Hello Powerglovers,

We're tickled pink (literally) to announce that we'll be touring with Sonata Arctica and Munity Within right after our tour with Hammerfall.  After these two big tour announcements this week, I have a sudden urge to travel back in time and reassure my 16 year old self that if I devote my life to making metal arrangements of video game and cartoon music, for some reason I'll get to tour with my metal heroes.  Also, I can let 16 year old Chris know that in a few short years his beard will finally fully connect to his moustache, ending years of nervous confusion and beard-doubt.

Tickets are again available through enterthevault.com at their site and through the links below.

The Sonata and Hammerfall tours play many of the same places, which might present some fans with a difficult decision.  The true Powerglove way of course is to attend all possible concerts, wearing a ceremonial Zebediah mask to all events, and try to stage dive over and over until the Ultimate Power reveals itself to you or you lose consciousness.  Cosplaying as Bridget from Guilty Gear is also acceptable.

Since most comments on these blogs are about where we're not playing, let me assure the populace of Glovopolis that we'll be touring a lot in 2010 and have some headlining dates and smaller shows to announce later that will happen during the Hammerfall / Sonata Arctica odyssey and beyond.  By all means though let us know in the comments where you want us to play, and we'll analyze the data with our tricorders and make sure we bring enough swords and starbusts for everyone.

With Sonata Arctica / Mutiny Within in 2010

Apr 02 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero Theater - Tickets

Apr 03 Worcester, MA - The Palladium - Tickets

Apr 05 NYC, NY - The Blender Theatre at Gramercy - Tickets

Apr 06 Quebec City, Quebec - Imperial - Tickets

Apr 07 Montreal, Quebec - Club Soda - Tickets

Apr 09 Toronto, Ontario - The Opera House - Tickets

Apr 10 Detroit, Michigan - Blondie's - Tickets

Apr 11 Chicago, IL - House of Blues Chicago - Tickets

Apr 12 St. Paul, Minnesota - Station 4 - Tickets

Apr 13 Winnipeg, Manitoba - The West End Cultural Center - Tickets

Apr 15 Calgary, Alberta - Warehouse - Tickets

Apr 16 Edmonton, Alberta - Starlite Room - Tickets

Apr 18 Vancouver, BC - The Venue - Tickets

Apr 19 Seattle, WA - El Corazon - Tickets

Apr 20 Portland, Oregon - Peter's Room - Tickets

Apr 22 San Francisco, California - Slim's - Tickets available soon

Apr 23 Santa Ana, California - The Galaxy Theatre - Tickets

Apr 24 West Hollywood, CA - House of Blues Sunset Strip - Tickets

Apr 25 Mesa, Arizona - U.B's Bar - Tickets

Apr 27 Austin, Texas - Emo's - Tickets

Apr 28 Houston, Texas - Meridian - Tickets

Apr 29 Tulsa, Oklahoma - The Marquee - Tickets

Apr 30 Atlanta, Georgia - The Masquerade - Tickets

May 01 Raleigh, North Carolina - Volume 11 - Tickets

May 02 West Springfield, Virginia - Jaxx - Tickets


In other news, we're still recording our second album, and we're pretty far along.  We endless revise and change our songs, but now all but one of them is finalized.  The drums are done, the bass is halfway done, and the guitars are done except for some overdubs on 10 songs with 1 more song to go.  Originally we were going to do nine songs, but that felt a little short so we realized we needed two more.  I won't announce them both, but I'll combine their titles into one word and that should get the message across:

Transfimpsons.

And we're still listening to your vg song suggestions too as always.  The two most requested for the album after this one are Chrono Trigger and Kirby, which is great for us since we were planning on doing them anyway!  I mean, uh, we're doing them because you requested them, as a testament to our love and devotion to you!

All Praise be unto Zebediah,
-Chris and Powerglove

The Hammer has fallen upon us all!

