Punks/activists push the anarcho-punk musical tradition to a new level of creativity, intensity, emotional expression. Imagine Zegota as a d-beat band like Diallo or From Ashes Rise: the heart and soul, the long improvisations, but with fist-waving, dreadlock-swinging crust parts. Ten soulful, dark, wide-ranging songs in 50 minutes.
Blacken the Skies existed from about September of 2002 till about April of 2003. Nate and I were sitting at Mexico, a restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina when we decided to start the band. Both of our previous projects had come to an end and we knew we could work well together because we had played in a band together before. I (stef) would play guitar and sing and Nate would beat the drums. We decided we would try to enlist our good friend xBenx to play the bass and sing as well. He was off in the Northwest sitting in a tree somewhere, but we’d get him to come home eventually. We received an email back from him one day when he had taken a break and gone into whatever town he was near. It said “yes”. It was on, we were staring a new band. xBenx returned home in late August.
We practiced like maniacs for months and eventually our half-Dutch/half-American friend, Vincent, joined us on second guitar. By January we had written a record and were ready to make a demo recording of it with our friends down the street. In the meanwhile, we played local shows and bought a van.
In February we met up with our friend Phillip from Kylesa at the Jam Room in South Carolina and we re-recorded the songs from the demo on to two-inch tape with Phillip producing and Jay Matheson engineering. We made the layout and shipped everything off for production so we could have the CD’s done for our (not intended to be) brief tour.
We set out in mid-March for what should have been a five-week tour. We played shows through Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana (Funck is the most edge, duders), Tennessee and Kentucky before throwing in the towel after two weeks in Louisville. After non-stop van trouble and the quality of Nate’s health decreasing by the minute (poor Natedogg was born with some crazy kidney disorder that causes his kidneys to back up and poison him with his own toxins) we decided there was no way to finish the tour. We headed home with our tails between our legs, cancelled the remainder of the tour and went on with our lives. We all live in different cities now but are still good friends. Thanx to everyone who ever supported our band by coming to see us play, booking a show for us or checking out our album. We love you!!!
