All of us here at Figment want to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving!  I know some of you may not celebrate Thanksgiving, but of all the holidays we celebrate here in the States it’s the one I think really applies to everyone.  You don’t have to be American to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It’s all about family and giving thanks for what you have.  We’re certainly thankful for everything we have and that includes your support over the past few years.  We consider all of you part of our Figment family, so thanks and have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Figment player shaveblog sent me this video.  It rocks…pun intended.  Enjoy!

Summer is right around the corner and the summer tour schedule is already filling up fast!  Whether you’re a fan of metal, horror punk, psychedelic jam bands or just plain good old fashioned rock n’ roll, the summer of 2011 is packed with a wide variety of live music options.  Here are a few of the choice tours and music festivals to consider:

Rituals Across Europe Tour:  Poison Throne and Slutwitch will kick off the summer tour season with a co-headlining tour that will also feature Medieval Casket in the warm-up slot.  Look for these Grindcore/Black Metal newbies to tear it up on stages across Europe in May and June.

Something Wicked Festival 2011:  Everyone from Werewolf Concerto, who will headline the main stage, to Lucifer and The Long Pigs, Sleeping Through The Apocalypse, Suicide By Papercut, Hey, Irene and Mortimer C. Klaxton and his Big Damn Steam Band will be in Leeds, UK on June 1st to kick off a summer of Something Wicked Festivals.

Antigoon Open Air II:   On June 3rd Antwerpen, Belgium will once again be the site of the second Antigoon Open Air Festival bringing metal bands as diverse as The Forgotten Falling and Vengeance Burns Eternal to the Main Stage and up and comers like Archers Storm, Destroyah, Steel Beneath Flesh and Buried in Black to the Second and Underground stages.

A Plague Upon Your House World Tour 2011:  German goth metal titans ZV and chart-topping Plague Rockers Janissary hit the road together on the North American leg of their World Tour.

Something Wicked U.S.A. Festival 2011:  The U.S. version of Something Wicked hits American shores on June 18th in Austin, TX and with Stonekrank headlining the main stage along and Cherry Vendetta headlining the 2nd stage it looks to be a great one.  Other featured bands include DeathBreth, Dollhouse in Black, The Night Walkers, Forever Haunted and Nuclear Insanity.

March of the Damned Tour 2011:  Do you like Zombies?  Love horror flicks?  Then this tour is for you as Horror Punks Murder13 bring Teenage Zombies From Mars and Zombies in Brown Sauce out on tour with them this summer.

Second City Jazz & Blues Festival:  Myrinx Records is behind this brand new Jazz & Blues Festival taking part in the City of the Big Shoulders.  Kaliclysm, Malaika, Massey Ferguson’s Stampeding Heard, Joseph Hayworth, The Irish Balloons, Mortimer C. Klaxton & His Big Damn Steam Band, and Grover “Neckbone” Clifton are all on the bill.

Something Wicked Festival Germany:   Can’t get enough of a good thing?  Then visit the Fatherland to take in the German Something Wicked featuring main stage headliners The Forgotten Falling as well as Let’s Not and Say We Did, Gravestompers, Kingslayer, The Angel’s Sin, Medieval Casket, Firecharged!, GothicEvil, Tyrannical Empire, Hope & Honour, and Devil’s Playground among others.

Rumor has it that UncleDuffRecords is also putting together a summer mini-tour.  Although unconfirmed at press time, word on the street is that it will be some sort of traveling festival.

If you’ve got a tour you’d like to announce please let us know about it.  Now go get some tickets!

UPDATE:

These tours were just announced!

Up The Creek:  UncleDuffRecords is indeed putting together a traveling festival, and what a great one it will be.  Zandergriff Miggs & The Parliament of Owls, The Cosmic Stoners, Vorpal Queen, Let’s Not and Say We Did,and Eccentric Arcade will all be travelling “Up The Creek” (the creek being The Mississippi) on a day-glo painted psychedelic paddleboat from New Orleans to St. Paul, stopping at cities along the river to allow each band an opportunity to headline a show from a barge being pulled by the paddleboat.  Got all that?  Good.  Ken Kesey would be proud!

Sparks of Summer Tour 2011:  Stonekrank will once again hit the road for their annual “Sparks of Summer Tour” on June 13th.  They’ll take side project Midnight Cheerleader Rebels out on the road with them, and are currently in talks with several other bands to join the bill.  So find your earplugs this one’s gonna Krank!

Figment player shaveblog sent me this great documentary on the Wah Wah effects pedal.  “Cry Baby:  The Pedal That Rocks The World” is the story of the wah wah effects pedal and is packed with appearances from famous guitarists who have used it over the years.  So take a minute and get a dose of boom chicka wah-wah!

