The Supra team have announced that a new edit will be dropping on January 27th featuring the team skating in New York. Watch this new trailer and visit www.suprafootwear.com for the sweets on the day.
If you missed the footage of Supra’s Tom Penny at the One Bowl in Biarritz, France then scroll down for the edit.
We spoke to Zorlac last night for an update of what’s going on in at Death HQ. The team are currently preparing the Ordinary Madness video as you read this so expect an announcement soon on when it will be screening. As the footage gets cut, the rest of the team are busy out there on a daily basis. Richie Jackson just won the Helliez Award under the category ‘Biggest Treat of 2011’ with that amazing firecracker kickflip out down a set of stairs that was highlighted on our homepage for a month last year.
Dan Cates just got a photo skating a UK backyard pool in the new Thrasher mag whilst at home, a new 8.0″ Team Issue deck has been released into your local skater owned shop so keep an eye out for the hazard sign when visiting. Death am Dean Palmer enjoyed his stay here in the UK and trips to Spain and America on his recent vacation and is now on his way back to Australia. Before he left he found time to film amongst other things this ‘How To 360 Flip’ at the XC park in Hemel Hempstead. Watch it here.
More absolute madness has been documented from Aaron ‘Jaws’ Homoki whose full section in The Other Ones by Thaddeus Croskey has more bangers than a Walls factory. The best part of watching one of his sections is wondering what the ender will be!
Bones Wheels dropped this edit this week as part of their Mo’ Mondays feature. Amazing stuff.
Liverpool’s Andy ‘Evz’ Evans bangs out 10 for Oliver Birch in this recent mini ramp sesh. andy is now on the Crayon Skateboards flow team, so look out from more of him this year.
If you have never seen Chris Mulhern’s DVD This Time Tomorrow then this section could well be the best introduction to it yet.
Last night Jimmy McDonald‘s full part was introduced to Chris’ vimeo channel so stop whatever you were doing and take all of this in.
It has been the talk of the town for yonks but confirmation is finally here. Soundgarden will be playing at this year’s Download Festival. It’s official.
Other acts announced to play tonight are Chase and Status, Biffy Clyro, You Me At Six and Tenacious D. Another nine bands will be added to here by tomorrow morning so look out for updates on this thread.
Following a huge breakthrough in 2011 with their debut album ‘Late Love’ picking up some rave reviews across Europe, Wolves Like Us return to 2012 hungrier than ever to spread their Nordic love further into our rock scene. The 4-piece will be back in the UK co-headlining on tour with label mates Junius in April, so look out for them on the road and enjoy what bass player Toy Kjeldaas told Ryan De Freitas and Crossfire when asked about how their impressive sound and stature has come together so goddam well.
Talk us through how this album came to be, from the formation of the band to the finished product?
Lars, Espen and I had recorded a few ideas and sketches that we played for Jonas. When all four of us met up in the rehearsal space for the first time, it all just clicked. It was truly amazing. We had plans for maybe playing a couple of shows last fall, but before we knew it we had been touring Europe, done a bunch of shows in Norway, sealed a record deal with Prosthetic Records, and started recording our debut album. Not sure what happened really.
Would you say that the experience you guys had musically with bands such as JR Ewing and Amulet helped you to find a mutual respect for each other quickly?
It certainly did. We were all fans of each others bands, and we’d all been friends for a long time when we first started thinking about making music together. We grew up listening to the same music, but it wasn’t until we started to play together we realized how similar our background really was.
The artwork on the album is also something that people have picked up on, we know that it’s by Justin Bartlett , who has also worked with Kvelertak and Sun 0))), how did the concept come about and was there a bunch of choices?
Justin put in a lot of work for us on this one. He used both our music and our lyrics for inspiration, and picked elements from them to come up with the concept that ended up on the album sleeve. He’s a very thorough guy, and it certainly shows. We thought it was an incredibly cool concept ever since he showed us the first sketches. He is an amazing artist we have a lot of respect for.
Are there other artists out there that you want to work with on sleeves in the future?
