Ellebelle.punt.nl

yeah, my friend Ellen's got a blog too now!

Ellebelle's blog

Playlist....

to 45 minutes of running through cornfields (and a couple runs around the cloister), 10 minutes on the stepping machine, 10 minutes abs work out and 40 push ups:

Calexico - feast of wires (warming up and running)
Bright Eyes - I'm wide awake it's morning (running and cooling down)
JW Roy - laagstraat nog iets (the stepping machine, abs work out and push ups)
Joe Strummer - rock art and the x-ray style (stretching and vacuum cleaning my mom's house)

ps. Holland has the best meat replacement products in the world.

Back home

culture shocked. thanx to Jeff and the boys in Chicago for making my last night a great one.

I need a job bad so hook me up. I'm good at landscaping and carrying boxes from a to b. If necessary I can also be a decent party director.

Magnus Enquirer

everybody check out Tyler's blog, it's in the linksection to the right.
from now on you can follow MLIW's every move from 3 different camera angles.

Soulfly

Soulfly's website has a band of the month thing going on and MLIW is July's band of the month!

here's what they had to say, check it out at www.soulflyweb.com:

To most fans of aggressive music, hardcore is all but a dead genre. Originally developing right alongside the thrash scene in the early 80s, hardcore was a fast version of punk that was synonomous with a do-it-yourself attitude, inventive, fast paced song stuctures, and a purely punk rock ethic. In all honesty, true hardcore bands don't even exist today. The genre has been reduced to million different second rate subgenres and brand-names, none of which capture the true essence and what traditional hardcore meant to achieve. Still, a very few handful of bands are still making progress in the small scene, and Iowa's Modern Life Is War is one of the greatest hardcore bands to come out since the genre "died" in the early 90s. Nothing that Modern Life Is War does feels like typical hardcore music, yet at the same time, it feels more authentic and punk rock than any other band that releases music under the "core" tag today. Their latest release, 2005's Witness, is an ugly recount of small-town American life; the type of place where you know everyone and everyone knows you. The lyrics are the best (and most believable) to be put to hardcore music in years and the hoarse vocals do well to communicate the hopeless stories of a midwestern youth. The dynamics of the album are unbelievable as well; a faint layer of distortion surges and sears through chord progressions that are unparalled on a record with songs of only 27 minutes. But perhaps the most refreshing and amazing aspect of this album is the actual structure of the songs. There are no breakdowns, now token sing-along moments, and no prefabricated point-and-yell-go setups. In fact, there are no verses, no chorus, and no typical song structuring at all. Just amazing artistry, and unbelievable concepts and talent. The guys of Modern Life Is War are onto something truly brilliant, and their future output should be very welcome to the ears of anyone who has enjoyed the hardcore music of past, but cringes when the repititious styles of metalcore or emocore are brought to mind.

Pictures from Nashville, TN

This show was ridiculously hot.

Counting down

a week from now I will be sitting on this exact bunker in the sun with a beer, Heldro icecream and a book, staring at the Maasriver waiting for my friends to take me out fishing. Being there it's gonna be weird looking back at the past months, but it will probably feel great.


and this is the view from the other side of the river.
href="http://hans.extern.kun.nl/pasp/20051001_cuijk_maas_kerk_vanaf_cuijksesteeg/600_r_200_06.jpg">

sitting there 2 sold out shows in a row in LA, or a crazy night in vegas or bourbon street will seem so far away it's ridiculous.

Zen Arkade

I know it's shitty but I don't know how to host mp3's so I think I got a pretty good excuse. well actually I can't find any reason not to do it this way since I got no content or money for a website anyways so here it is...

Zen Arkade

Messages sent to that page will be replied by my buddy Bakkie Beekstraat who's one of the most interesting people you'll ever talk to so hit him up. He's the drummer and real good at it.
all of it is in dutch so the rest of the world can't understand any of it (besides half of Belgium). Next week should see a new song up which in my opinion is better but since I'm in the US I had no say in which song was to be mixed first.
Besides entering our local highschool's bandcontest Zen Arkade has no real future plans right now. If you have any please hit us up, maybe we can trade places.

