Antillectual

We’re very excited to present you our third single: TRUTH HITS EVERYBODY, a cover of The Police!

In total we recorded 4 covers of “the roots of our roots”. Most of the bands we grew up on are still around or reunited, so we didn’t feel like covering those. It was much more interesting to go back one more generation and find early punk songs with a modern melodic vibe to them. Truth Hits Everybody was the first song that came to mind. It felt like something that would fit our style very well. We’ll release the covers sporadically, among our own singles.

The video is shot in our hometown Nijmegen by Ruben Smulders. The Police’s debut album Outlandos d’Amour from 1978 inspired the artwork of the single, created by our friend Andy Dahlström (Satanic Surfers’ bass player). Drums and bass recorded by Emiel Thoonen; vocals, guitars and hammond recorded by Menno Bakker at Amsterdam Recording Company. Mixed by Menno Bakker at ARC, mastering by Carl Saff.

The full video of Testimony live at Friends First Fest is online!

For its 10th anniversary we played our album Testimony in its entirety (+ more recent bonus songs)! See yourself if you were at Friends First Fest #4! See for yourself what you missed if you weren’t!
Which Testimony song from the live set do you like best?

Shot at De Onderbroek during Antillectual’s Friends First Fest #4 on December 29, 2018.
Video recording: Ruben Smulders & Mari-Liis Burket
Video editing: Ruben Smulders
Live audio mixing & recording: Emiel Carey Mahoney
Recorded audio mixing & mastering: Nico van Montfort XPZ Sound

Next week we will be playing with Pussy Riot! We’re very excited about it because they are a fascinating political punk act. But it also feels surreal to play with a band that risks their freedom and lives to speak out. We’re from a much safer and more privileged society, we can express our beliefs without much risk. But exactly that makes it important for us to speak up for what we believe in. Try to speak for those whose voices aren’t heard and those without a voice at all. That is what we think matters and why we’re excited to play with Pussy fucking Riot!

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Hope you all had a wonderful NYE and a good start in the new year? May your 2019 be better than 2018, even if 2018 wasn’t all that bad for you!

We’ll tell you what we can tell you about our 2019 plans, and we’ll hint at those we can’t tell you about yet.
Coming up first we have a nice extended weekend with one of the most controversial yet interesting (punk) acts around (Pussy Riot!) and one of our favorite bands of all times (Satanic Surfers!). In March we will record new music with Tim van Doorn at his Big Dog Recordings in Antwerp. That same month we will release a new single, for which the writing isn’t done, but the recordings are. In April we will play an awesome festival in a European country we toured extensively in the past, but not recent. In summer we will release another single, and we have some summer nice festivals scheduled. We plan to tour to places we haven’t been before (on the borders of fortress Europe) late summer. Our last 2019 single will be released in late fall/early winter when we hope to return to the other side of the equator to enjoy a little summer in winter. And of course we will end the year with a bang at the 5yr anniversary edition of Friends First Fest!

We hope to see each and every one of you in 2019 and have a blast together!

Jan 30 NL Arnhem, Luxor Live w/ Pussy Riot
Jan 31 NL Utrecht, Ekko w/ Satanic Surfers
Feb 01 BE Oostende, Elysee w/ Satanic Surfers
Feb 02 DE Münster, Skaters Palace w/ Satanic Surfers
Mar 08 DE Leer, JUZ
Mar 09 DE Neunkirchen, Stummsche Reithalle
May 03 AT Wels, SBÄM Fest
Jun 01 DE Wesel, Eselrock
Jul 07 NL Utrecht, dB’s/Revivalfest
And so much more to come …

2018 & Friends First Fest – in retrospect

We are thankful and happy that we get to end every year with Friends First Fest. It’s an incredible way to end the year, and yesterday was no exception! Thanks to the massive group of people making De Onderbroek packed and sweaty, the way we like to see it! Sorry to the people that got turned down at the door for the venue being too full already. Next chance next year! Not unimportant, together with Minor Operation Donations we managed to raise over 1300 euro for Help Refugees!

2018 was a strange but good year for us! We started by closing the ENGAGE cycle and shooting and releasing a video series for Change the Standard. An enormous project which we couldn’t have done or wouldn’t have been as much fun without the help from so many friends.

In 2018 we took a turn from our standard routing and started doing some things differently. Most noticeable we have stopped writing, recording and releasing albums. Instead we have started a song-by-song approach since June 2018. We were very anxious to release our first two singles (Heads You Win, Tails We Lose & The Invisible Hand Meets the Visible Fist) but were relieved when the response turned out overwhelming. We got to record the singles with Martin Beusker at Mailmen Studio, and something we will release in 2019 (to be continued!) with our sound tech Emiel and Menno Bakker at the Amsterdam Recording Company. We’ve shot videos with Younique Film, Ivana Smudja and many of our friends for our music videos of 2018.

We played less shows in 2018 because of study related obligations, which will continue in the first half of 2019. But the shows that we did were great! The Loud & Rising Tour with Green Lizard and This Means War, festivals like Manchester Punk Fest, AntAttack, Uncle M Fest, Booze Cruise, Riez Open Air, The Sound of Revolution, Bierschinken Fest and an amazing weekend in Spain for Actitud Fest. We had incredible shows in Liège, Minden, Wermelskirchen, Kiel, Osnabrück, Hamburg and many other places. We got to say goodbye to Adhesive in our hometown/living room and met and shared the stage with all time heroes No Fun At All and Propagandhi multiple times. We also got to say goodbye to our loyal van for 10 years and hello to our new red menace!

2018, you’ve been good to us. And by that we mean “THANK YOU!” to all who checked us out, came to a show or helped us out otherwise in 2018! Another big thanks to our solid partners The Living Proof Agency, Loud Noise, Uncle M Music, Redfield Records. And last but definitely not least a big “THANKS!” our steady rock crew Roos and Emiel, and all others that joined us on the road!

Catch you on the other side! Willem, Riekus, Toon

PS: check our best of 2018 playlist here