Swedish melodic metallers HAMMERFALL will return to North America for a full tour in March/April 2010. This will be the band's first tour of U.S./Canada in almost five years.

Confirmed dates are as follows:


Mar 05 West Springfield, VA - Jaxx - Tickets

Mar 06 Worcester, MA - The Palladium - Tickets

Mar 07 NYC, NY - The Fillmore at Irving Plaza - Tickets

Mar 09 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero Theater - Tickets

Mar 10 Montreal, Quebec - Club Soda - Tickets

Mar 11 Quebec City, Quebec - Imperial - Tickets

Mar 12 Toronto, Ontario - The Opera House - Tickets

Mar 13 Cleveland, OH - Peabody's - Tickets

Mar 15 Chicago, IL - Metro - Tickets

Mar 16 Milwaukee, WI - The Rave - Tickets

Mar 18 St. Paul, MN - Station 4 - Tickets

Mar 19 Winnipeg, Manitoba - The West End Cultural Center - Tickets

Mar 21 Edmonton, Alberta - Starlite Room - Tickets

Mar 22 Calgary, Alberta - Warehouse - Tickets

Mar 23 Vancouver, BC - The Venue - Tickets

Mar 24 Seattle, WA - El Corazon - Tickets

Mar 26 San Francisco, CA - The Grand Ballroom at the Regency Center - Tickets

Mar 27 West Hollywood, CA - House of Blues Sunset Strip - Also featuring Echoes of Eternity - Tickets



Each show on the tour will have a limited number of VIP tickets available. This will grant the fan entry into the building one hour before scheduled door time for an exclusive meet-and-greet with HAMMERFALL.

Both VIP tickets and regular tickets go on sale today (Wednesday, November 4) exclusively through EnterTheVault.com until November 24, at which point they will be made available through all normal ticketing systems.

Many nights of glory await us all!

LONG LIVE VG METAL!


-Powerglove

Alex and I have been recording guitars every day for 2 weeks now and we're over halfway done with all the rhythms and leads. We're in a state of total obsession, recording all day and listening back to note mistakes and changes at night, so I just felt compelled to write a bit about our recording setup and the songs.

This might be far more than you want to know, but I know some of you guys like reading this stuff and I sure as hell like typing it.

I have this urge to talk about all the different "feels" of riffs and leads, and talk about the songs from a compositional perspective. But, I would probably fail to make any sense or express any concrete ideas. Or I could talk about the scales and modes we used...






Or I could talk about this monkey. Where he came from is not important. What is important is that this stuffed monkey thing is pretty much the best string dampener I've used. Any guitarist who records a lot often battles string-noise (open strings slightly ringing out during riffs as you move your hands from one string to another). Hair-ties and dollar bills are often used but don't completely do the job. But the monkey, hanging from the guitar neck, presses just hard enough on the strings to prevent ringing but not hard enough to play other notes that might ring out. We're probably 4 days ahead of schedule simply because of how effective the monkey is.




Monkey at work, also Alex soloing or something.



Monkey again, probably saving my ass on whatever guitar lead I was recording at the time.



Songs we've recorded so far with impressions and some random recollections:

The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest
-Basically a laser-beam of glory being shot into your open eye. When I listen to it I feel like I've won something, even though I haven't won anything.

Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid
-No matter how insane and absurd you think a power metal cover of this song could be, you will not be prepared for this.

Heffalumps and Woozles from Winnie the Pooh
-Man when I was a kid this was the background music to some of my nightmares. I can't tell if it's happy or evil sounding anymore, somehow it's both at the same time. We'll be recording some tuba and trumpet for parts of this song, which you'll be hearing if it doesn't taste too smelly. We had good luck with the sax last time on So Sexy Robotnik so I'm optimistic.

This is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas
-Recording guitar for this song was tough but refreshing, because it seems to change keys twice per riff and you pretty much just have to throw out music theory to solo over it. So much improvising on this one while recording (as with most of the songs I guess) but the frustration was worth it. Always good to exit the comfort zone.

