SCENE FLYERS

A place to share all those graphic show posters from the golden days of MySpace. If you have some gig posters that might fit on this blog, hit me up. :)

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Hello people! (Again, SORRY for the lack of activity... :( )

Today, I’d like to show you this poster from an old Alesana tour, that took place in late 2010. I stumbled upon it during the search for an original poster from the release year of “On Frail Wings...” but aside from an old Warped Tour flyer, I couldn’t find anything so this one will do.

Like I said, this flyer was created in more recent years. Post-hardcore band Alesana had already released their third album “The Emptiness” in January that year, completed an album release tour and then set up a small tour called the “Two Frail Weeks Of Vanity And Wax Tour” where they played their debut album in its entirety for their long-time fans.

Supporting acts were fellow post-hardcore act Our Last Night, who just got exposed to a larger audience by releasing their successful third album “We Will All Evolve”, the newly formed and horror-themed trancecore sextet Vampires Everywhere! and Honor Bright, a pop-punk band who had released their amazing second studio album “Action! Drama! Suspense!” via Triple Crown in summer that year (it’s a shame that they didn’t get more attention, even now that they are reunited).

The artwork, created by an unknown guy named Kevin Moore, is identical to the album art used for the “On Frail Wings...” re-release from 2007. Personally, I think it’s not THAT phenomenal, even though it fits to mid-2000′s emo-imagery in general, given the rather unhealthy, spectral appearance of the girl. 

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SHEESH! Hello there, eh... it’s been a while right? I didn’t forget about this blog, it’s just that I was so caught up in work the last months, that I didn’t had the time to keep it active. But here I am still having hundreds of flyers to share and I WILL share them, pinky promise.

This wonderful hommage to 60s-80s horror movies is the flyer for the first incarnation of Artery Foundation’s now well-known “Artery Foundation Across The Nation Tour”. Being a rather small artist management company back then, the guys at Artery have made quite a name for themselves since the companys inception in 2004, they even founded an imprint record label with Razor & Tie in 2010.

The first Across The Nation Tour took place way back in 2008 and was sponsored by online merchandise shop MerchNow and Kyle Crawfords popular clothing brand Electric Zombie. When a new Across The Nation tour was announced, it always guaranteed for a badass line-up and the first one was no exception. Let’s first take a look at the bottom line, where you can see a then small band called Memphis May Fire, who had one little self-titled EP from 2007 under their belt and had recently replaced their original singer Chase Ryan with the now famous Matty Mullins. It’s fun to see them touring now with the likes of Killswitch Engage, Yellowcard or Of Mice & Men who ironically weren’t even existent back then. They are listed along with a band called Blinded Black (never heard of them) and The Hottness, who released their debut full-length on Ferret that year. They played pretty awesome post-hardcore and had a lot of buzz on MySpace but somehow just faded away after one last LP in 2009... :(

The next line features christian metalcore juggernaut Oh, Sleeper and Before Their Eyes. Both bands were only two years old and had their debuts “When I Am God” and “Before Their Eyes” out the year earlier. Four Letter Lie is the old band of A Day To Remember’s lead guitarist Kevin Skaff and Dylan Smith, better known as the rapper MOD SUN. They released a new EP in 2014, without the aforementioned members though.

Co-headliner Dance Gavin Dance had just kicked out their original singer Jonny Craig (for the first time :D ) and went into the studio recording their first album with Kurt Travis during this tour, which should be the reason for the “appearing on selected dates” asterisk. A Skylit Drive released their debut full-length and their first release with new singer Michael Jagmin during the time of this tour. The hype around that release was so real, that it instantly entered the Billboard 200 charts when it finally came out.

The poster just looks uncannily awesome. The whole horror movie theme is executed perfectly with the creepy staring face in the middle and all the scared and screaming people around. The color channel shifting makes them look very unnatural, which adds up to the creepiness, same with the Samdan Evil font, the creator (probably Electric Zombie) chose for the band names. I also like that they put the word “starring” on top of the bands, like they do on a real movie poster.

