#the overexposure that back to back to back tours with a new album in between and 2 moives

[hshouse]

x

[bananaofswifts]

Your guide to the singer-songwriter’s surprise follow-up to Folklore.

By

CARL WILSON

When everything’s clicking for Taylor Swift, the risk is that she’s going to push it too far and overtax the public appetite. On “Mirrorball” from Folklore, she sings, with admirable self-knowledge, “I’ve never been a natural/ All I do is try, try, try.” So when I woke up yesterday to the news that at midnight she was going to repeat the trick she pulled off with Folklore in July—surprise-releasing an album of moody pop-folk songs remote-recorded in quarantine with Aaron Dessner of the National as well as her longtime producer Jack Antonoff—I was apprehensive. Would she trip back into the pattern of overexposure and backlash that happened between 1989 and Reputation?

Listening to the new Evermore, though, that doesn’t feel like such a threat. A better parallel might be to the “Side B” albums that Carly Rae Jepsen put out after both Emotion and Dedicated, springing simply out of the artist’s and her fans’ mutual enthusiasm. Or, closer to Swift’s own impulses here, publishing an author’s book of short stories soon after a successful novel. Lockdown has been a huge challenge for musicians in general, but it liberated Swift from the near-perpetual touring and publicity grind she’s been on since she was a teen, and from her sense of obligation to turn out music that revs up stadium crowds and radio programmers. Swift has always seemed most herself as the precociously talented songwriter; the pop-star side is where her try-hard, A-student awkwardness surfaces most. Quarantine came as a stretch of time to focus mainly on her maturing craft (she turns 31 on Sunday), to workshop and to woodshed. When Evermore was announced, she said that she and her collaborators—clearly mostly Dessner, who co-writes and/or co-produces all but one of these 15 songs—simply didn’t want to stop writing after Folklore.

This record further emphasizes her leap away from autobiography into songs that are either pure fictions or else lyrically symbolic in ways that don’t act as romans à clef. On Folklore, that came with the thrill of a breakthrough. Here, she fine-tunes the approach, with the result that Evermore feels like an anthology, with less of an integrated emotional throughline. But that it doesn’t feel as significant as Folklore is also its virtue. Lowered stakes offer permission to play around, to joke, to give fewer fucks—and this album definitely has the best swearing in Swift’s entire oeuvre.

Because it’s nearly all Dessner overseeing production and arrangements, there isn’t the stylistic variety that Antonoff’s greater presence brought to Folklore. However, Swift and Dessner seem to have realized that the maximalist-minimalism that dominated Folklore, with layers upon layers of restrained instrumental lines for the sake of atmosphere, was too much of a good thing. There are more breaks in the ambience on Evermore, the way there was with Folklore’s “Betty,” the countryish song that was among many listener’s favorites. But there are still moments that hazard misty lugubriousness, and perhaps with reduced reward.

Overall, people who loved Folklore will at least like Evermore too, and the minority of Swift appreciators who disapproved may even warm up to more of the sounds here. I considered doing a track-by-track comparison between the two albums, but that seemed a smidgen pathological. Instead, here is a blatantly premature Day 1 rundown of the new songs as I hear them.

A pleasant yet forgettable starting place, “Willow” has mild “tropical house” accents that recall Ed Sheeran songs of yesteryear, as well as the prolix mixed metaphors Swift can be prone to when she’s not telling a linear story. But not too severely. I like the invitation to a prospective lover to “wreck my plans.” I’m less sure why “I come back stronger than a ’90s trend” belongs in this particular song, though it’s witty. “Willow” is more fun as a video (a direct sequel to Folklore’s “Cardigan” video) than as a lead track, but I’m not mad at it here either.