Flintstones
-You'll have a gay old time. The metal song equivalent of a Golden Retriever with a big goofy smile. Then the dog drops acid and starts spinning from the ceiling fan.

Inspector Gadget
-I learned this on guitar by ear when I was about 11, after learning In The Hall of the Mountain King which is musically the same idea. I cut my fingers to pieces playing my half of the guitar solo over and over, because there's a big slide into the first note and for some reason I was really into it that day and pressed my fingers down way too hard over and over while alternative picking like a madman. Hopefully you can hear the blood if you squint your ears hard enough.

Xmen
-Finishing this one up tomorrow morning but almost done. Alex and I do what I think is our longest trade off guitar duet in this song; our salute to the traditional Iron Maiden double-guitar-solo. We dabble in some flamenco shred as well, which I know Alex has been waiting to do for a while.


Next is Pokemon







Just realized I didn't take a picture like this of Alex's main guitar, a strat shaped ESP that he's holding in one of the pictures above. Alex and I both use our ESP guitars primarily but I use the black BC Rich V for some solos (that require the tenderness of the emg-85 pickup in the bridge) and we use Alex's Parker Fly (which has these weird smiling apple face fret inlays...) for clean guitars.

Our recording setup and gear has changed a bit from Metal Kombat, but the tone is so much better there's no comparison. The Mesa cabinet is new is is probably the main tone difference along with smarter tone settings, a better preamp than last time, and using multiple mics on the cab. Multiple mics are really hard to test (at least it was for me) because you have to really try everything and keep track of all these minor differences that matter more than they seem.






For those of you who really want to know, we used an sm57 straight on axis for our primary mic, with two extra mics blended slightly lower in the mix. For rhythms, we add a M421 which adds a sharp, tight high end compared to just the sm57. This prevents heavy rhythms from being muddy and garbled. For leads, we ditch the M421 and add another sm57 off axis, blended two decibels below the primary sm57. I don't know why but for some reason I can't put my finger on it makes the leads sound better.

Remember if you're blending mic signals to watch out for phase cancellation (a good mic preamp can phase invert a channel, or you can do it in recording software too but that's just annoying to do every time you record a track). Also, one mic should always be the dominant one (probably an sm57 if you're going for any sort of metal sound but there are others as well) and the signal from the other mic should be a few decibels softer and is used to fill in a tone gap of the first one. It just sounds wrong when the two mics are the same volume, but take one slightly down and the two signals will mesh.





Well it's 4am now, which means time to listen to the songs for a few more hours and write down parts to improve before bedtime. We've already gone through several cycles of this for those seven songs, but we're always looking for things to change and embellish. As always, we will follow the Blizzard Software ethos of endless revision until it feels ready and complete.

...which reminds me. Many of you know Starcraft II, the game which we've been waiting our entire lives to play, was delayed again until 2010 at the earliest. What you might not know or remember is that when we posted that video of us goofing off to the first minute of So Sexy Robotnik in the spring of 2007, a trailer came out for Starcraft II (which we ripped off of course) and the game seemed just around the corner. We even wondered if we'd get Metal Kombat out before the Starcraft release. How wrong we all were.

And here we are again, recording another album two years later, and Blizzard still hasn't released the beta.

And we're doing our video game cover album in 2010 and probably will release that one before the official SCII launch. Any time I feel like we're taking too long, I think about that and feel a little better.

And while I'm ranting, I demand LAN support for Starcraft II!!!! Sure they're making us essentially buy the game three times to get every mission, but I can live with that. But to get rid of LAN play out fear of piracy is just lame.

My body aches from the metal. Studio insanity has eaten holes in my brain. Remember the episode of Ren and Stimpy where Ren gets Space Madness? I'm Ren, and this album is my precious Ice Cream Bar.

-Chris

So here it is. We finally achieved the final tier of dorkocity. We didn't think we could be any nerdier, but now we have a twitter.

