Anonymous asked: First I want to say, you guys are amazing.....true music....my question is, how did you all meet? Have you known each other before the band? And did you guys have an idea collectively for the sound you were going for when you started up the band?

We went to high school in the same area, and knew each other through our various high school bands playing together. We wanted to do something weird and technical at first, as a side project of our other bands. But improvisation proved to be a big part of the fun, and the songs got longer and more atmospheric. That’s how Europa and Départe were born, in the Fall of 2003.

Anonymous asked: Hey Guys,

I am curious as a fellow band member, how do you guys incorporate day jobs within the band….I know there is not much money to be made in the music industry but what happens when you get back from a long tour…do you go back to a job you already have? And what kind of profits if any do you see from the record company?

It’s hard.  Day jobs are absolutely necessary because none of us make any money from the band, everything we take in goes to things like gas, repairs, recording, t-shirts, etc. We barely break even on expenses most of the time, and only take in money through touring — there are no record company profits. So we try to have jobs that are interesting to us and which are also flexible enough to let us tour (jobs like that are tough to find, but we’ve been lucky a few times). We have to be very careful about saving money when we’re at home to be able to eat while we’re on the road. It’s always a question of tradeoffs, and each person has a different view of the optimal balance between freedom and security.

Here is a recent interview with Metal Italia.

www.metalitalia.com/interviews/view.php?id=18&interview_pk=1565

Go get it here.

We know this has been at least somewhat-hotly anticipated, given how many people have asked/yelled/whined/pleaded/begged for it, and it’s finally here. It’s some of Cavity’s most ambitious packaging to date, a really fitting treatment of Mike Wohlberg’s artwork for this release, and on lots of colors for the super-nerds. It’s even quite reasonably priced for such a nice item!

(Note: the silk-screened edition is already gone, we did not and do not have any to sell, so please don’t ask us… other colors we should have at least a few of, at shows only.)

Anonymous asked: can't you guys somehow talk to your record company, because all of your music is blocked for me on youtube. i'd like to quickly show my friends, but i can't, because all i find are hilariously low quality concert videos or covers from other people.

It is not our record company that does this. It’s Sony, who owns RED, through whom Translation Loss music is distributed in the USA. Neither we nor our record company can do anything about it; RED has contractual rights to exclusive distribution of TL music in the US and is free to do whatever they want with that. As much as it bums everybody out, believe us when we say we had nothing to do with any of this and can do absolutely nothing about it.

We’ll be doing a short tour with our friends in Braveyoung, who are putting out a great record on March 29th that you all should go check out. We’ll be on the road from August 6th to 12th, with 4 of the shows being in Canada. Show info is on the way. Please get in touch with either us or David Mitchell at Proof Booking (who is booking these dates for us) www.proofbooking.com thegrandtheftottomanempire@gmail.com

Here is an updated list of shows 

23.06   SLO - Ljubljana @ Orto Bar

24.06   GER - Munich @ Sunny Red

 25.06   GER - Leipzig @ Zoro

 26.06   GER - Berlin @ Cassiopeia

27.06   POL - Szeczin @ Alter Ego

28.06   POL - Gdansk @ Mechanik

29.06   POL - Poznan @ Pod Minoga

30.06   POL - Warsaw @ Radio Luxembourg

01.07   POL - Zdunska Wola @ Club Variete

02.07   POL - Lublin @ Tektura

03.07   POL - Lodz @ Farbiarnia

04.07   SK - Kosice @ Tabacka Kulturfabrik

05.07   SK - Bratislava @ Obluda

06.07   CRO - Zagreb @ AKC Medika

07.07   HUN - Budapest @ Tundergyar

08.07   AUT - Vienna @ Escape Metalcorner

09.07   ITA - Bolzano @ Rock Im Ring

10.07   ITA - Arese (MI) @ S.G.A

11.07   FRA - Clermont Ferrand @ Raymond’s Bar

12.07   FRA - Toulouse @ Saint Des Seins

13.07   FRA - Nantes @ Le Ferrailleur

14.07   BEL - Gent @ tba

15.07   NL - Utrecht @ Ekko

16.07   NL - Tilburg @ 013

17.07   GER - Aachen @ Az

18.07   FRA - Paris @ Le Klub

19.07   FRA - Bordeaux @ Heretic Club

20.07   ITA - Torino @ Spazio 211

21.07   ITA -  in the works

22.07   SWI - Luzern @ Sedel

23.07   FRA - Colmar @ Le Grillen

24.07   CZ - Rokycany (Plzen) @ Fluff Fest

25.07   RUS - Saint Petersburg @ The Place

26.07   RUS - Moscow @ Plan B

28.07   UKR - Kiev @ Bingo

Anonymous asked: whats the worst and best thing that's even happened to you on a tour or a show

This is an almost impossible question to answer, in part because each of the four of us would have a completely different answer. Some examples of best would include:  
-Getting fed! Always great.
-Crowd-surfing at a living room show in Arcata, CA. 
-Playing a new place and everyone knows the words.
-Meeting your heroes. 

Some examples of worst would include: 
-Drunk 40-year-old pulling Dave’s bass amp off the cab and stage (falling 15 feet to the floor) while we’re playing. 
-Drunk crustpunk trying to unplug all Matt’s equipment while we’re playing, forcing Matt to kick him in the face (no joke, what an awful feeling).
-Getting paid nothing to play to a packed room because “the door was polled” and not enough people said your band name. 
-Any time anybody gets hurt, a van breaks down, or equipment dies. 

We still need help booking one show on our European tour with City of Ships

thu  21.07   SWI or ITA - AVAILABLE (mike.persilbooking@gmail.com) - please get in touch!

thechibisama asked: I absolutely love your music. Everytime i hear it, i think about... freedom. The releasing of our inhibitions and who we are. Your music is powerful and so --- beautiful. Now i'm no artist describing music, but i've listened to loads of music and your music is beyond the level of the 'mainstream garbage'.

But i wanted to ask, what is your inspiration? Is it always space?

Anyways, i love you guys, please continue to keep up the good work and stick to your shit (don't change from what is mainstream and lame). I love you guys because you have an identity. When i first read yr profile i was taken back because you guys aren't about God-bashing, naked women and vulgar topics, but you actually write about what is beautiful and living, and thats so awesome to have a band who does that.

You guys rock, i will be asking more questions. I love you guys..gah. Rock on boys!!

From yr biggest female fan in the caribbean. (i'd say the world, but i'd be stoned from other chicks.)

We appreciate the kind words. We joke sometimes about how male-dominated our audience seems to be, but underneath the joking is a real concern that metal disproportionately alienates women. It’s appropriate that it alienates a lot of people, because it’s an “outsider art,” but at the same time, if it excludes certain groups more than others, that’s not good. I (Matt) have thought a lot about whether that’s something that’s intrinsic to the sound, or if it’s more related to the visual trappings. My hope is that it’s the extras, not the core of the sound, that skews white and male.

As to where we get inspiration from: it’s not always space. In fact, it really hasn’t been space for a long time. The imagery of space travel has persisted, but most of our inspiration comes from personal experience. When we write songs, the music gets written before the lyrics. The music is created through a process of experimentation and looking inward to try and find what “works” and then develop it. At some point, the lyrics become part of that process of development, so the end product is very organic and interrelated. The hope is that a finished song will express something that maybe couldn’t have been put into words in the first place, because it was too intuitive, or too big for articulation. Everybody looks for transcendence in their own way. A lot of what is fascinating about music is how it refuses to submit to rational/biological explanation or analysis.