Hi Everyone! The deadline for PHL3 has come and past and we have had a lot of music submitted. We will be posting the bands/musicians soon – why can’t we post them now?? Especially since everyone that is interested in the project can’t wait to find out…..?
Here is the reason why! We have had approximately 20 songs submitted. We (the staff at Catholic Metal) will be listening to all the songs to make sure that they fall in line with the expectations that we have laid out. Here are the things we listen for:
1) Appropriate lyrics – In the past, we have had some songs submitted which had questionable content. We had a band that had an amazing song. I still think the song was amazing – but in the last line there was an expletive. We asked the band if they could fix this – but they said that they didn’t have the original tracks anymore. They asked us if we could bleep it out or cut it out; the answer was an overwhelming “No!” based on two things. First, it would be so obvious that there was an edit and second, we are metal- but we are Catholic first!! You don’t need to have swearing in metal music. There are so many examples of bands that are metal that have never had the need to swear on their recordings (e.g. Metallica, etc. – by the way, please email me if I am wrong on this – but I don’t think Metallica have expletives on any of their songs). We also had some bands submit stuff that was really misdirected in terms of Catholic theology…I am not an apologist, but we have priests and deacons that are gifted in the study of theology and we consult them if we need to. Luckily, this only happened twice.
2) Sound – if someone sends us a mix on a wav file that is peaking too high, we need to get them to adjust it. If they don’t want to adjust it, despite our request. Then the song probably won’t make it to the compilation. My posts concerning PHL3 have been very prescriptive in terms of what our expectations are; we want to have a professional sounding project and we expect anyone submitting music will be able to follow through. For PHL2 and PHL3 – there have been some amazing people submitting music that have taken the time to ask for questions or to ask for help. I know that some people might lack experience, and some people are trying to mix on equipment that might not be the best – but a lot of bands/musicians have been able to take us up on our offer to tutor them, or show them how to improve their mixes.
3) Insufficient information - we need to have copyright info, lyric/song writer info and other pertinent details. One of the most important is the social media information. We would like to provide links to all the bands this time out and make sure that anyone listening to our music can keep in touch with us or with the bands. I usually get about a dozen emails a week asking things like whether this band or that band are on facebook, or whether someone is on twitter. You would think that in this day anyone could just google this information, but with some bands having so many “official” and “unofficial” facebook/twitter/instagram sites – it is hard for some people to tell who the real “players” are – this should be something that we can provide here on this website.
These three reasons are why, my dear Catholic Metalheads, you will have to wait with anticipation until this Friday night (Dec. 5th) for the actual list of the bands. Another huge reason is that we have to listen to all the music. We don’t just listen once and say “okay, you’re in!” We listen to each song dozens of times over the next couple of days. We will have the names of the bands up by this Friday, but not the songs. The reason why is that some bands may have to “fix” their mixes a little and we don’t want to put too much pressure on them.
Thanks to everyone who submitted music and thanks for your patience while we listen…..
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at dave@catholicmetal.com
Yours in Christ!!
dave
PRAY THE ROSARY EVERY DAY!!