Written with “William Bowery”—the pseudonym of Swift’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn, as she’s recently confirmed—this is the first of the full story songs on Evermore, in this case a woman describing having walked away from her partner on the night he planned to propose. The music is a little floaty and non-propulsive, but the tale is well painted, with Swift’s protagonist willingly taking the blame for her beau’s heartbreak and shrugging off the fury of his family and friends—“she would have made such a lovely bride/ too bad she’s fucked in the head.” Swift sticks to her most habitual vocal cadences, but not much here goes to waste. Except, that is, for the title phrase, which doesn’t feel like it adds anything substantial. (Unless the protagonist was drunk?) I do love the little throwaway piano filigree Dessner plays as a tag on the end.

This is the sole track Antonoff co-wrote and produced, and it’s where a subdued take on the spirit of 1989-style pop resurges with necessary energy. Swift is singing about having a crush on someone who’s too attractive, too in-demand, and relishing the fantasy but also enjoying passing it up. It includes some prime Swiftian details, like, “With my Eagles t-shirt hanging from your door,” or, “At dinner parties I call you out on your contrarian shit.” The line about this thirst trap’s “hair falling into place like dominos” I find much harder to picture.

This is where I really snapped to attention. After a few earlier attempts, Swift has finally written her great Christmas song, one to stand alongside “New Year’s Day” in her holiday canon. And it’s especially a great one for 2020, full of things none of us ought to do this year—go home to visit our parents, hook up with an ex, spend the weekend in their bedroom and their truck, then break their hearts again when we leave. But it’s done with sincere yuletide affection to “the only soul who can tell which smiles I’m faking,” and “the warmest bed I’ve ever known.” All the better, we get to revisit these characters later on the album.

On first listen, I found this one of the draggiest Dressner compositions on the record. Swift locates a specific emotional state recognizably and poignantly in this song about a woman trapped (or, she wonders, maybe not trapped?) in a relationship with an emotionally withholding, unappreciative man. But the static keyboard chord patterns and the wandering melody that might be meant to evoke a sense of disappointment and numbness risk yielding numbing and disappointing music. Still, it’s growing on me.

Featuring two members of Haim—and featuring a character named after one of them, Este—“No Body, No Crime” is a straight-up contemporary country song, specifically a twist on and tribute to the wronged-woman vengeance songs that were so popular more than a decade ago, and even more specifically “Before He Cheats,” the 2006 smash by Carrie Underwood, of which it’s a near musical clone, just downshifted a few gears. Swift’s intricate variation on the model is that the singer of the song isn’t wreaking revenge on her own husband, but on her best friend’s husband, and framing the husband’s mistress for the murder. It’s delicious, except that Swift commits the capital offence of underusing the Haim sisters purely as background singers, aside from one spoken interjection from Danielle.

This one has some of the same issues as “Tolerate It,” in that it lags too much for too long, but I did find more to focus on musically here. Lyrically and vocally, it gets the mixed emotions of a relatively amicable divorce awfully damned right, if I may speak from painfully direct experience.

This is the song sung from the POV of the small-town lover that the ambitious L.A. actress from “Tis the Damn Season”—Dorothea, it turns out—has left behind in, it turns out, Tupelo. Probably some years past that Xmas tryst, when the old flame finally has made it. “A tiny screen’s the only place I see you now,” he sings, but adds that she’s welcome back anytime: “If you’re ever tired of being known/ For who you know/ You know that you’ll always know me.” It’s produced and arranged with a welcome lack of fuss. Swift hauls out her old high-school-romance-songs vocal tone to reminisce about “skipping the prom/ just to piss off your mom,” very much in the vein of Folklore’s teen-love-triangle trilogy.

A duet with Dessner’s baritone-voiced bandmate in the National, Matt Berninger, “Coney Island” suffers from the most convoluted lyrics on Evermore (which, I wonder unkindly, might be what brought Berninger to mind?). The refrain “I’m on a beach on Coney Island, wondering where did my baby go” is a terrific tribute to classic pop, but then Swift rhymes it with “the bright lights, the merry go,” as if that’s a serviceable shorthand for merry-go-round, and says “sorry for not making you my centerfold,” as if that’s somehow a desirable relationship outcome. The comparison of the bygone affair to “the mall before the internet/ It was the one place to be” is clever but not exactly moving, and Berninger’s lines are worse. Dessner’s droning arrangement does not come to the rescue.

