CLOUDKICKER IS BACK WITH BEACONS

Will someone please sign this guy? Of all the one-man bedroom metal bands out there today (and good lord are there a lot of them), the number of emails we get about Ben Sharp — aka Cloudkicker — far outnumber the rest. And with good reason; Sharp puts out consistently good material that’s not derivative in the landscape of a micro-genre that thrives on derivation.

Not that Cloudkicker really needs a label, because he seems to be doing just fine on his own and gives all his music away for free anyway. His new album Beacons — his second already in 2010 — appeared on the Interwebs this week, and surprise, it’s free, but with a twist: for the first time ever he’s taking donations for a digital download of the album in the form of a “name your price” box. Of course “$0.00” is a perfectly acceptable price to name, and you can essentially do that anyway by just steaming the whole thing on his Bandcamp page, but those fans wanting something more tangible can purchase a CD for $10 — or more if they so choose. Check it out right here.

It’s a pretty neat way to release an album. MS reader poll: if you’ve purchased Beacons, how much did you pay for it? BE HONEST.

-VN

Thanks: Josh S., Matan J.