We have a few names on our wish list. We’ve already been in touch with Aaron Turner, he’s better known through his music career having been in the late, great Isis, but he’s doing some incredible artwork as well and we’d love to work with him.
You are currently touring with Kvelertak, how will you fuck with them on the road?
1) The contents of their on-stage water bottles might “accidentally” be replaced by vodka one night. That’s a classic really. I’m pretty sure it has been done before.
2) They are using a wireless system on stage for their guitars, and we plan to hack their frequency and play Justin Bieber’s last album through their amps in the midst of their set.
3) Our finishing blow will be to hide all their guitars right before they go on stage and put fake plastic weapons in their guitar stands instead. You know, axes, swords, medieval stuff really. The drum kit will be a bunch of real anvils. We really are doing them a favour, because it looks even more badass than real instruments.
Which band member is the most roadworthy and can take anything that comes in the way without moaning, and who is the worst?
Espen can take anything that comes in the way without moaning – except bad coffee. That unleashes hell. To all other problems, he only sees solutions. Jonas is the one that has been touring the most in the past, and has certain expectations of how things are supposed to be while on tour. That of course leads to a certain amount of moaning, haha! He’s the youngest of us, so we just treat him like a child, and everything will pass. No really, it’s a good thing, cause all of us others are just a bunch of puppies learning the ropes when it comes to touring compared to him.
What is the most ridiculous tour story to date since the band formed?
Well, we haven’t been around with this band long enough to make that much of fools of ourselves yet, haha! One funny story is about a friend of ours who is a lightning engineer. He was gonna do lights for us at a show in Oslo. We started worrying because he never came around to the venue. After a long while he turned up, and as it turns out he had gone to the wrong venue, spent a couple of hours setting up the entire lightning rig, programmed the light board and been starting digging in on the backstage beers when he realized that someone else was playing there. No one noticed him sneaking out the back, so it was all good.
‘Late Love’ is an album that truly shines, how do you follow such an epic record now it’s out there and will you be playing new material on this tour?
Well, first off; thanks a bunch! Lars has some awesome riffs and ideas going on, but there won’t be any new material on this tour unfortunately. It has been an incredibly busy year for us, and we need some time to get back in the rehearsal room and put things together in a proper way before any new material will see the light of day.
In the past you’ve referenced 90’s skateboard videos as something you took an interest in musically, are you drawn to skate culture and do any of you guys skate or is it purely the music that you found enjoyable?
Skating and music goes hand in hand. We’ve discovered lots of bands by watching skate vids in the past. Espen, Jonas and I used skate back when we were kids. We still bring our boards on tour though, but personally I am feeling a bit too old and fragile to be doing any neck-breaking stunts these days, haha! I mean, I am almost 37 now and haven’t really been skating much for the past twenty years. Plus, I was a vert skater, and still suck immensely at street skating so I’d rather look back at my teenage glory days on the vert ramp than risking my limbs doing kickflips to impress the other guys outside the venue while on tour.
What decks and skaters were influences along the years?
Obviously, the Powell Peralta team were the shit when we were kids. They were the easiest decks to get a hold of. Personally, I was really into the H-Street team. My first deck was the Tony Magnusson pro model. I met him a few times on some skate events he did in Norway, and he was a really inspiring guy. Him being a Scandinavian making his way onto the US skate scene was mind blowing for me at the time. That was everyone’s secret dream to do. Also, I’ve always loved the artwork that Ed Templeton did for his decks when he started his own company, and in the later years I’ve become a huge fan of his photo work as well.
If you have some skateboard history to unleash from back in the day, unleash it here…
As absurd as it might sound, since the 1970s and up until 1989 skateboarding was illegal in Norway, so when we started to skate we had to sneak around and hide our boards or the cops would confiscate them. When the ban was lifted, I’ve heard stories about guys who went to the main police station in Oslo to get their gear back. They were followed by an officer down to a vault in the basement, and there, right by sawn off shotguns, homemade nail bombs and rocket launchers was a bunch of skateboards. A skateboard is really a powerful thing, use it wisely.