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This time I even have two flyers promoting the same tour, namely the “Rise vs. Tragic Tour” back in March 2008. The upper one was made specially for the Florida dates. It was some sort of collaboration between Rise Records and Tragic Hero Records, two labels that were still very small at that time. The first releases from bands like The Devil Wears Prada, Before Their Eyes or Dance Gavin Dance were some of the bigger things from Rise, Tragic Hero was for example the original home to Alesana and A Skylit Drive.

Both labels put two of their bands on the tour. A Different Breed Of Killer were a young deathcore band (yes, Rise was also home to some deathcore acts back then). They released their debut full-length “I, Colossus” shortly after this tour. Sadly, that should remain their only release to this day. I think this is my third post to feature Oceana. And and this time they were even further at the beginning of their career. Their debut “The Tide” came out in the same month this tour happened. From Tragic Hero came the post-hardcore group Akissforjersey, who were on the verge of dropping their second studio album “Victims”, which happened in May that year. It is the only band that managed to come back with one last album in 2014, but has since disappeared. Knives Exchanging Hands was an extensively touring band, that played some crazy deathcore. Their debut “Hiatus” came out a year prior. They played a reunion show in 2014, but that was the last thing I heard from them. :(

Both designs are not THAT spectacular. Though I wonder what the old woman is doing on the upper poster. I understand the small alligator, given that it is a flyer for Florida tour dates, but ol’ granny there... I’m not sure. I like the way they stacked the band names on top of each other ignoring the space between the words. The lower poster almost looks like some royal advertisement, thanks to the dominance of red and gold. I like the symmetry of this thing, but as I said, I’m not a fan of pompous frames etc.

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The next poster I want to share was made for "The Secret Of The Dangerous Radio From Maine, In Space Tour”, that happened in the spring of 2008. First of all, it’s a hilarious title which was created by merging the names of all the bands on this tour. It was again presented by the clothing brand Pyknic and additionally by the music website PureVolume. Solo electropop artist The Secret Handshake had already risen to quite some fame by that time. His second album “One Full Year” was released a year prior and earned him lots of new fans. The Maine were still a very young band (They didn’t even had their cool logo, they used for the next two albums) and had freshly signed to Fearless in December 2007 together with releasing their second EP “The Way We Talk”. Danger Radio were a sweet pop rock band, who had also dropped their second EP “Punch Your Lights Out” at the end of 2007, which spawned the catchy single “Party Foul”. They should top that success by far with their debut full-length “Used And Abused” released in summer that year. I have to admit, I had to refresh my memory of Powerspace. :D They were a pretty rad powerpop band and had released their debut “The Kicks Of Passion” on Fueled By Ramen in summer ‘07, it should be their only one. Their single “Right On, Right Now” featured a pretty funny music video with one of the band members running and jumping around naked in some field.

As you can easily see, the Pyknic guys were also drawing this flyer. It even features one of their shirt designs, the “Slime Basket” with a little different colors, i think. Aside from the gorgeously looking evil basket, I really like the different patterns they put on the different slime layers, the basket is sitting upon. I still am stunned by the fact, how you come up with such ideas. Just notice details like the little flying baguette sandwich on the upper left. I miss those designs. I also love the 80′s horror movie themed font, they used for the title. 

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HI. I’m finally back from the offline world. Had to get some really urgent shit done the last week. Oh and hi to all my new followers. :D Really, it feels good to see that it is not only me, who misses this time or is at least interested in a pretty defining time in alternative music history.