This song is also overrun with metaphors but mostly in an enticing, thematically fitting way, full of good Swiftian dark-fairytale grist. It’s fun to puzzle out gradually the secret that all the images are concealing—an engaged woman being drawn into a clandestine affair. And there are several very good “goddamns.”

The lyrical conceit here is great, about two gold-digging con artists whose lives of scamming are undone by their falling in love. It reminded me of the 1931 pre-Code rom-com Blonde Crazy, in which James Cagney and Joan Blondell act out a very similar storyline. And I mostly like the song, but I can’t help thinking it would come alive more if the music sounded anything like what these self-declared “cowboys” and “villains” might sing. It’s massively melancholy for the story, and Swift needs a far more winningly roguish duet partner than the snoozy Marcus Mumford. It does draw a charge from a couple of fine guitar solos, which I think are played by Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver, who will return shortly).

The drum machine comes as a refreshing novelty at this point. And while this song is mostly standard Taylor Swift torrents of romantic-conflict wordplay (full of golden gates and pedestals and dropping her swords and breaking her high heel, etc.), the pleasure comes in hearing her look back at all that and shrugging, “Long story short, it was a bad ti-i-ime,” “long story short, it was the wrong guy-uy-uy,” and finally, “long story short, I survived.” She passes along some counsel I’m sure she wishes she’d had back in the days of Reputation: “I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things/ Your nemeses will defeat themselves.” It’s a fairly slight song but an earned valedictory address.

Swift fan lore has it that she always sequences the real emotional bombshell as Track 5, but here it is at 13, her lucky number. It’s sung to her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, who died when Swift was in her early teens, and it manages to be utterly personal—down to the sample of Marjorie singing opera on the outro—and simultaneously utterly evocative to anyone who’s been through such grief. The bridge, full of vivid memories and fierce regrets, is the clincher.

This electroacoustic kiss-off song, loaded up with at least a fistful of gecs if not a full 100 by Dessner and co-producers BJ Burton and James McAlister, seems to be, lyrically, one of Swift’s somewhat tedious public airings of some music-industry grudge (on which, in case you don’t get it, she does not want “closure”), but, sonically, it’s a real ear-cleaner at this point on Evermore. Why she seems to shift into a quasi-British accent for fragments of it is anyone’s guess. But I’m tickled by the line, “I’m fine with my spite and my tears and my beers and my candles.”

I’m torn about the vague imagery and vague music of the first few verses of the album’s final, title track. But when Vernon, in full multitracked upper-register Bon Iver mode, kicks in for the duet in the middle, there’s a jolt of urgency that lands the redemptive ending—whether it’s about a crisis in love or the collective crisis of the pandemic or perhaps a bit of both—and satisfyingly rounds off the album.

[verytamenow]

Getaway Car is About Leaving BMG

Okay, okay, I know it's a reach, alright? You can stop typing out those anons telling me I'm on crack. I know. This very much so IS a crack theory. This is something of a followup to another crack!theory I wrote with @yourmarkonmeagoldentattoo (who I also owe a thank you for proofreading this) back in September 2017. Where I wondered if there wasn't a bit of a power struggle for how Taylor Swift™ was being presented to the public and if Taylor herself and her label were on the same page. So here's a little backstory: I watched the Reputation Tour Movie on Netflix last light and since I wasn't overwhelmed by the fact I was just feet away from our Lorde and Saviour Taylor Alison Swift herself in person, I was able to notice, or really - focus on, a few details I hadn't before. Such as Getaway Car having a Neon font that while not a match for the 1989 font, was reminiscent of it to me. And while it could have be the old fashioned Vegas imagery of neon lights on a desert getaway run, what if Taylor Swift - queen of hidden meaning - intended it to be more. We've all questioned the origins of Getaway Car. Was it a convulted reference to Kissgate and it's fallout? Was it about bearding with CH and that ending? Was it just a fun escapist fantasy what was originally meant to seal reputation as being about TH before that crashed and burned? But what if it's not about a personal relationship, but a business one? Taylor vs BMG and reputation era vs 1989 era.

