We recently got an email from a guy at Elevate Productions who is trying to run a typical Pay-to-Play (aka pre-sale) scam here in Denver.  Avoid this guy like the plague!  Here's the email we got.

Greetings from Elevate Productions! We are currently recruiting appropriate artists for our upcoming Battle of the Bands at Owsley’s Golden Road in Denver, CO. After reviewing your material, we think you would be an excellent fit. • Our next show is scheduled for January 17th, and the available slots are filling up rapidly, so if you are interested message us back with a primary contact number, and we also encourage you to contact our head promoter Mike Weiss @ 330-608-7399 to sign up as soon as possible. • Check the content of our myspace page for specific details on how the Battle will be set-up. • This is an ideal opportunity to: o Gain credibility o Expand your fan base o Potential to win up to $600 ($100 to the winner of each preliminary show, and a $500 grand prize, plus free photography, promotional materials, and possible future booking opportunities). If you are interested but unable to make this particular date, please do feel free to inquire about our future dates. We should be holding an event once every other week. We look forward to working with you. Many thanks, Kostas Alexiou, Elevate Productions

To an unsuspecting band this this might seem like a great opportunity at first glance.  Let me tell you why it's absolutely not..

Most battle of the bands shows are going to be pay-to-play, which is an unfortunate reality anymore.  So seeing that this was a battle I decided to visit his myspace page and see what's up.

http://www.myspace.com/elevateproduction

According to his page:

Each Battle will contain 8 to 10 participating acts. Each act will be allocated 100 tickets (optimally 3-5 weeks prior to show) to sell pre-sale at $10 per ticket. The order of the performance each show will be determined by the number of pre-sale tickets sold, with the band selling the most pre-sale tickets being rewarded as the headlining act. Tickets will be $12 at the door but will have no impact on the order of the lineup. At the end of each individual battle, the winner will be determined based on crowd response, and awarded a $100 dollar cash prize received that night. In addition, the winner as well as the runner-up from each event will be given the opportunity to move on to the finals for a chance to compete for a $500 prize and future representation!

Here's why it sucks..

You have to sell tickets.  This is the glaring red light that it's pay-to-play.  No self-respecting band sells tickets to their shows.  Selling tickets is the job of the promoter or the venue, not the band.  The band's job is to play music and promote the show in absence of a promoter.  If the promoter actually believed in your band do you think he would require you to sell tickets?  Of course not.  He is attempting to get you to do his job for him.

Second, there will be 8-10 bands!  What show have you ever gone to besides a festival where there are 8-10 bands playing?  It's setup like this so the promoter can guarantee he makes money off the show but the odds that you actually make money aren't so great..

The winner will receive $100..  Wow.  So basically the "one" band that can con enough of their friends and family to buy overpriced $10 tickets to a local show can walk away with $100, the rest simply lose out.  Most local shows are $5 or even free for the 21+ crowd.  You want people to show up, not deter them by ticket prices that are double what everyone else is charging. 

What makes this $100 "prize" even worse is this..

Included with the pre-sale tickets, and the promos, there will be a contractual document· This will need to be filled out to the best of your ability, with a $50.00 application fee attached (cash or checks).

On top of requiring you to sell tickets, he also wants you to pay him $50!  Seriously..  This is even astounding to me and i've seen a lot of these scams.

Once again, I suggest you stay as far away as you can from this guy.  It's a 100% scam and he even lists Gorilla Productions on his page.  If you've never heard of those guys you'd be doing yourself a favor by clicking that link.

To find out more about pay-to-play scams please check out this informative blog post by Musicians Against Pay-To-Play, who are also on our top friends.

Ah, it's refreshing to know that as frenzied as life can sometimes be, some things remain ever constant. In defiance of fair weather trends, Denver is still a hotbed for metal, and Dave Otero still has a hand in producing some of the best music coming out of here. For evidence, look no further than the latest effort from Cryogen, Despara, released yesterday on Dark Millennium Records. In what's steadily becoming a welcome trend locally, the outfit is streaming the entire EP on its MySpace page, allowing fans to sample the goods before forking over their hard earned loot to pick up the disc. And we all know that metal fans are among the remaining contingent that still buy albums, right? Good move.

