Art of Mass Destruction

nathanedwards:

We are officially a part of panic records! (Taken with instagram)

Congrats! Well earned and deserved!

Go check out my son’s latest recording project. I’m a little biased but I think it’s pretty badass.

ronstormer:

therammerjammer:

People across the southern United States are trying to use your platform for good, and isn’t that what the internet is all about?

I beg of you, make a 2011 Tornado Outbreak Tag Page so that we can get this information and these stories out to those that use this as their main form of social media.

Or you can sit back and be content with having LOL and Royal Wedding as your top priority, your call…

That number is still going up as we can tell.

(via theveekey)

OUR COMPLETELY UNPLANNED REFUGEE VACAY, PART I

Some of you may have a vague awareness that Alabama was hard-hit by a string of very large and powerful tornadoes Wednesday. My hometown of Huntsville was hit by 6 of them. I spent most of Wednesday afternoon watching them lining up to our west on radar and then around 4 they started rolling into our city. I stood outside with coworkers watching these huge rotating cloud systems travel at amazing speeds over the top of our shop and just to our north. We watched one of the larger ones as it touched down and heard over the radio that it had hit a grocery store and housing development. Some time just after five our power finally gave out. I assumed the damage would be limited and the power would be back up shortly. I was wrong.

We spent Wednesday night completely in the dark, both literally and figuratively. I went home expecting to pick my son up, go find a restaurant/bar with electricity and spend a few hours waiting on the utility workers to get things back online. As we drove from one end of our darkening town to the other, carefully easing through the lightless intersections, it became clear that the power outage was massive. The only place we found open was our usual taco truck running off battery/generator power and with a crowd of people gathering out front. As I waited in line for dos pork burritos I overheard the gentlemen in front of me say that all of North Alabama was without power and the nuclear plant had been shut down. Scary shit. I still went home believing that things would be repaired during the night and I’d need to be at work the following morning. I lit some candles, plugged my now dead phone in with hope that it would start charging as a slept, and went to bed early.

Thursday morning came and still no power. I used my son’s phone to try and reach my boss and the network was down. I took a luke-warm shower, got dressed and headed out to my car to listen to the radio reports. I was shocked to find a tiny 8 page newspaper hanging from my doorknob. In a heroic effort, our local paper The Huntsville Times stayed up all night putting together this mini-edition using an extension cord plugged into an RV to run their press. The 8 pages are almost entirely photos of destruction and the small amount of text was all bad news. Electricity would be out for days - damage worse than estimated - hundreds missing.

I sat and thought for a bit. We had no grill. No natural gas utilities. Batteries were low. Phones were dead or dying. The food in the refrigerator was already room temperature. The one thing we had in our favor was a half a tank of gas and money in the bank. I woke my son up and told him we were heading north for a day or two. Long enough for me to get online and get a better idea of what was happening, charge our phones, get in touch with relatives and buy non-perishable food items, something we had woefully little of. We packed our overnight bags, dropped off the food that would go bad in our absense at Ronstormer’s house (they have a grill), and headed for Tennessee.

The small town of Athens just northwest of us miraculously still had power, and as a result they also had half the state trying to get at their gas pumps. The lines were tremendous and people had parked and were outside their vehicles trying to glean news from one another. Overnight gas stations had become the trading posts of yore. We decided to just head north on the old two lane highway instead of the interstate which appeared to be a parking lot, and on our way drove directly through the path of the tornado observing the damage to Tanner, Alabama first hand. My empty light came on somewhere around Lynchberg but every exit we passed had lines of cars waiting just to get off the interstate and then get in line for gas. We kept going and had just enough gas to get us as far as Columbia, TN before we had to stop. We spotted a Super 8 with free internet and grabbed a room. We’ve been in Columbia since then. Our friends in Decatur now have their power back and more and more shops in Huntsville have opened up and are operating on generators, but Huntsville is still without power and looking to remain that way until sometime Monday. Chris and I are heading back to Alabama tomorrow. I’m dropping him off in Decatur to stay with friends and then I’m going on into the city with all of my electronics charged, an assortment of soft drinks, potato chips, cookies and sandwich stuffs and six $1 flashlights. I will have plenty of distraction free time to clean out my fridge, and get in some reading. Hope to see you again in a few days Tumblr.

