Digg The Release

I am proud to announce the final release of the debut Severed Fifth album Denied By Reign. You can go and download it in its entirety here. There are download links for both Ogg and MP3 as well as BitTorrent links. Thanks to Adam and Neuro for providing mirrors. The full album is available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license - you are free to copy, share, remix and sell the album if you like.

When I started working on Denied By Reign, I intended it to have two primary purposes. Firstly, I wanted it to be a good representation of my own creativity, as any musician would want. With this goal in mind, I have worked to produce a pretty thumping metal album, and I am really proud of it - I hope some necks ache out there. But the second purpose is more important - to explore what is possible when an independent artist releases their work in the new music economy.

Today the next phase of Severed Fifth begins and in this critical time, our focus shifts to exposure. To build success around Severed Fifth, we need to get Denied By Reign in the hands and ears of everyone. The goal here is to spread the word about the album and strongly celebrate it’s free culture foundation. I am hoping Denied By Reign will be an example of how a free culture album can gain critical exposure and success, and how this can open up other opportunities for artists.

With this in mind, we have the Severed Fifth Street Team - a collection of Severed Fifth fans around the world who are going to help with this goal of getting the album oodles of exposure. I have heard of people who are going to print out posters and put them in music shops, burn Denied By Reign to CD and play it in clubs and venues, and one guy even talked about taking a Denied By Reign CD, putting it in a boombox and walking down his town high street.

So now this critical phase kicks off. How can you help? Well a few ideas to start with:

• Download Denied By Reign and review it. Put it on your blog, and talk about the project.
• Join the Street Team and come and join us spread the word about the album. Put up posters, tell your friends, tell local music shops, show it to local bands, post on forums, send it to established artists that you may know and anything else that can help.
• Come and join the Severed Fifth community. Check out our Forums and log onto #severedfifth on irc.freenode.net

With the focus shifting to the Street Team, I will be posting more about this soon. Thanks everyone for all of your support.

Well, after a weekend off of Sneak Peeks from Denied By Reign I want to give you the final three before I release the album tomorrow:

• Sneak Peek 9 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 10 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 11 - Ogg MP3

If you missed the others, here they are:

• Sneak Peek 1 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 2 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 3 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 4 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 5 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 6 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 7 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 8 - Ogg MP3

So, after months of writing, recording, production, mastering and development, the final album is released tomorrow. I am looking forward to getting Denied By Reign out there, and then the focus moves to the next big step - telling the world about it, and spreading a free culture message around an album. This will be the really large and difficult job - writing, recording and releasing an album is something I have done before both by myself and with Seraphidian, but the new ground being forged here will be in spreading the word around Severed Fifth and not only growing a culture and buzz around the music, but around the mechanics of a free culture album. This is when the real fun begins, and this is going to result in a lot of email, a lot of discussion, and importantly, trying to mobilise a world-wide street team. Fortunately, w already have a great bunch of people already involved, and I will focussing my own efforts on providing everything needed to ensure the street team can kick arse and take names. This includes help, guidance, only materials and whatever else.

I am also really, really keen to grow a community of listeners and fans around Severed Fifth, and you should all go and hang out in the wicked-cool Severed Fifth Forums. Lets get a party going over there.

One more day…one more day…

About Severed Fifth

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics - go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.

I just want to thank everyone for their support of the album and the project. Thanks also to the Creative Commons for their continued support.

Another two sneak peeks from Denied By Reign building on the three previous days:

• Sneak Peek 7 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 8 - Ogg MP3

Today I want to highlight two rather cool quotes that have come in from some pretty notable people about Severed Fifth. First, I blogged about this yesterday, but Zak Tell from the legendary metal band Clawfinger said:

“Hi Jono, nice idea man & good announcement, it’s probably going to be the only way to do it in the near future unless someone comes up with a genius idea that guarantees artists get paid for the art they create however big or small they may be! You’re definitely on the right track as there’s no stopping the technical evolution, therefore the best thing you can do is use all the available tools to your advantage!”

Second, Mike Linksvayer, VP of the Creative Commons had the following to say about the project:

“The new music economy will be defined by those who push the envelope. Severed Fifth is pushing the envelope and taking names. Thank goodness they’re on our side.”