Okay, for the next one I chose a poster that maybe doesn’t have the most gory neon artwork but is pretty nonetheless and features popular and important bands for the scene culture in the late 2000s. This tour happened in the summer of 2008. It was presented by wildly popular merchandise and alternative clothing retailer Hot Topic and was headlined by the then young and upcoming post-hardcore act A Skylit Drive. Their studio debut “Wires... And The Concept Of Breathing” dropped a few months earlier on Tragic Hero and charted immediately. It was their first release with Michael Jagmin after their original singer Jordan Blake left to form Watchout! There’s Ghosts, Jagmin has left his old band Odd Project a year prior. Sky Eats Airplane was an absolutely sweet post-hardcore/electronicore band who had a huge cult following back in the day. In 2008 they were on their peak of success, thanks to their deal with Equal Vision and their second self-titled LP which was released during this tour. It’s crazy to look at the names below the two headlining bands. Younger people: just imagine a world were Breathe Carolina & Emarosa are listed below a band like Sky Eats Airplane (”Sky Eats Who??”) Well, even back then Breathe Carolina and Emarosa both sure enjoyed their good dose of MySpace popularity, which should rise even more when their debut full-lengths (”It’s Classy Not Classic” and “Relativity”) were released around the time of this tour, but they were still far from being the headlining band.

As I said this is not the most colorful illustration, but pictures of expressionlessly looking girls layered with grunge textures = pretty scene in my book. The texture evokes the impression that the girls is buried under ice, that would explain the big black cross painted across the whole flyer. Maybe this is also a reference to A Skylit Drive’s first two releases which both feature photographs of girls as the album cover. I also enjoy the narrow font they used for the band names a lot.

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Hi again! Here we have a poster from an Automatic Loveletter tour, humorously titled the “Almost Have A Tour Bus Tour”, which took place in early 2009. It’s another sad example of a line-up, where every band has called it quits for a long time. Automatic Lovetter was a pretty well known pop rock back then, mostly thanks to their wonderful singer, songwriter and guitarist Juliet Simms. They had already gathered quite a lot of fans back then thanks to their 2007 EP “Recover” and should top that success the year after that by releasing their debut “Truth Or Dare”. A Cursive Memory were a pretty sweet pop rock band, who landed a fairly decent hit called “Everything” in early 2008 and released their debut full-length “Changes” shortly after. Powerpop act The Friday Night Boys had already generated some buzz with their first three EP’s but it wasn’t until summer ‘09 that they crashed into the mainstream with their debut LP “Off The Deep End” and hit singles “Stupid Love Letter” and “Stuttering”... god, I miss them. I don’t know much about Tickle Me Pink, except that they released their first studio album “Madeline” in fall 2007 and that their bassist died of heroin overdose in 2008. They played some decent emo/alternative rock and their single “Typical” is actually pretty sweet.

Whoever illustrated this, clearly wanted to go for some hippie-inspired art, which is pretty obvious regarding the watercolored background, the twisted font and the desired “tour bus” in the middle. It looks like a decommissioned city bus, rather than the famous Volkswagen bus, but anyway. I like the design, the colors are beautiful and the abstract floral thing behind the bus looks gorgeous. I also love those cute little guys running after the vehicle.

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For the next one, I’m gonna go a little more into the heavy side of things. If you were part of the scene back then and weren’t into powerpop or electronica bands you most likely had your iPod crammed with brutal (or br00tal) underground metalcore/deathcore bands. One of those bands were Arsonists Get All The Girls who were headlining the “Broken Hearts Broken Jaws Tour” in early 2008. They played their own schizophrenic version of deathcore mixed with mathcore, a lot of electronic elements, or even interrupted their tracks for a little ska. They had just suffered the tragic loss of their long-time friend and bass player Patrick Mason, who died of alcohol poisoning after celebrating his 21st birthday at the 30th November 2007. Their second album “The Game Of Life” was released just a few months before that incident. All that didn’t let them stop making music, though. Most of the other bands were still newcomers at that time. MyChildren MyBride released their label debut during this tour, but they already had a solid cult following, thanks to touring almost non-stop. For The Fallen Dreams had just released their debut “Changes” in January that year and Stray From The Path were far away from the rap metal/hardcore mix they play today. Their third album “Villains”, that came out in May that year, featured a pretty math-y style of hardcore, which they kept the next 5 years.

