Thurs April 1: Worcester MA
We’ll be playing “Metal Thursdays” at Ralph’s Diner. This twice monthly event showcases great new england metal acts with a very narrow and traditionalist definition of metal, so we will be playing to a targeted audience and playing up our “progressive” metal side. Also on the bill are Composted, In Harm’s Way, and Ravage. (I’m particularly looking forward to Ravage).

Fri April 2: Albany NY
Albany’s monthly Goth Night – “Alien Nation” at The Fuze Box, is adding live bands and we are the first to play since Bella Morte in 2002. We’re digging out some of our earlier, more new-wavey material for the Albany Goths.

Sat April 3: New Bedford MA
New Bedford is on Massachusetts’s south shore and despite the name the venue, the New Wave Cafe, strikes us as more straightforward rock/metal, so we’re saving our hardest hitting tunes for the last night. Cruella and Runtt are both from down that way so we hope to see friends and family there. Also on the bill are Pistol Shot Gypsy, Cortez, Name in Vain, The Usual Madness, and Fighter Captured. Obviously a big night.

Serpentarius: http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_1907461

Seas of Blood: http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_1907536

TWO – An Original Music Series
at Port City Music Hall
March 23rd
504 Congress Street, Portland ME
$2 cover at the door | 21+ only
$2 all drafts: microbrews + Guinness (from 8 – 11 pm only)
2 Portland bands. The best of the best.

However, there was one more fly in the ointment to consider. back in March I had, on a whim, thrown our hat into the ring for the Utica Music Festival in Utica NY. Surprisingly, we were accepted fairly quickly! Surprisingly because these things are NEVER this easy. So, with a bit of skepticism I kept in the back of my mind the fact that we may have to go out to Utica for a show in Sept. We we’re not notified of our actual slot until June, and at that point I proposed turning the one gig into a short tour, our first. Again surprisingly, everyone else was into the idea! I think the fun factor was the biggest selling point.

So with that in mind, we were able to rustle up two other gigs (Tammany Hall in Worcester MA and Dingbatz in Clifton NJ). Though no one else in the band had ever been on tour, I had when i was decidedly younger, and it was a fucking horrible experience, with several close friendships ending before the tour ended. So with that in mind, off we went on the tour we dubbed “the Unfinished Business Tour 2009″, named so due to having to cancel the tour we had planned for 2007. I kept trying to focus on the fact that we were all adults and good friends as well as band mates, and that everything would go fine. In actuality, it went more than fine, it went great, and everyone had an awesome time. So much so that we’re planning another tour for the coming Spring.

Once back from the road we realized our 5 year anniversary was coming up, and since we had not played in Portland for the entire year, a special show at Geno’s was in order. Our very first gig in Oct 2004 took place at Geno’s, though admittedly at the old location on Brown Street. At our 5th anniversary show everyone there made us feel so welcome and accomplished. It’s truly our home away from home.

So, now that the studio is done, recording will start very soon, and then another tour. The new record will kick major ass, and not meaning to sound all high and mighty, but I really feel we have moved into a new strata, as we are now a “touring” band. Some friends of mine who tour for a living have warned me that sometimes the road can get draining, especially if you’re out for long periods, but actually I doubt we’ll ever get beyond 4-5 shows at a clip, as our personal lives aren’t flexible enough for anything else.

But that’s fine by us. We just want to keep it fun and challenging. Life’s too short for burdensome and draining.

Renowned for sounding like no other band in their town and leaving their audiences in a state of awed appreciation during and after gigs, BBA soon started spreading their area of influence throughout the complete New England region (for those interested, this includes the states Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont…or, in plain language, the complete North-East of the US) and, enthoused by people’s reactions to their music, spent time in two Maine studios from January to April 2007 to record their full-length debut Seas Of Blood (re-recording the track “Deny Yourself” off their EP and adding 7 new tracks to make for a 50-minute album). Following the mixing in June, the album was released a couple of months later through the Jericho Hill Records imprint. To top things off, the album was given additional distribution through Metal specialist label Relapse…and that should give you an idea of the qualities of this band! So what happened? Why haven’t we heard about the breakthrough of this band? Why are they now promoting themselves with that same 2007 album? The fact stands that singer Cruella was diagnosed with breast cancer (had an operation in August 2007 & started chemotherapy right after) just prior of a late 2007 tour that was to take the band outside the New England area, and in order to give her a fair battling chance, the tour was completely cancelled. Only towards mid 2008 did the band get on its feet and on local Maine stages again again (did their post-hiatus debut show on May 31st, at which time the band tried out the new material they had written in November-December 2007).

