A Band In Hope

Stolen from Wikipedia: A Band in Hope (formerly The Mad Silentist) is the third studio album by The Matches and was released on March 15, 2008 in Australia and Europe and March 18, 2008 in the US. Like their previous album Decomposer, A Band in Hope features multiple producers, though fewer this time around. According to frontman Shawn Harris’ blog, the album was created in a period of despair due to the lukewarm reception and record sales of Decomposer. Instead of following up with the sister album titled The Mad Silentist, the band scrapped many of the old songs (only 4 remain in the final cut) and re-wrote the album. The new album, as Harris states, sways between hope and despair, and the hope one gets when they feel disillusioned and abandoned.

The album was leaked on February 11, 2008.

On Tuesday, March 11, The Matches released the entire album on their MySpace page, and were featured on the Myspace front page. The next day the video for the first single “Wake the Sun” was released exclusively on Yahoo! Music. The video for “Yankee in a Chip Shop” was supposed to debut on Myspace.com Music on Friday, August 29th. However, due to the issues listed below in a blog post from singer/guitarist Shawn Harris the video was removed shortly after it’s posting. (The issue has since been resolved and the video released.)

“Serious bullshit is going down. I’ve been on the phone all morning (I do mean morning - try 5am) with our label and the London Metropolitan Police (our manager is out of town). I’m told that the “clip” Yankee in a Chip Shop contains footage of us “engaged in violating British law” and that our rights of dissemination are in question. Serious bullshit.