Let's rewind to 2016 before everything went to hell. It seemed such a promising year. 1989 had won Album of the Year, Taylor's second in less than a decade and before 30. She'd come off her most successful era - both album and tour earnings millions. On the verge of overexposure but not there yet - getting the standard criticism that has always mystifyingly surrounding her but seemingly about to dodge the cycle heavy criticism that followed her achievements. And on time to release another album - her rumoured last on her contract - in the fall of that year. Surely there wouldn't be a better time to renegotiate a contract? When her star was burning so brightly and she'd been able to deliver the ultimate “I-Told-You-So” to Scott Borchetta about switching to pop? Surely BMG would want to make sure their flagship artist and crown jewel in their lineup wasn't going anywhere? So why didn't they? The best way Scott could have capped off that era would be announcing he had re-signed Taylor Swift for a few more records ensuring number 6 wouldn't be her last with them. It would have been almost guaranteed money in the bank at that point, especially with her then steady every other year cycle. Something Scott could have used, either knowingly or unknowingly about to face several setbacks, including the future loss of Tim McGraw in 02/17 to Sony (and to what degree Taylor would have known this was coming or heard it might be or the two not re-signing could have influenced each other, I don't know), several rumouredly expensive projects such as the attempt to turn Steven Tyler country going nowhere, and the folding of Dot Records in 03/17. On the pro side of the pro-con list for Taylor: Scott had seen potential in her at 14 and they'd both taken a gamble. Scott in signing such a new and unknown artist and putting his fledgling label's comparatively limited resources behind her, Taylor in signing with a label that may go nowhere rather than holding out for a bigger name. They had grown up and changed the industry together and few would be more invested in the continued success of Taylor Swift than Scott Borchetta who had built a label group around her. Their rumoured family like relationship meant it was a tight bond to break and BMG had always given Taylor a freedom most other young artists would never have had. So why didn't it happen? Well we know from the new deal there was one thing Taylor wanted: her master recordings. And with 5, soon to be 6, albums in BMG's hands, they had the ultimate bargaining tool if they'd wanted to keep her. Except when 80% of your revenue comes from one artist? You're not likely to want to give that up, even if that revenue is more limited by Taylor's rights as a songwriter in regards to licensing. It's still a valuable commodity as long as we're in the streaming bubble. Especially if you're investing in objectively risky pet projects. It was well rumoured to be the major sticking point, making it's way into multiple articles as the deadline drew closer and closer, and the Variety Article from 08/18 breaks down all the major players and what was at stake pretty well. Was it any surprise Universal wanted to keep such a major artist? Enough to negotiate it's spotify payout for ALL artists and ensure her master recording would return to her even if not immediately. But what does any of this have to do with Getaway Car? Well, let's take a look at the lyrics through this lens. No, nothing good starts in a getaway car... It was the best of times, the worst of crimes I struck a match and blew your mind The best of times is easily explainable as the brief post-Grammy's high. An album that as the time had sold over 9 million copies worldwide, a tour that had grossed $250.7 million globally, numerous endorsement deals, streaming revenue, and to cap it all off a second Grammy for AOTY. The worst of crimes? Not re-signing immediately when offered. For both both this would have been a shock. Taylor that Scott wouldn't consider compromising on her masters and Scott that Taylor would consider another deal. But I didn't mean it And you didn't see it Maybe Taylor wasn't 100% sold on leaving BMG just yet and a compromise could have been reached, but Scott saw it as all or nothing. The ties were black, the lies were white In shades of gray and candlelight I wanted to leave him I needed a reason This seems such a good summary of a business deal. A professional atmosphere with promises that may or may not hold up being offered to get a signature. All of it being a shade of gray in terms of who would benefit and having to be viewed in the right light. Taylor realizes if she'd going to leave BMG, she needs a far better deal. A really good reason. X marks the spot, where we fell apart He poisoned the well, I was lying to myself I knew it from the first old fashioned, we were cursed We never had a shotgun shot in the dark “X marks the spot” would easily be the signature line on a contract and would be the obvious place where things would fall apart between the two parties. Taylor was fooling herself to think they could reach an agreement that they both wanted after Scott had drawn the line in the sand. Perhaps