#they've reposted the posts that a couple of the bands made to their story but haven't made an official post

[emometalhead]

WWWY fest quietly adding female fronted bands to the lineup without acknowledging the very justified backlash they received is soooo

[jackfromthefairytale]

No no go OFF kiran i wanna hear cause i'm also nosy and a very opinionated bitch

the most recent set of opinions i've got is about their current marketing strategy (or lack of) cus like. they've definitely got the money for some decent marketing and a social media campaign but they're doing nothing. which. is a strategy that hasn't exactly failed them before because they didn't do shit before just pretend went off, but that's a whole different story

take this ost album that just came out. v.a.n. banger song, banger music video, good idea getting poppy on the track etc. etc., and in terms of garnering attention they did those cryptic videos as a kind of "character introduction" and, in the days leading up, they had the guys deactivate their instagram accounts and it was this whole big thing (which, with the timing of it and three from sleep token taking a break due to doxxing was a little unfortunate but i digress) anyway. this all helped and v.a.n was a hit (maybe a slightly unpopular/controversial one, but it made numbers so. a hit)

then there was nothing. for the next month or so. then the drain got leaked and they did the tracklist announcement, which had a bit of fanfare but not much for one of the biggest bands in metalcore. and half of these collaborations were people that hadn't been heard of but hey it's something different, right?

then nothing for months. then they tell us they're cancelling the festival run due to noah's burnout, and a week later is when the album drops, and still there's nothing on the release side, no buildup no nothing. a couple social media posts/reposts from the collaborating artists and not much more from the band members themselves.

so. album drops. it's an experimental concept album, which most people didn't quite get since they were expecting a run-of-the-mill deluxe and not a 26 track release that had not a lot of relation to the previous album. there's a narrative that most people aren't clued in on because the average guy might be following the band on social media but isn't keeping track of every word uttered in the few interviews they do. to put it simply, there's a bit of confusion.

anything > human is the release day single, which i didn't actually know until i looked at their artist page and saw they put it out as a single but that was dropped at the same time as the rest of the album which kinda doesn't make sense and again, not much pzazz aside from using two lines from the verse as captions on instagram but it got it on playlists and on the charts

(which. the three singles all made the (us hard rock) charts, one hit the number 1 spot which is pretty good but other than that a tad underwhelming for a band who are considered to be one of the current biggest) (which also. poppy has a lot of fans and a lot of brand recognition, health are known in their vein of industrial metal and are professional shitposters and erra are known within their niche but have quite a different audience to bad omens and are generally a smaller band compared to poppy and health)

and maybe, maybe they did have some big marketing plan with music videos and just generally a lot more fanfare which got cancelled with noah not being well, but all of it being cancelled in favour of,, nothing? not even downsizing to a smaller social media campaign to get some eyes on them? the most they had were the visualisers (which are pretty cool, i'm not dunking on those) and whatever sumerian's social media guy was doing, which a lot of people block out anyway.

which bad omens are a big band. sumerian are a big-ish label. a concept-oriented album like this requires some level of concept to build off of that isn't contained in the four issues of comic books that the band wrote/published (and i think some people who read them said that they don't tie much into the ost anyway?) and they have a "creative director", who works in comics and worked on the comics and i just think there's a lot more they could have done to (a) clarify exactly what this release was supposed to be (b) highlight the artists they're collaborating with (c) put a bit more fun into it and (d) appeal to the nerds (like for example, how i managed to infodump about the comics and the concept behind the just pretend music video and got a friend so interested into the storyline that she went looking for live tickets and she doesn't even like much heavy music)

they have the resources/budget and some degree of personnel on the creative non-music side of things yet..?

it just seems really weird and lacklustre that they had just the visuals they commissioned and nothing else to put out on this side when release day came, because if you don't have a level of marketing strategy at this point in your career, is your album really ready to be put out?

(it is also kinda. iffy. how the only thing they've consistently been using their social media for is. merch drops left right and centre. which with the lack of anything else comes off as a slight cash grab (not a comment on merch prices, and i do get that it is the main way of making money as a touring band when not on tour) but maybe that's just me)