like $11 a shirt. If we wanted to sell cds at shows we also paid them $11 each. The album deal itself went up exponentially so if they put out a second record and then a third we got more money but we were getting pinched on the merch, which we were partially paying to them, and that’s the only money we would make aside from show guarantees. Basically, we were fucked. They lump everything together and it becomes impossible to understand what costs what because money given for shirts gets mixed with money given to make a record, and record sale royalties are being used to cover everything instead of just the recording costs. No one could understand it, but we had to go along with it if we wanted to be on the label.”
As you’ll read in the rest of the interview, Fleischmann points out how naive the band was at the time:
“I was one year out of high school, I didn’t know anything, nobody told the band how to do anything, we got here on our own and for the first time we knew where we wanted to go next. So we had no one to go to for advice. We had no manager, no lawyer, and there was no one that we respected that gave us anything useful – everyone we talked to was some bitter dude more upset that we were getting signed and he wasn’t.”
Vision of Disorder went on hiatus in 2000, then vocalist Tim Williams and guitarist Mike Kennedy started Bloodsimple and putting out two albums. But Vision of Disorder would get back together again in 2008, and eventually sign with Candlelight Records and put out The Cursed Remain Cursed in 2012. Razed to the Ground (pre-order here) was produced by Chris “Zeuss” Harris, and you can now listen to the first song from the album “Hours of Chaos,” which was released earlier this month.
(via ThePRP)