The multicolored, deformed abomination that graces this poster is again the work of Benjamin Lande. And again I got nothing but love for his work. I mean, just look at that... thing. It looks like some crazy biomancer flipped out in his laboratory and just threw all his test tubes and breeding boxes against the wall. There’s just eyes, teeth, fingers and guts everywhere. What an amazing way to promote your tour. :D No, seriously.

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For the sake of completeness, I also have to show you the flyers whose design I just can’t stand. This is one of them.

It is from the “The One Moment Tour” (named after One Moment Management) that took place in fall 2008 and featured a sweet bunch of popular post-hardcore groups from that time. Headlining act Before Their Eyes were still on Rise Records back then and released their second studio album “The Dawn of My Death” during this tour. Eyes Set To Kill were a young and upcoming band who had just released their debut “Reach” earlier that year. Ferret Music’s biggest flagship LoveHateHero had 2 albums under their belt, the last one being “White Lies” in early 2007. Sadly neither Ferret nor LHH have survived to this day. And I just realized that this is my second post to feature Oceana. On this tour, however, they still were at the beginning of their short career, before splitting up into different bands (Polyenso, Decoder/Lead Hands, Wolf:Speak) They had just released their debut “The Tide” in March that year.

I don’t know exactly why these designs were popular among scene kids, they all featured skulls, guns, angel wings, stars, those rococo frames. Malus Clothing, the presenter of this tour, sold shirts with those elements, so it seems natural that they also did this poster. It’s stuff that you can see on old As I Lay Dying or Bullet For My Valentine merch from 2005, or stuff that the cliché “emo” guy/girl from some tv series is wearing. I have to say, though, that I like the symmetry of the illustration and how they stained parts of the design with a contrasting red (it’s supposed to be blood, right?).

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Hey there!

This flyer is from the “No Parents No Rules” tour presented by the popular clothing brand Pyknic, which had a measurable influence on scene fashion back then. The tour happened in May 2009 and it was headlined by The Secret Handshake, the electropop/rock project of Luis Dubuc. He had just released his third studio album called “My Name Up In The Lights” a few weeks before this tour. 2009 was definitely the year where TSH was on the peak of it’s success, with a lot of touring, a good amount of press coverage and doing official remixes of All Time Low and Bring Me The Horizon tracks. The Dangerous Summer had their debut LP Reach For The Sun fresh in stores, same with The Bigger Lights’ Fiction Fever EP. Indie-pop band The Morning Of had released their second record The World As We Know It in early 2008.

The guys over at Pyknic were drawing this poster. Even if there wouldn’t be their logo on the briefs, their designs always featured designs that had to do with food & drinks (I think they still do, but they ditched all the bright colors :( ). Cupcakes and slushies also were very popular elements associated with the scene culture. I love how the name of the headlining band is integrated into the design, using blocky letters and splitting the words to make it fit.

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EDIT: Thanks to the wonderful Wayback Machine, I finally found a flyer in good quality. I even found out, that this tour was presented by the clothing label Ikke Medal. Couldn’t read that before. :D   Hi again! :)

This sadly seems to be the only flyer left on the whole internet for this special tour. (And it’s not even in a good quality, I had to screenshot it because the file was broken somehow...) It’s from the EZ Bronz Tour, that happened in the last months of 2009 promoting the release of Breathe Carolina’s second LP “Hello Fascination” earlier that year. Supporting powerpop act Cash Cash had released their debut record “Take It To The Floor” a year prior. It was long before they decided to go full on DJing and producing house music. Stephen Jerzak is one of the guys who made those cute acoustic pop songs adored by scene kids around the world (like NeverShoutNever or Romance On A Rocketship). And Fight Fair... fuck, I miss them. They were part of the whole easycore scene and released an absolute banger of an EP called “Settle The Score” in November 2008, full of summer party jams spiced up with heavy breakdowns. I’m proud to own that EP, because it’s very hard to get where I live.