Meanwhile, the band had gotten high praise from local Portland weekly arts publication The Phoenix, who placed the band in their year-end Top 10 lists, first in 2005 for the EP, and then in 2007 for the full-length, and again in 2008. When the band found out in early 2009 that they had been overlooked for a nomination in the Portland Phoenix Music Awards, they called out for help from their many friends through their MySpace and eventually ended up winning TWO awards, the first in the category “Best Category Defying Act”, and the second for “Best Female Vocalist”!

Okay, enough praise, now back to the music! When listening to the 8-track album (6 of which you can hear at the band’s MySpace page) you’ll find the band to be quite diverse in their approach of songs! While the band will stand proud to be compared to the liikes of Nightwish and Kamelot, theirs is a wider spectrum which sets ‘em apart from those examples and inspiration sources (other influencial bands include The Damned, Mercyful Fate, Christian Death, Bauhaus, Jethro Tull, and Within Temptation –whom are cited as being the most influencial in BBA’s formation). Album opener “Serpentarius” is one of the longer tracks on the album (7 ½ minutes’ length) and has the atmospheric keyboards backed with violin sounds (induced onto the album by producer Steve La Cerra, whom also worked on the EP) for a track that starts off in fairly decent “heaviness”, but gets a rather “classic” passage to boot towards the end. The ensuing “Wants Me Dead” has the violins dropped and the keyboards replaced by a spooky 60’s B-movie Horror movie organ for a somewhat shorter track (still a good 4:20). The ensuing song throws the musical approach (which up til now was typified by the heavy guitars), for a more acoustic and lyrically macabre approach, where Cruella is accompanied only by piano, violins, and some sparce percussion. The spooky organ returns to support the heavy guitars in the tracks “Nidhogg”, “Lovely Lies”, and the re-recorded version of “Deny Yourself”, but is exchanged for piano on the album’s title track and album closing song “Little Lady Lillit”, the latter a nearly acoustic BBA version (the guitar remains etheric, and doesn’t go really into “heavy” mode) of the childish nursery lullaby (the cruelty of privileged children) with dual female vocals (I’m sure thekeyboardist helps out here)! Anyway, you really need to check it out for yourself (at myspace.com/bybloodalone) because descriptions, however elaborate, will never do justice to this band’s dark and somewhat unique approach of Gothic Progressive Metal. As mentioned earlier, the band have already a completely new set of songs to build a new album on, and I, for one, am definitely curious as to what evolutions the band may have gone through!

The Night Is Young
by Aimsel L. Ponti

My, how time flies when you’re playing a witches’ brew of Goth-anointed alternative rock/prog/metal. It’s been five years since By Blood Alone played its first show at Geno’s, and although the traditional fifth anniversary gift is something made of wood, I think By Blood Alone would prefer something in black velvet. Congrats to the band on hitting this milestone!

For the uninitiated, slither over to bybloodalone.com and myspace.com/bybloodalone, where you can spend seven minutes in Cruella’s BBA heaven listening to “Seas of Blood.” In case you didn’t hear, Blood is the new black.

A Night to Dismember: By Blood Alone 5th Anniversary Show with Ghosthunter and Arcane Lore. 9 p.m. Saturday. Geno’s Rock Club, 625 Congress St., Portland. Ages 21 and older. $5.

It is hard to believe it has been five years since we played our very first gig at our home away from home, Geno’s (the Brown St. Geno’s). We want to thank Barb for having giving us the support we needed from the very beginning of our time in the Portland music scene. In fact we would like to thank everyone at Geno’s for always being supportive of us in every way. And of course all of our friends in the music scene (you know who you are) and all of our fans and family. We wouldn’t have been able to be together this long with out all of you. YOU ALL ROCK!

We feel quite lucky to have had the attention of the local and worldwide media outlets for giving us great press (and some bad which only pushed us to work harder and write better material) This helped us along our journey from the beginning. Without positive feedback from outside of our little BBA world we would have surely not made it this long.

We are celebrating our 5 years of committed bliss at GENO’S, Of Course!, and would be so pleased if all of our friends that have been there for us in the past will come to this show.

We will be joined with our good friends of Ghosthunter and Arcane Lore, and we even have a couple of new tunes to unveil.

It will be a NIGHT TO DISMEMBER!
We hope to see you there and please spread the word.

love and blood always
By Blood Alone
Cruella, Runtt, John , Jack and Jenny xoxoxo

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=125829&id=38637272185&l=bd8a8b7ed2

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=4081446&albumId=2732540