it was something she had known from the beginning of the meeting, the idea of two familiar business associates having a drink over talks being well known. Chorus You were driving the getaway car We were flying, but we'd never get far Don't pretend it's such a mystery Think about the place where you first met me We're riding in a getaway car There were sirens in the beat of your heart Should've known I'd be the first to leave Think about the place where you first met me In a getaway car No, they never get far No, nothing good starts in a getaway car Scott was ultimately running the show to a degree, being the label president. He was releasing and pushing reputation, the last album of the deal. And while she predicted, hoped, it would be a success it wasn't going to take them further. Taylor's reminding Scott this wasn't unforeseeable. He'd met her at 14 in a cafe and she'd been every bit as ambitious and  set on how her career should look then as she was now. Scott's aware of what's going on and maybe worried or even panicked, alarm bells going off as he faces losing the crown jewel of his label group. But he should have known this was coming, that she'd walk if she didn't get the deal she wanted. She'd already walked from a development deal at 14 because she didn't see a future in it. The end of everything, surely not something good, starts with reputation. It was the great escape, the prison break The light of freedom on my face Perhaps reputation was more than just the last album for Taylor. It was freedom. Freedom from the press and the heavy interview and promotion schedule that had defined 1989. Freedom from the pressure to be Taylor Swift™ at all times. Freedom from caring about major awards that would make the label look good such as Grammys. Freedom from anything but fulfilling her own expectations and her fans'. She's no longer carrying a label. Soon to be no longer under a contract, along with whatever other clauses - regarding public behaviour or image that can exist in contracts - might have existed. But you weren't thinking And I was just drinking Scott didn't think things through. Didn't weigh the costs and is now feeling it as the clock ticks. Meanwhile, Taylor is unfussed. Calmly sipping her drink as she watches the fallout. Well he was running after us, I was screaming 'Go go go!' But with three of us, honey, it's a side show And a circus ain't a love story And now we're both sorry (we're both sorry) A reference to new contract negotiations. Scott still trying to get Taylor to re-sign while Taylor courts new options. He's trying to chase her while she's telling her own team to prepare to jump ship. Maybe there's even a bit of a struggle for control as the new era kicks off and each side tries to leverage it to their advantage. It makes negotiating a new contract more interesting. Any other label aware of BMG's history with her and continued attempts to court her and the industry and media beginning to realize there hadn't been news of a contract and beginning to weigh in. It's becoming a sideshow to the main exhibition that is her music. Both Taylor and Scott probably have regrets over how this is ending. X marks the spot, where we fell apart He poisoned the well, every man for himself I knew it from the first old fashioned, we were cursed It hit you like a shotgun shot to the heart Again referencing a contract, and Scott's refusal to budge. This time Taylor voicing it became more about them each trying to get the best deal for themselves, or maybe Scott looking out more for himself in their negotiations, rather than a team working towards a mutually beneficial deal. And it's a harsh realization for Taylor after over a decade, hitting her like a slug to the heart. Chorus We were jet set Bonnie and Clyde Until I switched to the other side It's no surprise, I turned you in 'Cause us traitors never win They had been a team, an unknown artist and fledgling label against the world and the industry. Moments like winning the Horizon Award at the CMAs which inspired the song Change and winning AOTY for Feearless probably building that bond. Something that remained in place until she switched to viewing herself as a potential free agent. It shouldn't have been a surprise it happened, though maybe it was, but it certainly felt like a betrayal to both parties. I'm in a getaway car I left you in the motel bar I put the money in a bag and stole the keys That was the last time you ever saw me She's talking again about reputation and this era as a getaway car. She walked out of that negotiation into a new era, taking her earnings and control over her career with her and declaring this would be the last era Scott got with her. Chorus I was riding in a getaway car I was crying in a getaway car I was dying in a getaway car Said 'goodbye' in a getaway car A reflection on their separation to come over the era. It hurts and it's painful but it's also a phoenix moment forever. BMLG Taylor dying and being reborn in the next era, this one being a goodbye and her send off to them. I was riding in a getaway car I was crying in a getaway car I was dying in a getaway car Said 'goodbye' in a getaway car