The title of the tour refers to some insider slang between the members of Breathe Carolina, if I remember correctly. “Bronz” is just their version of bros. I somehow like the odd mix between the inserted photo of a real lion (which is also featured on the cover of the Hello Fascination single) and the simply drawn elements. The whole thing revolves around a big party with a little too much alcohol, it seems. Well the bands on this tour certainly had a lot of fun. :D

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One thing I always had to grant the alternative music industry is, that they had established several projects to raise awareness of self-harm and suicide among teens and young adults, which still is not unusual among adolescents and was sadly also prominent among scene kids. One of those projects is the non-profit organization To Write Love On Her Arms, but another example of this is the Sub City record label found by Hopeless Records in 1999 and especially their annually hosted Take Action Tour. They book a couple of bands, which many kids listen to, so they can enjoy a day full of great music and clear their minds. They donate a good portion of their ticket and CD sales (there is also a Take Action Sampler every year) to a non-profit organization. Back then it was almost always an organization that helps people dealing with suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

In early 2009 the featured bands were Cute Is What We Aim For, finishing one of their last tours before their hiatus that singer Shaant announced later that year. Breathe Carolina were still signed to Rise Records at that point and had just attracted some attention by releasing their debut LP “It’s Classy, Not Classic” in September 2008. They should sign to Fearless and skyrocket to huge success shortly after this tour, though. Every Avenue had made a good impact on the community by releasing “Shh. Just Go With It” a year before that and started recording their follow-up shortly after the Take Action Tour. Anarbor were another new addition to the Fearless roster back then and the only thing I know about Meg & Dia is that Dia was featured on a track by The Summer Set, haha.

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The next poster I wanna show you, is this poster from an All Time Low tour illustriously titled the “Manwhores And Open Sores Tour” happening in the beginning of 2008. They garnered huge mainstream success by releasing their second LP “So Wrong, It’s Right” a few months before this and could now finally go on their first headlining tour. Guests on this tour were Mayday Parade, who had just released their first studio album in the summer of 2007 which generated a good amount of buzz within the alternative music community and is today considered one of the best pop-punk releases of all time. And the small name on the bottom right is the same Every Avenue that should give us 3 great albums in the years to follow. At that time, however it was not long ago that they signed with Fearless in 2007 and released their third EP “Ah!” which brought them some moderate success, mainly thanks to the single “Where Were You?”.

The poster itself is just lovely. One of the presenters is Glamour Kills and I think you can see that they had big influence on the illustration of this. You have to keep in mind that this was 2008 and GK was still all about brightly colored shirts mixed with different fonts. (GOD I just realize how I miss this style. I’m so happy, that I still got my GK/Hit The Lights collab shirt, haha) There are many different colors, cute clouds with moustaches and bowties, snowflakes some great fonts and it all looks like some playful lovely collage of some of the most important brands for the scene culture.

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Whoa! Hi guys, I’m sorry for the lack of uploads. Keeping this as active as I would like it to be is actually harder than I thought, haha.

Okay, here we have a flyer from a Cute Is What We Aim For tour that took place in the late spring of 2010. It was one of their first tours with a completely new line-up except singer Shaant, after he had put CIWWAF on hiatus a year before that, blaming his abuse of alcoholics as the cause. For supporting act The Friday Night Boys it was one of their last tours before they announced the breakup later that year. The Bigger Lights, however, had just released their debut LP a few months before this and should be touring almost non-stop until the end of 2010.

The flyer features the artwork from the new CIWWAF single ‘Harbor’ at the top. I love the huge light sign with the paper plane crashing into it. Together with the crumpled and ripped note papers below, the whole poster induces some kind of high school-esque feel. Most of the fans of these bands were in middle or high school back then and their lyrical themes fit pretty well, regarding the life situations of an adolescent being into scene music.

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Now this is what you expect, when you think of “scene flyers” right? This stunning piece from more carefree times was made for a Parkway Drive tour in spring 2009. That means one and a half year after they released their second album Horizons but still almost the same amount of time until they returned with an enormous bang, by releasing Deep Blue in the summer of 2010 and took album charts all over the world by storm. Another band that were still far from becoming one of modern melodic hardcore’s (and also Sumerian Records’) biggest flagship were Stick To Your Guns, who also still had one and a half year until they released The Hope Division which led them to some mainstream success.