So everyone who wants to know too much information about what we're doing at random times of the day, or whatever other random crap comes to our heads, follow us on twitter @PowergloveBand

Let the tweetage begin!

-Powerglove

And so it is, that after many months of arranging music and watching professional Starcraft, we've now ended up with about two releases worth of songs. We would probably hemorrhage with pure glory if we tried to just record them all at once, so we're going to split this batch into two albums.

The first one will be all of the tv, cartoon and movie themes that we grew up with, smelted into shimmering metal. The Pokemon theme song is on this one as some of you know, along with This is Halloween from The Nightmare before Christmas (one of several Danny Elfman songs we're doing on this one, a favorite composer for sure), The Flintstones, The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest (if you haven't heard that one look it up, it's awesome), and a song that for the moment I'm calling In the Hall of Inspector Gadget. Also, we have this psychotic arrangement of Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid with 220bpm shredding and steel drums that will make you pass out from laughing and headbanging at the same time. In the next few weeks we'll reveal some more about it as we get started with the recording. As to the amount of songs, I honestly don't know yet how many we want to put on this release. It could be an EP, it could be an album, only time will tell.

And the second one is back to video game music! We've got most of the core material done for that one as well, so we'll have plenty of time to kick it around and refine it. I'll save revealing those tracks for later, but I recently did an arrangement of Snake Man from Mega Man 3 that I can't wait to hear live, should it make the cut. I'd love to have the first one come out later this year, and the second one in 2010, but we'll see how that works out with touring etc.

We just got all of our new gear together and we'll be setting it up and getting our tones starting this weekend. Our drum and bass sounds are already way better than Metal Kombat, and Saturday the never ending quest for the perfect recorded guitar tone begins anew.

I can't really generalize on the sound for this album, but there are definitely more dark moments than Metal Kombat, and the gleeful moments of cheer are more intense and ecstatic. It is also heavier and shreddyer, but every band says that. So don't take our word for it now, you see when the time comes.

-Chris Marchiel and Powerglove

Hey Glove-mo-trons!

I just got back from a crazy trip to LA where among other things, I got to check out the E3 convention for the first time in my life! Being in Powerglove does have its good sides!

The convention was great and I got to check out lots of new games first hand. I thought I'd run down the best and worst for you so you'll know what to get and what to avoid like the plague!

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The Best:

Batman Arkham Asylum: Completely awesome!!! I played through a good stretch of the demo and this game feels, looks and sounds great. The voice acting is very good (i think they used voice actors from the cartoon which was a good move) and the graphics and atmosphere is great. The characters have freaky looking eyes, but that's me nitpicking on a generally great game. The gameplay is a good combo of beatemup with some stealth and light puzzle elements, but it's more about letting you be an awesome incarnation of Batman than anything else. When you beat up henchmen the animations are great, they grab their heads like they're getting concussions from your bad ass batpunches!!!

New Super Mario Wii: An obvious choice, but this was a great multiplayer demo and had to be mentioned. It's the same gameplay and style of new SMB for the DS, but four player "co-op." I use the term co-op very loosely here, since one of the best parts of the game is the ability to screw up and torture your teammates!

Fight Night Round 4: THE SWEATIEST GAME EVER MADE!!! Dear god the eye candy in the game could induce a diabetic coma! The fighting system is complex and seems to have a good amount of depth, once you wrap your head around it.

God of War 3: I loved the first two, and the third one is just more of the awesome. You can grow wings too! Now I might actually have to get a ps3...

Infamous: I only had a few minutes with this game, but the climbing system is as deep as Assassin's Creed and you can electrocute people, so I had a pretty good time with it. Hopefully it won't drag on in the second half like Assassin's Creed did.

The UFC Game: Another eye candy sports / fighting game with deep combat. Alex, Bassil and I are all UFC fans so I really wanted to see this one first hand, and despite confusing me at first I couldn't help but enjoy myself. BJ Penn gassed in the Second round just like in real life!!! Well he's in better shape now, but still, it felt very true to life, despite characters taking way more of a head on beating in the game without the ref calling a TKO. That aspect didn't feel super realistic, but I can understand that choice to make rounds longer and more fun, so I gotta give the thumbs up.