[replicapromo]

Act Of Defiance launches video for new track, "Overexposure" Act Of Defiance - the heavy metal group featuring the veteran talents of Chris Broderick on guitar, Henry Derek on vocals, Shawn Drover on drums and Matt Bachand on bass - will return with their new album, Old Scars, New Wounds, on September 29th via Metal Blade Records. After slamming back into the metalscape with their first video/single "M.I.A.", Act Of Defiance is back today with a second new music video/track, "Overexposure". Directed by Vince Edwards, the melodic scorcher is backed with fast-paced imagery of the band members in their finest form - churning out a precise metal assault! Watch here:http://www.metalblade.com/actofdefiance where you can also pre-order the album in the following formats: --CD --180g Black Vinyl --Golden Vinyl (EU exclusive - limited to 100 copies) --Auburn Marbled Vinyl (US exclusive - limited to 300 copies) On Old Scars, New Wounds, Act Of Defiance has upped the ante. Each of the 11 new tracks sound fresh and urgent while wielding a timeless quality that will connect powerfully with metal fans new and old - and there aren't many contemporary bands who can make such a claim. Naturally blending a plethora of metallic styles and never recycling ideas, Old Scars, New Wounds is an even more dynamic and diverse collection than its predecessor. The title - plucked from the blistering track "Conspiracy Of The Gods" - stands as a metaphor for life in general, and the breadth of lyrical matter covered is as broad as the styles of heavy music found on the record. Old Scars, New Wounds track-listing: 1. M.I.A. 2. Molten Core 3. Overexposure 4. The Talisman 5. Lullaby of Vengeance 6. Circle of Ashes 7. Reborn 8. Conspiracy of the Gods 9. Another Killing Spree 10. Broken Dialect 11. Rise of Rebellion Going into writing the record, the quartet had no grand plan, and spread across the continental US, the individual members worked separately, bouncing demos back and forth and building on each others' ideas. Like many contemporary bands, through taking advantage of available technologies they made a record that is very much a collaborative effort, despite the distances lying between the members' home bases. Recruiting producer Dave Otero (Cattle Decapitation, Allegaeon) they tracked the record likewise, with Broderick laying down guitars in his own Ill-Fated Studios in LA, Derek and Broderick's vocals tracked at Red Light Studios also in LA, with Bachand tracking his contributions at Manshark in South Hampton, MA and Drover's drums were laid down at Atlanta's Glow In The Dark Studios. Having proven themselves on the road in support of Birth And The Burial both as headliners and supporting the likes of Killswitch Engage, Hellyeah, and Hatebreed, the band are looking ahead to the expansive touring that will accompany Old Scars, New Wounds, and their hunger to get back in front of crowds has not abated in the slightest. Upcoming touring plans are set to be announced very soon. Stay tuned for more news, tracks and videos coming from Act Of Defiance, in anticipation of the release of Old Scars, New Wounds. Act of Defiance line-up:Chris Broderick - guitarHenry Derek - vocalsShawn Drover - drumsMatt Bachand - bass https://www.facebook.com/actofdefiancemusichttps://twitter.com/actofdefiance1https://www.instagram.com/actofdefiance/

[replicapromo]

