Shadows Fall Has Signed with a Label for New Music, Announcement’s Still Coming
We’ve known for a while now that Shadows Fall was working on new music. It’s a source of hype around these parts, since they haven’t put anything new out in more than a decade. According to a recent interview, it sounds like the band’s taken care of a major step in making a record — finding a new label.
Speaking with Sh!t Talk Reviews (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), frontman Brian Fair said there are plans in the works right now to release new music. It’s been more than a decade since Shadows Fall put out some new tunes, so Fair said the band’s trying to make sure it’s done right before really commenting on anything.
“We’ve got something locked up. I don’t know if I’m allowed to announce yet, but we definitely have a great partner for the music. We have a very progressive kind of view. They’re gonna let us kind of release it in a way that makes sense. So, yeah, we’re very excited that we got kind of the infrastructure.”
With so much time between releases, Fair said the landscape in the music industry’s changed too much to really go a more traditional route.
“It’s very different now. The traditional sort of record deal, it doesn’t have to be the way it used to be. There was such an industry standard of, like, record a full-length, tour for a year and a half, record a full-length, tour for a year and a half, that kind of cycle. And it’s been totally decimated now, ’cause you don’t need to do the… The first-week [sales] numbers don’t mean what they used to, all that type of shit. So it’s cool. But, yeah, we’ve got a good partnership that hopefully we can announce soon.”
As for how things are looking for Shadows Fall moving forward, especially given the fact that drummer Jason Bittner left Overkill to focus on the band, it’s sounding like the reunited outfit is sticking around a bit. When asked if this was a more permanent situation, Fair said it wasn’t going anywhere, albeit with a bit of a caveat.
“It’s not going anywhere, but I don’t think we’ll ever be the full-time touring band we were. It’s a lot of family stuff and people have just got different things going on. Jon [Donais, Shadows Fall guitarist], being in Anthrax, that’s gonna be kind of his main gig most of the time. Jason, yeah, he left Overkill, but he’s also got Category 7 with John Bush and Phil Demmel and all those guys, and that new record’s killer. So they’ll be busy with that. But we’re definitely gonna keep playing shows. We’re gonna keep doing festivals. We probably will hopefully do some short tours here and there, especially when new music comes out, but we’re gonna kind of pick and choose our battles, which is, again, also a nice place to be in.
“When the band was our full-time job, you couldn’t stay at home for too long or there wasn’t gonna be a home to come home to. You’ve gotta go out and grind. So it’s nice to not have that pressure, but also to do it because it’s fun again. Each show that we’ve done have all been blockbusters in our minds because there’s just enough time between each one that you get that excited again. It ramps up and then it’s just like an explosion.
“Me personally, I was so burnt out by the time we stopped touring in 2015. We’d been on a 15-year run where I hadn’t been home for more than a few weeks through that whole thing. And physically, my neck was shot, my back was shot. I was burnt mentally as well, so it was time to come home for a while. But then, now I’m, like, ‘Okay, cool. Let’s go have some fun.’”
