Just the other day as I was walking around the grocery store, I heard my first holiday song of the season. It seems like every year, the music and decorations start earlier and earlier.
Following this trend, Lancaster, PA based August Burns Red have just released a new holiday LP today through CI Records.
The album features the previously unreleased, God Rest Ye Weary Gentlemen, and is backed by the band’s version of Little Drummer Boy, which was released last holiday season.
The album artwork features a winterized version of their “Leveler” album artwork, and the album pressing is limited to 1000. Order your copy here.
Last week ABR released their new music video for Empire. The song comes off the band’s fourth album, Leveler, which sold around 29,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 11 on The Billboard 200 chart. [the video can be viewed below]
“The Empire video shoot was an exhausting 8 hours of sweating and head banging,” explains guitarist JB Brubaker. “But it was worth the exhaustion as I think it’s the coolest performance video we ever did. I especially like the old-school ‘Godzilla’-looking shots that are in the middle and the coloring and filters that were applied to the post production brought everything together.”
Leveler was released on June 21 via Solid State Records. The effort was made available in both regular and deluxe editions — a first for the band.
For Leveler, August Burns Red re-teamed with producer Jason Suecof, the man behind the board on the band’s previous CD, 2009’s Constellations, which landed at No. 24 on The Billboard 200 and sold more than 90,000 copies. The result is an album that pushes the band’s sonic boundaries in every direction, yet emerges as an unquestionably heavier album than its predecessor.
“Putting out a fourth record is a little scary because we obviously have our sound figured out at this point, but we don’t want to put out a record that just sounds like a redux of our previous albums,” explains JB Brubaker. “Our tastes are always evolving as musicians and we’ve been motivated to progress as a band and push ABR in different directions, while maintaining the characteristics that made us the band we are in the first place.”
While August Burns Red has never succumbed to the artistic trends in metal album covers, Leveler represents an even larger departure than fans have seen on the band’s previous albums. The artwork, created by artist Jordan Crane, brings a striking comic book flair that the band wanted the artwork to encompass.
Visit the Eastpak Antidote Tour:
17/11 – UK Nottingham
18/11 – UK London
19/11 – UK London
Related articles:
August Burns Red – Leveler (Deluxe Edition) [CD review]
‘Eastpak Antidote Tour 2011′ with ‘August Buns Red’ and others [Sept. 2011]
‘Brick By Brick’ – ‘Connecting Cultures, Creating Community’ [Aug. 2011]