Brutal Legend: How could I not like this game? I almost didn't put it on this list because it feels like cheating; Rob Halford, Lemmy, Ozzy and Jack Black in a game about metal? That's pretty stacked. Plus JB's Character is named Eddie Riggs, a DOUBLE reference to Iron Maiden's artwork that gives them 10 metal points right off the bat.

Soul Calibur PSP: It might be the King of Button Mashing, but Soul Calibur just looked and played great on the PSP, like it was meant for it all along.

New Wolfenstein: Couldn't play it, but this looks like yet another awesome wolfenstein franchise reboot. Nazis are going down!!!

Mario Galaxy 2: Originally didn't put it on the list since it was only a presentation, but then again I didn't play Wolfenstein either. Looks great just like the first one, not much to say other than that.


There were plenty of other worthy games (I went nuts with Tiger Woods Frisbee Golf) but onto:

The Worst:

New Portable NES Thing: I don't know what the name of this product really is, and I don't want to know. It's basically an NES that's a portable unit (like a DS with one screen type of shape) that supports a tv output and wireless controllers. A very good idea (That homebrew mastermind Ben Heck already did a thousand times over years ago) but the execution is a disaster. How they screwed up the button response so much I'll never know. I played the original SMB game on it and died repeated on the first level because of the jump button response. I told the guy at the booth about that and he blamed me for sucking. I've been playing mario since I was five!!! I know how he jumps!!! Then he picked up the controller and died 10 seconds later by running straight off a cliff where an easy jump could have saved him. Still think it was my fault??? On the flight home I played NES games on my DS with gba slot hard drive and laughed at what a load of crap that product was.

The New PSP Thing: Wow, it flips open like a Sidekick... That'll really knock the DS (50 Million Sold!!!) off its perch. It's too bad Because the Original PSP is a good system that just didn't take of the right way. Nintendo can afford to make semi-new portable system versions, god knows they do it enough, but Sony should have taken a quantum leap ahead if they wanted to get back in the game.

(edit: In retrospect, perhaps I was being a little harsh, The resolution is good and it's not like it's a horrible thing, just disappointing because I expected more since you have to wait in a little line with a security letting people in slowly to see it. Still wasn't impressed, but if you're going to get a PSP now that's an ok option, and the bluetooth sharing is cool.)

Cheerleader games: By the Forge of Hephaestos, is this some new trend? I did have fun making a fool out of myself for a minute, but the world does not need multiple cheerleading wii games. Even the super hot cheerleaders working the booth couldn't come close to saving this. The problem with a game like this is that to do well, you have to limit your movements and not jump around and go all out, which might give the game some party value. So you have two choices: play seriously while barely moving your arms (lame) or jump around and have fun but not have the movements register right (also lame).

Muramasa: Might be getting the name of this wrong, but again I don't care. This game looked cool at first (I love high quality looking 2d games) but was so boring I cried. It has the fractured feel that kind of ruined games like Legend of Mana in my opinion, although Legend of Mana was still not too bad and this was way worse.

Assassin's Creed 2: Some of you might have flipped out seeing this on the list, but it's not what you think: they wouldn't let me play it!!! I was really looking forward to this one, but this bimbo turns me away from the booth saying I needed an appointment! So I'm putting it on this list out of spite! The trailer looked cool enough but let me play it damn it!!!

Resident Evil New On-Rails Shooter Game: Not an atrocity I guess, but after the awesomeness of RE5 why go back to this On-Rails stuff??? Maybe it should be in the undecided category, but I gave it up after a few minutes.