Tour's over

Yesterday our van blew up and we had to cancel the rest of the tour, big bum
out. We left our van somewhere in colorado and drove back to Iowa in a Uhaul
truck, which was kinda funny.
The last week has been very interesting like that. We did 2 sold out shows
at the Chain Reaction in Annaheim which was awesome, both shows were insane.
After that we did a show in vegas where kids tried to ruin the fun by
punching Uncle Bobby, and then had the guts to complain about the bands not
wanting to play. Way to make us feel welcome Vegas.
After the show we went and got a couple beers and hung out at the strip all
night where I lost all my money playing roulette. The next day we drove to
Denver and went to Bill Stevenson's 4th of july barbeque. Me: starstruck. We
blew 2 tires to get there and had to call some guy in the middle of the
night to fix us a new one.
and then after the denver show our engine blew out so no I'm back in the big
M and I'm tired so I'm off to bed!

Oh, I got a first mix of a Zen Arkade song and things are looking good.
Expect MP3's soon!

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Duran Duran Duran

I just got word Duran Duran Duran is doing a set in holland at nighttown, rotterdam in august. needless to say i'm gonna do everything in my power to be there. yeeeeha!

youtube

search MLIW on www.youtube.com and you'll get footage of this tour.

(i don't wanna be that guy but there's a new song up there)

late news breaking, this just in

the dutch government resigned, hopefully I'll be back home in time to vote. fucking harry potter and his politics was driving me insane, for real.

yesterday I hung out with johannes from holland, it was great seeing him again. he got implants now and they looked awesome... I want!

I love outbreak so much I licked chris's sweat straight of his body, it was real salty, really.

what else... uhm... long drives are driving me crazy. I listened to every single song on my ipod a 100 times now, I need new stuff so i'm taking suggestions now, advise me on new music , please. I like everything.

one of my friends is expecting a baby in august, that blows my mind, and yesterday johannes told me this other guy I know is gonna be a father too. I guess I reached that age... that same age where everything I eat puts on wheight.

today daXmila made me an awesome proposition I will tell all of you about it later, but I just wanna say i'm supersiked. I told my mom so if you really wanna know drop her a line.

the zen arkade songs are being mixed as we speak, I hope i'll be able to put mp3's up here soon.

my body finally doesn't hurt anymore. it kinda was another wake up call that i'm not 16 anymore but i'm back in shape now. nerdie fact: I got 12 jumps in during dead ramones. I had to count 'm haha.

tomorrow and the day after we play two shows in a row in annaheim and presales are amazing. this'll be my claim to fame.

allright, gonna watch bane now. this tour is the best one I ever done where I love every band on it.
keep posting comments people.

Oh! I forgot to tell you...

...some of the guys from Only Crime came to one the shows in texas, and turns out one of those guys was in GWAR. that's awesome right?

wooooohooooooo!

free drinktickets in albequerque, new mexico! woooooooohoooooooooo!

jeff looks like bayou billy and nate outbreak looks like axl rose. he's so hot right now.

ya'll want a bite of my corndog?

The more I think of the game the more it pisses me off. 14 yellow cards and 4 red ones is just ridiculous.

in other news: while playing my cabinet lit on fire. there were literally flames coming out of it, big flames. we had to use water to put it out. Zach from Bane tried to blow it out which was kinda funny, if my cabinet wasn't actually on fire. John's cabinet to be more precise, it's his but I was playing it. I don't know what caused it, I never seen anything like that before. If anybody knows why this could've happened let me know.

Other cool stuff that happened.... uhm, we went to bourbon street in New Orleans. New Orleans so far is probably the most beautifull american city there is and it looks totally european. Bourbon Street is in the french quarters, you may have seen it on Mardi Gras video's. It was a cool mix of stripclubs and bluesbars, and me and chris watched this bluesband play while having some beers. They did Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye and way more stuff. Plus their classic originals 'Going Back To New Orleans' and the tearjerker 'Phonecall from Memphis'. In the near future I definitely wanna try and spend more time there, like a weekend or something.