Act Of Defiance to release new full-length album, 'Old Scars, New Wounds', on September 29th; video for new single, "M.I.A.", now online With their 2015 debut, Birth And The Burial, metal band Act of Defiance - featuring Chris Broderick on guitar, Henry Derek on vocals, Shawn Drover on drums and Matt Bachand on bass - delivered a blast of pure and unadulterated metal that ignored fads and hit home hard. This year, the band returns with their sinister new album, entitled Old Scars, New Wounds, hitting retailers on September 29th via Metal Blade Records. Today, you can watch a full performance video for the album's intro track, "M.I.A.", via http://www.metalblade.com/actofdefiance The video was put together by Robert Graves.  You can also pre-order the album now at the same link, in the following formats:--CD--180g Black Vinyl (EU exclusive)--Golden Vinyl (EU exclusive - limited to 100 copies)--Auburn Marbled Vinyl (US exclusive - limited to 300 copies) On Old Scars, New Wounds, Act of Defiance has upped the ante. Each of the 11new tracks sound fresh and urgent while wielding a timeless quality that will connect powerfully with metal fans new and old - and there aren't many contemporary bands who can make such a claim. Naturally blending a plethora of metallic styles and never recycling ideas, Old Scars, New Wounds is an even more dynamic and diverse collection than its predecessor, which was written solely by Broderick and Drover prior to recruiting bassist Matt Bachand and vocalist Henry Derek. With a fully-seasoned, tour-hardened band in place, there was room for everyone to bring something to the table this time around, and their varying styles helped shape the record. The title - plucked from the blistering track "Conspiracy Of The Gods" - stands as a metaphor for life in general, and the breadth of lyrical matter covered is as broad as the styles of heavy music found on the record. "Another Killing Spree" looks at hardcore drug use, while "Lullaby Of Vengeance" is an angry song about singing angry lyrics, and "Overexposure" is an anthem dedicated to not selling out. There is also some very topical material, most notably on "Mis-Information Age" and "Broken Dialect". "'Mis-Information Age' is very applicable in today's social climate, where we can no longer blindly trust the source of facts that determine our view," Broderick explains. "It asserts that we should be skeptical, making sure we have the truth and not someone's propaganda, while 'Broken Dialect' conveys the idea that people can no longer hold a conversation with each other where their views differ, instead turning to sources that only support the view they want to hold on to." With every track featuring a blistering solo from Broderick, fans of his shredding can rest assured that the guitarist has not held back - though that was not his initial intention. "I actually wanted to tone it down a bit technically in terms of my solos, but the opposite happened! This was because I inadvertently ended up creating a few new techniques to use in my trick bag and saw their potential, so I worked really hard on the execution so they could make the record." Old Scars, New Wounds track-listing:1. M.I.A.2. Molten Core3. Overexposure4. The Talisman5. Lullaby of Vengeance6. Circle of Ashes7. Reborn8. Conspiracy of the Gods9. Another Killing Spree10. Broken Dialect11. Rise of Rebellion Going into writing the record, the quartet had no grand plan, and spread across the continental US, the individual members worked separately, bouncing demos back and forth and building on each others' ideas. Like many contemporary bands, through taking advantage of available technologies they made a record that is very much a collaborative effort, despite the distances lying between the members' home bases. Recruiting producer Dave Otero (Cattle Decapitation, Allegaeon) they tracked the record likewise, with Broderick laying down guitars in his own Ill-Fated Studios in LA, Derek and Broderick's vocals tracked at Red Light Studios also in LA, with Bachand tracking his contributions at Manshark in South Hampton, MA and Drover's drums were laid down at Atlanta's Glow In The Dark Studios. Having proven themselves on the road in support of Birth And The Burial both as headliners and supporting the likes of Killswitch Engage, Hellyeah and Hatebreed, the band are looking ahead to the expansive touring that will accompany Old Scars, New Wounds, and their hunger to get back in front of crowds has not abated in the slightest. Upcoming touring plans are set to be announced very soon. Stay tuned for more news, tracks and videos coming from Act of Defiance, in anticipation of the release of Old Scars, New Wounds. Act of Defiance line-up:Chris Broderick - guitarHenry Derek - vocalsShawn Drover - drumsMatt Bachand - bass https://www.facebook.com/actofdefiancemusichttps://twitter.com/actofdefiance1https://www.instagram.com/actofdefiance/