Need For Speed Nitro for the Wii: So unnecessary, especially with all the Need For Speed games coming out. It's just a watered down version of NFS Shift which was pretty cool, and it's the epitome of a bad wii version of a game suited for consoles with more horsepower and standard controls. Wii games need to focus on fun and innovative controls, and shaking the wiimote to boost speed feels like a half-hearted jerk off motion, which pretty much sums up the game perfectly.

Undecided:

DJ Hero: Like many guitarists, it's hard for me to accept Guitar Hero, since it represents the death of creativity at the center of music (or it's just a game! depends how deep you want to analyze it). I watched the DJ Hero demo with a friend who is a professional hip hop DJ, and he was just disgusted by it. To him being a DJ is about creating new sounds from multiple old sounds, and a machine telling him how to do that was the last thing he wanted. Still, to me (and I've never tried being a DJ), it seemed more interesting and creative than Guitar Hero, since you coud scratch, rewind the track while playing, and add effects with a little knob thing. But most of the cool functions like cross fading and sample triggering were based on the Guitar Hero "Do as I say not as you feel" philosophy. Hopefully there's more of a freestyle mode in the game somewhere, because the idea of having two songs and mixing them together in the game would be really interesting if you have the freedom to get creative with it.

Tony Hawk Ride: This game is really cool, but frustratingly close to actually skating. Part of me wants to just give it a good review because it's cool, innovative and feels pretty fun, but it suffers from the Rock Band Drumming Syndrome. You're almost doing the real thing, so why aren't you doing the real thing? Sure actually skating a halfpipe will kill you if you don't know what you're doing, but after playing Ride I felt like giving it a shot, because Ride is so realistic in some ways except for the fact that you can't get any airtime!

Darksiders: The booth girl called it "Bad Ass Zelda" and it kind of was, but I couldn't help but think it felt a little generic... Maybe she shouldn't have said it, it really colored my entire view of the game. The cloth maps they gave out were useful for wiping away the drool that New SMB Wii and Arkham Asylum caused though.

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That ends my E3 review, I had a blast and met lots of cool new people. We got lots of ideas for new Powerglove projects, including getting a video camera sponsorship thing. Our video camera broke over a year ago, which is why we haven't been making any videos. But we got hooked up with a nice HD video camera so now we can finally put out more videos! We're going to finish a music video for Mario Minor that's a composite of 3d and 2d mario graphics (with lots of crazy animations and effects) with us greenscreened into the games. I know the song is old but it just demands a music video so it has to be done. We're also going to do some music demonstrations, since there are a bunch of those for our songs on youtube now but none of them are exactly right! I love how fans are doing them and a few of changes sound cool, but we've got to set the record straight and show you how we played our remixes!

So much work to do!

-Chris

Hey Powerlovers,

It's been a long time this we posted an interview, and judging by the emails we're getting it's pretty obvious people are wondering what we're up to. We've rearranged and written a whole bunch of songs, but as some of you know from how we did Metal Kombat, we write a lot of songs per album and cut them down to one album's worth of the best songs. We were going to post a track list (hence the news that never came...) but after changing the track list a few times we decided we shouldn't post it until it's final.

However, I did drop two clues to one song we're probably going to do, in questions 6 and 7. I think it should be tough to figure out but obvious once you notice it, but we'll see!

I'm also working on a new flash game, which I mention in the interview. We're planning on doing an original score for it sometime after this album is done, so a lot is going on right now.

Here's the interview, hope you enjoy it!

http://spinelanguage.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/10-questions-with-powerglove/

-Chris

Comments are off to avoid spoiling the clues.

Powerglove will be performing a special 1 hour set along with a meet and greet/signing session at Game Unicon 09. Plus we'll give you the oppurtunity  to challenge us to a variety of games including Smash Bros Brawl, if you can muster up enough courage.

Gameunicon will be taking place at The Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel and Convention Center in Marlborough Massachusetts from August 21-23. Our set will take place on August 22nd from 8 to 9pm.

For more information on what Gameunicon has to offer, check them out at
gameunicon.com

Now go forth and pre register!

-Powerglove