victoriaelyse:

jcrew:

When he’s not designing, Billy Reid can likely be found hosting a rock ’n’ roll jamboree in his Florence, Alabama-based headquarters, strumming a guitar on his front porch or hitting the road for a musical festival or two. So we couldn’t resist asking him to tell us what has caught his ear lately. Here’s his highly recommended playlist of current faves…

(post by Alison Griffin)

J. Crew is helping me in saluting and supporting a fellow Alabamian, in hopes to prove to the rest of the world that some of us actually do lead successful and sophisticated lives, (I’m obviously referring to Mr. Reid here) as well as wear shoes and use proper sentence structure on a daily basis (with the exception of the occasional “ya’ll” added into our vocabulary…you’ve gotta’ keep it colorful, people!) You don’t see an ounce of red on his neck, do you?

Ok, so running sound for local shows doesn’t exactly pay well, but one of the perks is that your mom is rarely made to pay the cover when she shows up. (Thanks Ronnie, Scott and Chris!) As a result I’ve seen Carridale perform several times now and it’s always fun. These guys are great musicians, have incredible energy, and work hard to put on a show that lights the local kids up like firecrackers. Don’t just take my word for it - read the review below - and then go give them a listen.

fuckyeahpop-punk:

Bear with me guys, this is my first album review ever!

If you haven’t heard of Carridale yet, you’re doing something wrong. The 5-piece pop punk band from Decatur, Alabama, already seems out of place, being from Alabama - not to mention they have members from the metal band Mychildren Mybride. The band over looks the stereotypes of where they’re from - location and previous bands, and comes out with an awesome new EP.

Relapse In The River City is full of everything a pop-punk record should have: fast punk beats, catchy melodies, relatable yet metaphorical lyrics, gang vocals, and whoa-ohs. Get ready to pop-punk jump in your bedroom until your walls fall down. 

The EP starts with How Did I End Up Here?, a song with a fast, punk beat that’s going to make you want to start a circle pit as soon as it starts. The song draws you into the EP, and from it, you know that you’re gonna be hooked on this band. 

Relapse continues with songs that you may have already heard on the bands Myspace page, A Lesson In Semantics, Count On Me, and One Girl’s Trash Is Another Girl’s Trash. Lesson starts out with a seemingly “easycore” riff, and makes it work with their upbeat, early 00’s-esque pop-punk. Count On Me is another song that’s going to make you want to stage dive, pile-on, and sing your heart out. One Girl’s Trash is the track with the aforementioned “whoa-ohs.” You know this one’s going to be a good track, just from that. I mean, who doesn’t love themselves some whoa-oh’s? 

Back to the unheard tracks! Relapse continues on with the title track to the EP. The topic of this song seems to be extremely popular in the pop-punk community, but I think that a pop-punk album isn’t complete without a song about touring and hating the town that you actually live in, so here it is. If you’re looking for a song to singalong to in the car while road tripping, or even touring, this is the song you’re gonna want to listen to. Circular Logic: relationship song! Pop-punk hates girls! Catchy! Yay! That’s all you need to know about Circular Logic. It’s awesome. Oh, and it has a sick guitar solo in the bridge and an awesome singalong at the end. My Oubliette starts out with another fast punk beat, your “stay positive” lyrics, and ends the EP with another singalong.

All in all, Relapse In The River City is a fucking solid pop-punk album. Go pick it up, at a show, pre-order it at their bigcartel website, or buy it online somewhere. Support this band so they can keep doing what they love to do. 

Relapse In The River City comes out this Tuesday, February 8th.

Bigcartel: http://carridale.bigcartel.com
Myspace: http://myspace.com/carridale
Facebook: http://facebook.com/carridalemusic