The Final Countdown

We are currently mixing, and finalising the new release details. Until then here is a small video of our Bassist making an unholy racket. It comes as no surprise to us as well, that what we have laid down in the studio has inspired us to start rehearsals again ready for some gigs and our next release after this one....

Studio Report II

Hound Of Hell, The Studio Mascot

Making A Loud Noise

Louder Than Hell

Trying To Hide, from the Hound Of Hell

Studio Report

Upon arrival, after driving round the windswept streets and rain lashed back alleys of Northern England for more than 18 hours searching for our destination, we leapt out of the Solstice armoured personnel carrier to be confronted by the sight of a virtual military style compound. Razor wire and broken glass cemented atop whitewashed walls surrounded the studio buildings, and to compliment this, a slavering Staffordshire Bull Terrier which snapped hungrily at Andy’s groinal regions through gaps in the main gates steel mesh.

“Never mind him lads” sounded a whisky soaked death rattle of a voice, “I fed him yesterday with a stray taxi driver”. We turned and faced our studio engineer for the session; a grim pallor lit his features in the gray light and pissing rain of the cheery Yorkshire spring weather. First mate on the Good ship Venus, and now turned sound emporium proprietor, Kerry “The Hatchet” Hughes gazed upon our dishevelled forms, a gleam of contempt in his glass eye as he decided to himself whether to feed us to his dog, Nosher, or welcome us in, or maybe bludgeon us with the piece of lead piping he carried in his gnarled club of a fist.

Our newest recruit, Squire James twitched nervously, his nervous tick which normally only surfaced after 17 pints of real ale and a kebab becoming more apparent, as he noticed the backstreet we were now in was deserted (except, for a urine soaked corpse of a tramp someone had left in a shopping trolley). We were on our own, and there was now no going back.

“Let us in ya bastard” mumbled Andy, his eyes averted and sweeping the ground as if looking for spare change for a bottle of cider, or a discarded jazz mag. The hatchet again cast a withering gaze with his glass eye upon us, and with a laugh that sounded closer to a broken beer glass being inserted between the buttocks of a nancy boy, swung back the gates to allow us entry….

To be continued....

Forward To Extinction

Finally, we will be ensconced in a recording studio in a matter of weeks to begin laying down some new songs, "FORTRESS ENGLAND", "I AM THE HUNTER", "DEATH'S CROWN IS VICTORY" and "AEQUINOCTIUM III" will be first studio recordings we have made in quite some time. Naturally, we are pretty excited to hear the results of our work over the past few months and what the results of our labours are.

Upon completion, we shall review the results and begin working towards a second set of studio demo's with some more songs. The demo's we complete will make up the bulk of the "ENGLANDER" album in rough draft, but something will appear in some form shortly before we play a few more European festival dates this summer. Watch this space for details...

For the internet orientated among you, there is now a SOLSTICE youtube channel, over the next few months we will add some old live footage, and whatever else takes our fancy. Search for "Solstice-Englander" or use the link below

https://www.youtube.com/user/SolsticeEnglander

Finally, a big thankyou to Steve at Vibrations Rehearsal studio, for his hospitality and service these past 4 months, we appreciate it!!

Whale Oil Beef Hooked

Good Evening, as a great man used to say. But the question is, is it a good evening? That remains to be seen, and how to set the parametres used to measure the evenings "goodness", if indeed we can measure them at all. Not if we have no yardstick to actually measure anything, or even a pot to piss in. Which is most likely the case in this day and (New Dark) age.

 

Enough of that though, firstly in response to increased awareness of illegal downloads offered by certain quarters without our knowledge and consent, we have rectified this by uploading our previous recordings to the bandcamp site. These high quality audio files are available as official and legal downloads ONLY from bandcamp. Any other downloads offered either via Itunes (Whom we threatened with legal action unless they complied in removing our songs) or any number of dodgy MP3 sites from eastern Europe are total dogshit quality and will only finance organised crime rings who also specialise in Heroin dealing etc. Fuck these scum.

 

The recordings are priced modestly, as we feel if you are not actually buying anything physical, and it would be wrong to ask anymore. On the plus side, if you do choose to purchase from us via bandcamp, you are supporting the band directly.

 

There will be a variety of other downloads available shortly from both SOLSTICE and a couple of related side projects, such as the ONLY authorised digital version of the ISEN TORR "Mighty & Superior" EP, the entire WARTORN discography from 1990 - 1994 (Featuring Rich & Lennaert of SOLSTICE and James of IRON MONKEY) and whatever else we can dredge up in the vain hope of making more money for cider. The bandcamp link can be found to the right of this page in the "Solstice Links" section.

 

We also recently had some new band photos taken by Mr. David Naylor of Bradford, the first of which already made it onto Face(Arse)book. However, for the sake of those of you sensible enough not to spend your lives posting on there, we shall repost them here.