Hey, I know we’re typically all about fake bands here on Figment, but it’s almost the New Year and we thought why not think a little “outside the box” shall we say.  So sit back and enjoy a little “real music” from javdoc and his band Major Fiasco, as they cover the Alice In Chains classic “Man In The Box”!

Do you think you’ve got what it takes to not only design fake album covers, but the real thing as well?  Then we have a challenge for you.  Norwegian metallers Darkthrone and their British label Peaceville Records are calling on fans and artists to design the covers for the re-release of two of the band’s now classic albums, Ravishing Grimness and Goatlord.

The rules are pretty clear cut – no found images, in fact no “free” images may be used.  All artwork has to be completely created by the designer and only by the designer.  Plus the band doesn’t want to see any photoshop designs or in their words “there’s gonna be a fight.”  So pull out your sketch pencils and paints, it’s time to get your metal on!

Please note that this is not a Figment sanctioned contest, merely one we thought you’d be interested in checking out.

A special thanks to algoreyou for bringing it to our attention.

Summer may be winding down, but the summer tour season on Figment is anything but over!  With everyone from Stonekrank to Zeroth hitting the road it’s been a busy summer, but even after Labor Day it shows no sign of slowing up.

Zeroth, whose “Infinite Spiral” Tour 2009 is currently winding it’s way through South America, has a string of U.S. dates planned throughout the fall to be followed by a European leg that stretches into early 2010.  In even bigger news, the band has just reached an agreement with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and Antiquities to play the Great Pyramids of Giza on January 29 – 30, 2010!  You can check out their band page or their new Zeroth Play the Pyramids page to find out more!

Crimson Eye, another Long Bong Records artist, just kicked off the second leg of their Shot of Karma U.S. Tour on Aug. 28th that ends with an appearance at the Merchants of Metal Festival II in New Orleans on Halloween!

The MoM II Festival will see bands as diverse as The Dark Immortal, Obsidian Paradox, Amish Militia, Phallic Acid and Dark World performing.  I don’t know about you, but I’m just getting my hearing back from the first MoM Festival!  And speaking of that show, if you haven’t picked up your MoM Tour shirt you can create your own in our Figment Merch shop!

As for Crimson Eye, as soon as the final leg of their U.S. Tour is complete they’ll move on to London where they’ll kick off a European tour on Nov. 6th that will finish up Dec. 5th in Madrid.

And speaking of metal Festivals the aptly title “Metal Fest” will kick off it’s inaugural year on November 12th.   Organized by Kranked Up’s Olivia Smith and Greg Jay , the Fest should be a blast with early reports saying Pusher and Phallic Acid have signed on to appear.  Although a location for the Fest has yet to be named and further lineup announcements are pending, it looks to be a good one.  If you’ve got a metal band and wanna play the show, leave em’ a shout on their Metal Fest page!

But arguably the biggest fall tour of them all is the double bill of Eccentric Arcade and Fait Accompli.  Their Xenophilia 2009 Tour kicked off in Vancouver on Sept. 1st and criss crosses the U.S. from West to East before culminating in what’s certain to be a killer closing show in Toronto, Canada on Sept. 28th.  Xenophilia tour shirts are also available in the Figment Merch Shop.  Both bands are tweeting about the shows on their respective Twitter Feeds – you can follow them @EccentricArcade and @strollingwolf – and the biggest news yet is that Fait’s lead singer Aaron O’Blivion sprained his ankle while in San Diego, but will continue the tour using a cane.  It doesn’t seem to have slowed him down though as reports say the band continues to tear it up live.

Is your band going on tour?  Let us know and better yet, let the world know by creating your own custom tour shirt in our Figment Merch Store.  Hope to see you on the road!

We posted this article a little over a year ago.  We’re re-posting it now because we’ve had a lot of growth in the Figment community since then, and with that growth we’ve seen a band or two that have really pushed the boundaries of what we consider offensive material on Figment.  I have to say that we are very pleased with how fair and conscientious you all are, so this is in no means a reprimand or a “see what happens” type of post.  Rather it is an attempt to clarify what we view as offensive and how we hope to deal with it going forward.  You all play a part in making Figment a place where everyone is welcome but censorship is not the means to the end.  We welcome any comments you might have on this subject.

————————————————————————————————————————————

We here at Figment consider ourselves a pretty fair bunch and as I’ve said in other posts we go out of our way not to over police our site for what we consider offensive material, but rather try to allow the users to self-police those bands they find offensive.  If enough people agree that a band is offensive than we mark it offensive, that is unless something is truly over the top in which case we step in.  We have never removed a band or album from Figment for being offensive (when we mark something offensive it is only filtered out of view of those people that asked not to be shown offensive material when they created an account on Figment), until now.

