MetalSucks.net diligently summed up 3 Inches of Blood’s quickly-announced, relatively low-key label switch from Roadrunner to Century Media. The timing seemed odd, given Daath’s similar move this year from RR to CM (though they’re calling it a parnership, but whatever). Could Roadrunner be slimming down, liquidating resource-draining, low-return acts and trading them them to the baby-band friendly confines of Century Media? Were they becoming the Florida Marlins of metal?
Nope, turns out it’s just a coincidence, at least for now. MS’ David Bee Roth already got the scoop last December that Roadrunner decided not to exercise their option on 3IOB’s third album, a move vocalist Cam Pipes felt was for the best:
One of the major events this year is that you’ve split with Roadrunner records. What happened to that relationship between the label and the band?
It was time for them to decide if they were going to pick up the option for the next record. They didn’t and we’re happy about it because we didn’t really like being with that label. There was a lot of things inside the label that we didn’t like in terms of how they showed their support for us and how they pushed our band in the press. We really didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. They’re a really big corporate label now owned by Warner, so they’re moving strictly in a “We want to make money” direction and we weren’t putting up the numbers that they would have liked to see. We got dropped on the priority list time and time again and then they finally decided that it wasn’t economically viable to keep releasing this band. It’s enabled us to be a lot more creative on where we want to go. We’re not tied down to a long term contract anymore, so we can go explore other options and hopefully we’ll be a little more free to do certain things with a label that’s a lot more focused to promote us in a better way and [is] more geared towards our style.
The band is currently in the studio working on their Century Media debut with producer Jack Endino.