 

 

Handsome bunch of lads, what? Moving swiftly on, and to answer the burning question, yes we will be in the studio very soon, thats all we can say right now, we've been working our collective testicles off correcting the wrongness that had crept over the past 18 months, but, no point in going on about past history, the wait is nearly over.....as ever, watch the skies!!

 

 

 

Death's Crown Is Victory!

"I rode over the mountains to Huddersfield. A wilder people I never saw in England. The men, women and children filled the streets and seemed just ready to devour us." - John Wesley (Methodist Church Preacher & Founder) 1757.

 

And on that jovial note, I bid you all Good evening, morning and whatever else. It's been a while since the last large update regarding our activities as a band, and since then, there have been a couple of line up changes for the better we feel, bringing in individuals more attuned to what we are about musically, and also bringing with them a greater talent that can only add to the overall epic metal holocaust that we are aiming to deliver on the next album.

 

First we have a new bass player, and it be none other than our old comrade Mr Ian "Geezer" Buxton (Aka Izak Gloom) also of MONOLITH and LAZARUS BLACKSTAR (And previously with local legends CHORUS OF RUIN and THE DEAD RESURRECTED. Ian's credentials are impeccable, and more importantly he likes a fucking good booze up as well as making a loud noise with his bass guitar. The more eagle eyed among you will have spotted him performing his duties at the HAMMER OF DOOM festival in Germany earlier this month, which for having had only a few weeks to learn the songs he performed admirably we feel.

Mr. Ian "Geezer" Buxton, yesterday.

 

Our next addition is our now new drummer, Mr James Ashbey, also of London power/thrash gods DECEPTOR and CIMMERIAN SHADOWS fanzine fame. All of you who know James, will know he is a drummer of phenomenal capability and talent, and having only had a few rehearsals with him we are already able to gig should we so desire, such is his playing. Any man who turns up, already knowing the songs and pounding the living hell out of his kit gets our vote of approval. James has finally bought the tightness and power we have been sorely missing for the past 12 months with his empathy to this style of music. I am currently looking for a suitable picture of James, but my search has proved fruitless, but should any of you so desire you can find his likeness on the DECEPTOR bandcamp page of Facebook etc.

 

And so, Myself, Andy and Paul would like to welcome both into the band, and raise a toast to both fellows and look forward to getting down to the real business of writing and recording now we have a clear 6 -8 months or so of no live gigs booked. Naturally this is what we have been aiming for for the past 20 months, but with the hinderance of disinterest from certain quarters it was apparent that nothing was happening and we were struggling to even honour our commitments to live appearances. A pretty sorry state of affairs when looking on the online sewer that is Facebook on ones mobile phone takes higher priority than learning new songs. Despite that, the weight from around our neck has been disposed of, and we feel confident of entering into a studio just as soon as our engineer and producer have free time and we more importantly, have finished the final versions of the songs we will demo. There is however some debate as whether we will actually release the recordings in advance of the album versions as a limited cassette, purely on the ground when we see shitty labels like Rise Above trying to jump on the tape bandwagon, we know that releasing tapes HAS become a trend rather than a love of this most noble of formats. Something will be out there shortly, though what format it is released in now has to be decided at the annual SOLSTICE Yuletide booze up on December 21st in Huddersfield.

 

On the live front, we have a couple of shows booked already for next summer, and naturally are always interested in hearing from people looking to book us, our booking contact is Paul, and his details are to be found on the Faecesbook page (Search for "Solstice-Englander"). Locally we may play in the West Yorkshire area after Yule just for the hell of it, in small drinking establishments purely for our own enjoyment, and there is talk of a small 5 band festival in the Bradford area with DESOLATION ANGELS and DEEP MACHINE also in attendance. However, these small "unofficial" shows are not set in concrete, and may not happen at all, it's purely conjecture on my part as to what might happen should the stars align and we are all in the area at the time for rehearsals and the chance of making an unholy racket in a Public house arises. As I have said before, our high priority is now writing and recording, and we have promised ourselves that we will make the "ENGLANDER" album a reality as soon as we possibly can. As well of course, as updating our live set, which I personally have thought has become a little stagnant of late. But, heres a small clip of "The Sleeping Tyrant" live at the Hammer Of Doom

 

 

Finally, thanks are due to everyone who has turned up to this years batch of shows in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Denmark, England etc and shown us their support. You cannot imagine how much it means to us all, we are simply overwhelmed by the positive response we have recieved, especially that now Paul is finally hitting his stride as the frontman we knew he could be, no further proof is needed by the mindblowing response to the show in Dublin. So all there is to say really is, buy a shirt, turn up to the shows, watch the skies, and if all else fails, drink thyselves blind and turn it fucking up!!!

Operational Update September 2012

Greetings, we are sorry to announce that we will NOT be playing at the Full Moon Dog festival in Leeds in October, due to unforseen complications we have had to withdraw from the event. In the meantime, we will endevour to keep you all informed of current happenings.