Today I removed a band that made fun of people who suffer from Down Syndrome.  I thought long and hard about whether or not I should remove this content from Figment, but in the end decided that there are certain boundaries we have to set for the site and this band crossed those boundaries.  Making fun of people with developmental disabilities is something that has been done before, but it’s a slippery slope and one that requires a lot of finesse on the part of the person delivering the joke in order for it to be funny.  When it’s not it’s simply mean-spirited.  We found this band mean-spirited, and even if it wasn’t meant in harm, felt it could cause harm simply by perpetuating a stereotype that increases the stigma attached to those who are developmentally disabled.  That’s not what we created Figment for.

In short, just because something is delivered as a joke doesn’t mean it isn’t hurtful and we all need to be mindful of that fact.  Is it a right to think whatever you want regardless of whether it hurts someone’s feelings?  Yes, but it’s also our right to restrict the use of our bandwidth to promote something we feel crosses the line.

Right now the movie “Tropic Thunder” is also under attack for scenes that use the term “retard” and although I’m not sure I support the idea of a boycott, I do think the filmmakers should have considered some of the complaints leveled at their movie prior to releasing it and practiced a little self-editing of their own.  That is certainly what we are asking all of you to do on Figment.

So what other boundaries have we set?  Well, I don’t want you to think that we are telling you what to express, but let’s face it there are certain areas that I think we would all agree are overtly offensive.  For instance, racist, sexist and hate related material.  We aren’t looking to play the role of big brother on Figment, but we do expect everyone to play our game in a respectful and fair manner and if we feel something doesn’t meet those criteria we will exercise our right to remove the material or it’s creator from Figment.  We also understand that there is always room for interpretation and will try to consider that before making any decision related to permanently removing any form of content from Figment.  Furthermore, we promise to always notify the user as to our decision and allow them an opportunity to remove the material themselves.

We’re open to hearing what you think about this issue so feel free to leave us a comment with your perspective.

Noticed a new band on Figment today called XMortis, but when I clicked on it to check it out I found this:

—————————————————————-

Xmortis

2nd Fridays of the month

Genre Goth Rock Band Created 7/7/2009 Fan Base 0 Total Sales 0

Xmortis
Five Year Anniversary Party!
Friday, July 10th 2009

Five years ago this July we launched Xmortis. It was a new monthly celebration of morbid mirth, in the long, dark tradition of Manray Nightclub. Since Manray’s closing we have kept that tradition going strong at T.T. the Bears. Come celebrate our 5th year anniversary with us!

We’re looking to dig out some great blasts from the depths of our spooky past. We’ll have prizes and giveaways to thank you all for the memories, with wishes for many more to come! Prizes include tickets to Depeche Mode and VNV Nation, as well as a limited number of special commemorative Xmortis V pins.

DJ Chris Ewen continues to spin the most memorable Goth and Industrial with DJ Mothra reprising his Manray co-residency. Terri the bartender keeps the spirits alive and flowing in the Lounge while the Wednesday Addams dancers torment Pugsley to get the evening (and heads) rolling!

18+ $10 ($5 before 10:30) 9pm – 2am
STRICT DRESS CODE: Goth, Industrial, Fetish, Creative Attire Encouraged. MINIMUM ALL BLACK.
T.T. the Bears 10 Brookline St. Cambridge, MA

—————————————————————-

Needless to say this is a REAL event and NOT a fake band.  So to answer the title of this post…no Virginia this is not a Figment.

While we frown on this, because Figment is not a bulletin board for the posting of events, we do think it sounds like a pretty cool event that our users might very well be interested in attending.  So we’d like everyone to know that if you have a REAL event that our users might be interested in checking out please feel free to send us an email at customerservice@figment.cc.  If we think it has promise we’ll post something about it here on the blog where it belongs.

In the meantime, good luck LatexLily with XMortis – we hope you have a successful event!

GothZilla’s debut album “50 Stories of Sadness” is the first album on Figment to go gold!  The band received their golden horn certification this weekend for reaching the 100 albums sold mark with “50 Stories of Sadness”.  Reached for comment the band has this to say about their achievement, “That ole thing?  Really?  Shi….”  When asked why they thought the album resonated so well with fans, they responded “We have no idea.  Honestly we’ve moved on and are working on a new album.  It’s kind of a Perry Como inspired lounge kinda thing with marked Polka influences.”

For those of you who are not familiar with our horn certifications, Figment awards those bands whose albums reach certain sales marks with horn certifications.  These certifications include an icon that’s placed on the album’s page as well as special lucre rewards, which we refer to as “filthy lucre”.  To give you a better understanding of the various horn certifications – here are the icons and corresponding “filthy lucre” rewards for each:

Gold Horn Certification = 100 sales of an album

Filthy Lucre Award – 500 pieces of Lucre

Platinum Horn Certification = 250 sales of an album

Filthy Lucre Award – 1,000 pieces of Lucre

Diamond Horn Certification = 500 sales of an album

Filthy Lucre Award – 5,000 pieces of Lucre

So congratulations GothZilla on being the first to reach gold!