The design of this poster looks outright hilarious. I don’t know exactly what’s happening here. There are some dudes and a woman in the front with some apparently bad intentions (I don’t think I want to know what exactly is happening graciously concealed by the plant in the front) and a van with a surf board near the palm tree in the back. It almost looks like a trip to the beach gone terribly wrong, maybe it’s a movie reference I don’t get? 

However, I can definitely tell you who is responsible for this illustration. At that time, I spent a lot of time on emptees (later renamed to mintees), where almost every graphic designer affiliated with the alternative music scene had an account and uploaded his/her designs, e.g. Dan Mumford, Godmachine, Michael Shantz (who did most of the old Drop Dead shirt designs) and a guy called Benjamin Lande, who also designed shirts for Whitechapel or Dance Gavin Dance. Unfortunately, he has deleted all his old stuff, but I’m 99,9% sure it’s his work, because of his unique drawing style and his love for white/pink gradients.

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One thing I liked about the whole scene back then is that, contrary to their often serious and emotional lyrics, most bands never took themselves too seriously. An example for that is the poster for this Gwen Stacy tour, early 2010. It was one of their last tours before their break-up later that year. Supporting acts were Vanna, Oceana and Dead And Divine, who all had released their second LP’s a year earlier. Solely Vanna is still active to this day, Oceana released a last EP in 2010 before transforming into an indie/experimental outfit called Polyenso (which is amazing too, check those guys out!)

The design of this flyer is so blatantly exaggerated that you can’t help but laugh. Beginning with the name up to the collage featuring every hip-hop cliché you can imagine. Adopting some hip-hop behaviour and imagery was popular during the “scene era”, if you want to call it like that. Just look at the bling-bling cover artwork of the Punk Goes Crunk compilation, the fact that the “Crank That” cover by I Set My Friends On Fire hit more than a million MySpace plays in 2007 or simply the whole “crunkcore” scene. But this one almost looks like someone from Pen & Pixel was responsible for illustrating, haha.

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Hey! I wasn’t home for the weekend, but i’m back now, so I can finally post some flyers again. Yay!

This one is from a release show of Dance Gavin Dance’s self-titled second LP in their hometown of Sacramento in 2008. The album was released 4 days prior to this show. The supporting acts all had released new material in that year, with post-hardcore acts A Skylit Drive and Lower Definition having released their debut full-lengths a few months before this.

The artwork is one of the reasons I wanted to share this piece, besides the incredibly sweet line-up. It’s from Mattias Adolfsson, who designed all the album covers for Dance Gavin Dance, except their first EP. He drew a lot of these fascinating baroque house-robot-men at that time and of course he also did the terrific baroque death star illustration on DGD’s self-titled CD. I could stare at his drawings for hours, because you can easily get lost in the numerous details this guy puts into his work. Oh yeah, he also has it’s own tumblr, it’s called: http://mattiasinks.tumblr.com/ . You can look at his most recent stuff there.

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HII! I didn’t have much time today, but I want to keep this active, so here we go. This slimy flyer is from Pierce The Veils “Delicious Tour” that took place in the autumn of 2008. It was their first headlining tour since their inception in 2006. They had just garnered some solid hype by releasing their debut record “A Flair For The Dramatic” a year earlier and could only dream of a world tour like the one they should be doing with Sleeping With Sirens 6 years later.

The supporting acts were mostly newcomers at that time. Breathe Carolina and Emarosa (with Jonny Craig after he had been kicked out of DGD the first time) had just released their debuts a few months before this.

The headlining act’s name becomes the central design element on this poster. I absolutely love the gooey design of the name. Although I know, that it should depict ice cream flowing down the letters, I always think of some alien slime and the bones sticking out of some of them add up to that image. It’s also impressive how much detail the illustrator put into the different dripping layers of “slime”.