Yesterday in Corpus Christi after the show me, Chris and Mike (bane's merchguy) decided to go to a bluesbar before going to the hotel and at the bar we met some people who invited us to their afterparty. When morning came they decided to take us to the beach to watch the sunrise. So somewhere between seven and eight we were on the beach by the Gulf of Mexico watching the sun come up while Abel was passed out in his car, Mike and Kadie were swimming and me, Bobby and Chris were in the back of his pick up truck, it was beautifull.

These girls from Orlando decided on a whim to get in their car and follow us. weird. They're wrestling eachother in a room down the hall right now.

Josh got the most intense sunburn I ever seen. His skin looks all blistered and crazy, it hurts a lot to he says, he screams when putting aloe vera on it.

Oh, I started a European straight edge band with the Outbreak guys, we're called XcrucialfingerjumpingX, expect a 7" soon.

Aight, I'm off to bed, gotta sleep now if I wanna wake up on time to catch my free continental breakfast tomorrow morning.

Holland's out

The portugese fought dirty, the ref didn't let anyone play and now Holland's out. What am I supposed to do now?

...

I got a hat that says made by, paid for by, worn by....Americans!!!
that's right, three exclamation marks. all that over the american flag.

The dirty south is great. we met the (supposedly) guitar player from Lynyrd Skynyrd. he offered us drugs and then he went to get us girls in the projects. we never saw him again. Southern Belle's are truly Southern Belle's.

I love outbreak.

Other bands I saw on this tour besides the package:
-tarpit
-when tigerZ fight
-ruiner

Listening to and why:
Daniel Lohues (for obvious reasons)
Opgezwolle (wie behartigd je belangen? uhm..)
Winne (pomp die shit net als een lekke band)
The Shins (put me to sleep)
The Doves (just got this from John)
Mew (I love their latest record, I can't stop listening to it, amazing)
Twilight Singers (the new record which is unbelievable)

I want you to find out about The Beatstrings, Old Scratch Revival Singers and All Rattle And Dust. I know there's people reading this so do it allready.

I wrote a bunch of folksy songs in dutch again, can't wait to play 'm for my boys back home.
MLIW is roadtesting some new songs, I love playing those, it's a lot of fun. On that note: I started doing back up vocals which is fun too. Other fun stuff: I party a lot, I'm not letting my back stop me. My back hurts, seriously.

There is no better life

Right now I'm in Atlanta, Georgia. last couple days were interesting and fun, been to florida, saw lizards, we thought the van was stolen but it turned out to be towed, had party's, I won a dance-off, my back is killing me, outbreak are crazy, the airco in the van is broken, we got it fixed but it worked for only about 10 minutes and I wasn't even there.

not much else going, my sister got her first tattoo. sorry mom.

oh yeah, anybody that has any pictures of any mliw shows, hit me up!

Comfortable chairs, comfortable temperatures

not much time to update this. I'm having tons of fun though. Holland won, US got crushed. 3 more days till the next game. Check out the new sticker on my guitar. All this pics taken from the B9 board. Search mliw on there and you'll find tons more.
In other news, the van smells like shit.

U.S. Bombs

Tonight I saw the US Bombs and now I'm convinced Duane Peters is Elvis and the US Bombs are the best rockband on the planet. Their encore was Tora! Tora! Tora! and Jags, I was pleased.

Also, I got tattooed again today! Darius, who does posters for shows (which you can see on Jeff's blog, witness in the link section) and a bunch of our new shirt designs hooked me up. So now I have 'MADE IN HOLLAND' on my ribs, it's great! Sorry mom! Pics will be posted as soon I get a chance to take 'm of my camera.

Check out his work here:

www.qojak.com