Thanks Zak and Mike. Also, in related news, Sam Dean from OSTATIC did a write-up of Severed Fifth called More From the Open Source Music Garage. In this he says:

“If Severed Fifth can simply create an enthusiastic community around an album, live performances might attract audiences and grow the community larger, though. It will be interesting to watch this effort”.

In other news, great to see people like earthdragon helping to give away CDs at his/her school and things are kicking off on the Street Team. Go and join the Street Team by clicking here. We certainly need your help - lets make this happen.

About Severed Fifth

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics - go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.

I just want to thank everyone for their support of the album and the project. Thanks also to the Creative Commons for their continued support.

One person who has picked up on the Severed Fifth train is Zak Tell, singer for rap-metal legends Clawfinger. Speaking about the project he said:

“Hi Jono, nice idea man & good announcement, it’s probably going to be the only way to do it in the near future unless someone comes up with a genius idea that guarantees artists get paid for the art they create however big or small they may be! You’re definitely on the right track as there’s no stopping the technical evolution, therefore the best thing you can do is use all the available tools to your advantage!”

Thanks Zak! I can’t tell how cool it is to hear one of my fave singers giving the thumbs up to the project.

Two more sneak peeks for your delectation, building on two previous days:

• Sneak Peek 5 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 6 - Ogg MP3

I also want to say a big thanks to Matt Asay’s coverage of Severed Fifth on CNET. Thanks Matt! Big thanks also to Ryan Busch who is going out and about spreading the Severed Fifth word in Michigan. Keep up the great work Ryan!

I also wanted to show off a new information document about Severed Fifth:

Go and grab the PDF of the page, and you can also grab a PDF Poster which I showed a few days back.

About Severed Fifth

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics - go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.

I just want to thank everyone for their support of the album and the project. Thanks also to the Creative Commons for their continued support.

Continuing the week of Denied By Reign sneak peeks, I have two more for you:

• Sneak Peek 3 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 4 - Ogg MP3

I am also proud to introduce the front and back covers of the album, and these images will be provided in large enough resolution to be printed at the correct size for a CD cover:

Front cover of Denied By Reign

Back cover of Denied By Reign

Thanks also to the following write-ups:

• Jorge’s comparison to Dethklok
• Greg from the CC blogs about Denied By Reign

About The Project

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics - go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.

Alright, get your seatbelts on, your engines running and get ready for a couple of sneak peeks of the final songs of the debut Severed Fifth album Denied By Reign. Grab them from below:

• Sneak Peek 1 - Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 2 - Ogg MP3

This week I will be releasing two sneak peeks from Denied By Reign every day. Stay tuned for more! I will also be releasing additional promotional content and features.

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics - go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.

I just want to thank everyone for their support of the album and the project. Thanks also to the Creative Commons for their continued support.

The release date of the debut Severed Fifth album, named Denied By Reign has been officially announced as Tuesday 21st October 2008. The album in its entirety will be freely available for download and sharing from severedfifth.com and various online music catalogs and bit torrent download sites.

The album features the following eight songs:

• Metric Of Hate
• Beating Heart
• Dollar Plague
• The Lake
• Edge Of Design
• Take The Test
• War
• Enslaved By Pain

Written, performed, recorded and produced entirely by Jono Bacon, the album touches a range of political and social topics, driven by a brutal, thundering style with pounding double bass drumming, grinding guitars and guttural vocals. The album was recorded in Jono’s home studio in central England and combines a range of styles. Pre-release listening sessions has resulted in comparisons to Metallica, Cannibal Corpse, Slayer, Pantera, Decapitated and Hatebreed.

I am pleased to make available a new Severed Fifth flyer that you can print out and stick up in your local area. Print the lovely little bleeder out, shove some tape or tack on the back and stick it up in your local cafe’s, music shops, computer shops, skate parks, record shops, old folks homes, or anywhere else. Oh, and do take a photo of where you put it up and send it to me - I would love to feature a couple of photos on severedfifth.com.

You can download it here.

Go nuts!

Thanks to Cory K for creating the flyer.