Impeccably recorded at Otero's Flatline Audio studio, Despara, the follow-up to Psalms of Deceit, of which the outfit sold a thousand copies, is an exercise in sheer brooding brutality. If dual leads and otherwise precision guitar work, machine gun rhythms and scathingly guttural vocals put a smile on your face, Cryogen has just what you're looking for and more, particularly on tracks such as "Mirror Entropy," which bolsters the blistering leads with a anamolous, unexpected classical interlude. Give the record a spin and then catch Cryogen with such like minded acts Immortal Dominion and Walk the Dead at the Cork in Fort Collins on Sunday, November 8, and then again at 12 Volt Tavern on Saturday, November 21, with Conspiracy Assassins and Hate By Example.

-Dave Herrera

link to article

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In case anyone doesn't follow us on Twitter (@CRYOGENband), the new EP is 100% complete. After a slightly extended mixing/mastering session last week at Flatline Audio, we got the final product which has really turned out amazing! For this release, we pushed for a less 'controlled' sound than Dave usually gets from us. The result was a more open and punishing production which really compliments where our songwriting is right now. I can also say that the drums really shine on this record more than on any other we've released (both performance and production), and the string parts will surprise you!

Phil's finishing up with the cover art which we're excited to unveil and weave into a new Myspace layout. Once this is done, sound clips and pre-orders can begin. SPREAD THE WORD! 

Despara:
1. Mirror Entropy
2. The Hidden
3. Divine Hallucination
4. Agnosis

We'll be keeping a video log here on myspace of our time in the studio, recording our new demo/EP (out sometime this fall/winter).  Check back for updates.
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Pre-production & Day 1 (Setting up Drums)

Pre-production was done over the last few months in our practice space up in Greeley, CO.  We spent a lot of time perfecting the songs and getting the time signatures and tempo's down, plus recording scratch tracks that we'll use to play with in the studio.  The video shows a run through of one of the newer songs.  The recording setup we had up there was minimal, but it got the job done.

Day 1 at Flatline Audio was spent setting up and tuning the drum kit.  We'll, that was Dave's job.  Our job was to fuck around and take retarded pics and videos.  Enjoy.




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Day 2-3 (Recording Drums)

The next few days were spent recording drums.  Somehow we missed taking video of Arron actually playing them, but you get to hear the infamous Cryogen roll through the monitor speakers in the control room.

After drums were finished up, we headed to a Vietnamese restaurant where mikey got his first taste of durian fruit..




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Day 4-6 (Recording Guitars and Vocals)

Next up was guitars, which Brian masterfully executed, or in layman's terms.. "He torn that shit up."  He goes over some of his guitars in this video, which are all pretty much junk.  Unfortunately we didn't get any solos recorded so I guess you'll just have to check that shit out at one of our shows.  Dave can be seen adjusting the 6505, which is what we used along with a Krank for the guitar tone.

Vocals were done at MindCycle Studios (Darkness' studio), which recently moved locations so it's not fully setup yet.  Check out Mike with his low ass vocals at the end.  Apparently constricting his throat with his hands like that makes it sound better..  Can't argue with that.

Here's some videos and a couple pics from a trip we made to Casper, WY back in February.  As usual, most are in the truck, but we did manage to get one in the venue this time!  Wow.. we're just that good.  Anyway enjoy.

Just wanted to fill everyone in on what's happening with us this summer. We've been bustin our asses for most of '09 working on a new 4-song demo that we're recording with Dave Otero starting Monday, June 15! These songs easily represent the most intense, technical material we've ever written, and we've been spending a ton of time trying to make everything as musical as possible. We guarantee this won't sound like math metal...

Expect some new shit for Cryogen like string ensemble stuff (actual strings!); a ton of odd timings (13/4, 12/8, 17/8, 10/4, etc..), and more extended arrangements. The runtime of this demo will be similar to that of our previous releases, so you'll definitely get your money's worth!

We haven't yet decided how we're gonna release this beast, but stay tuned for updates as well as the usual recording vlogs you've come to love.

While you're at it, download our EP 'Psalms of Deceit' for whatever you'd like to pay HERE