Posted on: June 5, 2010 Posted by: AAA NeuFutur.com Comments: 0

The Jersey-based alternative rock meets metal outfit RETURN TO EARTH are currently gearing up for the band’s upcoming release of Automata, which is due out in stores and online August 17. In honor of the band’s second full-length album and Metal Blade debut, RTE has just released the track listing and artwork for Automata and will be launching a redesign of the MySpace page tonight that includes the addition of the new track ‘Back Of My Hand’ in the music player. RTE’s aesthetic approach to the artwork emulates bands like TOOL and NINE INCH NAILS by creating a visual element that parallels and accentuates the music.

Helping RTE with their vision are Damien Serban and Yann Bertrand from Absinthe Studio in France (www.absinthestudio.com); two fans of the band that had reached out to vocalist Ron Scalzo with a short film they had put together. The short film Serban and Bertrand created was computer generated and trippy, and perhaps serendipitous in that it sort of vibed with the musical and lyrical themes of the album and the concept of Automata, itself. Noting the connection between the album’s lyrics and themes and the short film, RTE decided to reach out to the two French filmmakers to create a 60 second trailer for the new album. RTE sent Serban and Bertrand three songs from Automata along with a basic outline of the songs’ themes. Absinthe Studio’s vision – a giant mechanical cube (or polyhedron, for all you intellectuals out there) in the desert which opened up to reveal robotic machinery organically pumping to the rhythm of RTE’s songs, simultaneously meshed with images of distorted flesh and human body parts – was awe-inspiring and pretty much blew the band away. When it came time to put together the artwork with Bald Freak Music’s Head of Design John Bryan (www.revolutiondream.com), the band members all agreed that the ‘cube’ concept was “it” – that it best embodied the spirit of the music visually – that the cube and the mysterious power within it could be responsible for the blurry line between humanity and machinery that is a recurring theme of Automata.

Head over to the RTE’s MySpace page HERE to check out the redesign and to listen to the new track, Back Of My Hand.

Automata, in stores and online everywhere August 17th, 2010
Automata track listing:
1. Automata
2. You Will Be Replaced
3. Back Of My Hand
4. 1.0
5. Edge Of Forever
6. Night Of The Exploding Razors
7. Snakeface
8. The Dots Do Not Connect
9. 2.0
10. The Replicas
11. So Close
12. God At The End Of The World
13. 3.0
14. Exit Wound
15. The Altercation Of Man

About the band:
RETURN TO EARTH is the amalgamation of the musical talents of Ron Scalzo, Brett Aveni, and Chris Pennie; three veteran and visionary musicians whose material can’t be pigeonholed to one genre or easily classified. You’ll hear bits and pieces of their influences and other projects and those bits and pieces come together to form the unique whole that is RETURN TO EARTH.

All three members of RTE sport impressive musical resumes – Pennie, in particular, hones his craft as one of the most heralded drummers working today. His groundbreaking drum style provides the backbone for RTE’s aggressive brand of rock. Pennie also wrote a lot of the material & contributed in the form of synth & loop programming. “Brett & I have been itching to work with Chris for years,” admits Scalzo. “He’s one of those prodigies that make the rest of wonder why we even bother trying to make music.”

Brooklyn native Scalzo is no slouch in the music-making department, having achieved moderate success as electro-rock singer/songwriter Q*Ball. With three self-released critically-acclaimed albums under his belt, Scalzo has purveyed that moderate success – and a lot of long hours – into an underground DIY label, Bald Freak Music. The upstart’s growing roster includes Guns N’ Roses guitarist Bumblefoot, who releases his impressive solo work on the label, and buzz-worthy pirate metal band Swashbuckle.

“You blink your eyes these days & the industry has already shifted another 30 degrees to the left,” says Scalzo. “I was tired of playing ‘the game’ – trying to fashion an image, a look, a musical style that would impress all the wrong people. I wanted to make music that I wanted to make, and the only way I was going to do that on my own terms was to release it myself.”

RETURN TO EARTH is:
Ron Scalzo – Vocals
Brett Aveni – Guitars
Chris Pennie – Drums

Follow the band at the following sites:
http://www.returntoearthmusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/returntoearththeband
http://www.facebook.com/returntoearth
http://www.baldfreak.com
http://www.youtube.com/baldfreakmusic

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