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New York electronic/metal/cyber-tech/industrial stakes its claim with Mystic Music & Entertainment debut
"Uranium 235 is an unstable element. Alpha rays excite the electrons in uranium 238 (its natural form), and free the neutrons, and beta rays close it back up again. The extra neutrons are then put in a separate container and when uranium 235 and the neutrons come together, that’s what makes the explosion."
Shane 235…
They’ve opened for Marilyn Manson, Type O Negative, Fear Factory, Life of Agony, God Lives Underwater, and The Electric Hellfire. The band’s highly anticipated self-produced electronic pantheon, Cultural Minority, has made its Mystic Music & Entertainment debut on Feb. 22nd.
Together since 1995, vocalist Shane 235, guitarist Matt Brown, bassist Jimmy McConnell, keyboardist Chris Bride and drummer Rob Steele have worked hard from the underground up, winning friends and influencing people with a powerful stage show, exhaustive touring and a pulsating collection of songs. With sheer fortitude and love of the music, the band has prevailed through it all.
Looked upon as leaders in this genre and knowing the impact of the Internet, the band spends hours on-line with their fans, offering ways and means to navigate through dysfunctional family lives as the hundreds of lost souls are saved through music and guidance. Want proof? Go to the website.
Cultural Minority is fresh and rife with meaning. It’s dramatic and edgy without being overbearing, complementing and in turn complemented by a physically intense and emotionally raw stage performance.
"It’s a mixed blessing when you have diversity in your sound," Shane 235 acknowledges. "That’s what’s kept us from getting signed for so long. But we have a huge, huge fan base and we’re catching on. We went on the road for a couple years and sold 15,000 demo cassettes so we built a really big fan base. Our fans are the ones who are making it happen for us," Shane 235 credits gratefully. "They’re the ones who adopted us and they’re the ones who want to do all the work for us. The street team is called Sterile Nation and they enlist people. Because of them we have a following at college radio."
Though their name and their uranium235.com website aphorism, "The Cheapest Way To Kill People Is To Use Nuclear Weapons" may suggest otherwise, Shane 235 clarifies, "We’re not political but there are definitely some issues we bring out in the music that confront the machinery of society and the mainstream of how people get along. I feel like the band’s a cultural minority. Our fans are definitely a cultural minority.
On a humorous note,
Shane 235 points out, "You got your two food groups: guitar bands and non-guitars. If you have guitars, that’s all you can have. And it’s gotta be heavy and it’s gotta be loud. If you have no guitars, you gotta have a lotta keyboards and it’s gotta be very, very well thought out and drafted. We walk the fine line between both; few bands do what we do. We’re not extremely heavy but we have plenty of aggression yet our music is keyboard heavy at times."Shane 235 who produced and engineered Cultural Minority and co-wrote the music with Matt Brown concludes "What you hear is the way we were feeling at the time we made the album. It’s like a diary of our lives up to that point -- four years of being on the road, playing every single day, starving, suffering. We want to see this take form and give it its due. This band’s got a history. One year we played 340 dates in 365 days and we haven’t changed. We haven’t fallen into the trap of sounding like all the other bands. All the kids who have waited for this album to come out -- it’s finally gonna be out. Our fans make up the merchandise and sell it at the shows. We let our fans do whatever they want."
Feeling lost? Unloved? Don’t know what to wear? Shoot an email to the person with the answers
Shane235@mailcity.com.