Last words….
Remember kids, skateboarding is not a crime…anymore.
Wolves Like Us + Junius April 2012 UK tour
22nd Nottingham Hit The Deck Fest
23rd Glasgow Ivory Blacks
24th Manchester Star And Garter
25th London Borderline
When most companies are struggling to push as much content as possible onto the web, it’s nice to see a company take their time to prepare a proper DVD with quality footage and a great soundtrack.
Kill City have chosen to start the year off with a bang by releasing their full length video Rookies featuring Dave Davies, Sam Pulley, Nicky Howells, Jess Young, Joe Lynskey, Jake Collins and Caradog Emanuel. Head honcho Lee Dainton took the role of filming and general hypeman duties for the team and has worked his magic over and above expectations. Watching Rookies gives you the feeling that Kill City is a tight team of friends based in England and Wales where sessions are more about fun than business, which backs up Dainton’s legacy of his team tenfold.
Rookies introduces us to the next generation of UK skateboard royalty and beyond. You would think the video was edited backwards when you witness Dave Davies’ amazing two-song opening section. Joe Lynsky and Nicky Howells take care of the ledge techniques and switch skating, whilst Sam Pulley and Jake Collins mix things up with all-terrain skills. Jake’s all round gnar just landed him on the Quiksilver team so expect his talents to be traveling even more than usual this year. Jess Young has grown up during the filming of his section. He has gone from a gnarly kid leaping consecutive big sets of stairs into a young man with no fear of grinding down rails with 15-foot drops off the side. If he doesn’t kill himself, Jess has a great future ahead of him. Finally, there is Caradog Emanuel for the finish and he closes the video off in style. You can understand why he gets last part when you witness the talent he has on board. Caradog is quick to dish out 360 shove-its switch manuals down a steep bank, long backside lipslides through fountain ledges or a picture perfect heelflip over a rail into a massive bank – skills that make him a name to look out for in the future.
Overall, Rookies is a solid video that you can watch from start to finish without skipping sections or wandering off to make a cup of tea. Great skateboarding all round. The soundtrack also gets thumbs up with music varying from Mobb Deep and Biggie Smalls to Sebadoh and the Butthole Surfers. Finally, the extra credits are probably the funniest 4 minutes I’ve seen in a long time, get a copy today.
This DVD is highly recommended and available right now in your local skate shop.
Ralph Lloyd-Davis
Cut-Out Team Red (8″ x 32″)
Polar Skateboards is the brand new brainchild of Swedish über-skater Pontus Alv. Pontus has already established himself as a freethinking individual with his numerous cinematographic and cement mixed solo projects. It was only natural for someone with such an abundance of talent to push the “Do-it-yourself” ethic into a fully-fledged business. I’m not sure business is the right word though because Polar Skateboards is definitely focused on the aesthetic value of its products and team riders more than the simple profitability. That said, the Cut-Out Red team board I have been riding recently is worth every penny, kroner or cent on the tag.
Already, the graphic is great taking inspiration from French modern artist Henri Matisse with statuesque silhouettes laid from nose to tail. See the Blue Nude II for inspiration. Pontus has taken a bold step in his art direction and the use of bright colour and simple imagery places his product head and shoulders above the usual hogwash of cartoons and skulls that emblazon a lot of mainstream board company decks these days.
Pontus likes to ride everything so the Polar boards come with enough concave to carry your board and body over the steepest wallies and roughest surfaces. The nose of this particular model is rounded off to exactly 7 inches with the tail running just shy of 6.5 inches, which makes it easy to handle either way around. I imagine poor weather conditions were on his mind when Pontus went looking for the best manufacturer for Polar boards. The board was pressed in Germany and has so far withheld the terrible damp of winter and the brunt of unfortunate cracks in the pavement.
Check out Polar Skateboards at http://www.polarskateco.com or via Pontus’ blog.
Ralph Lloyd-Davis
Beibel’s yard gets smoked in this Spliff All Star visit.