While I was being productive doing drum tracks yesterday my esteemed bandmates held a contest to cram as many gummi bears into Justin’s mouth as deemed safe by our producer.

Hey guys and gals! Our show tonight is postponed until some time next year due to zombies!

Yes, that’s right NoCo HQ is under attack by the undead and we need some time to fight them off with shotgun shells and loud rock music. I’ve also heard it’s snowing outside but I’m too busy reloading and typing with the other hand to see.

Please take care of yourselves today and we’ll update you later on rescheduling the show.

Jack and Justin got together to wish all you fans and friends a happy holidays and exchange gifts. Thanks for nothing guys cause I didn’t get dick.

Also, Jack’s Jewish?

The title says it all, Kaleidoscope is now available for sale on iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/kaleidoscope/id344892389

Of course it’s already been available for free download but for people who refuse to get music from anywhere else or still haven’t learned to distinguish digital music from iTunes (our parents), here it is.

Side note, the official artist listing is “NoCo” instead of “No Compromise.” I know it’s a pain in the ass our metadata is inconsistent but we’re using “NoCo” for all releases going forward for two reasons.

1. It’s short, sweet, and rhymes with “SoCo“
2. We don’t technically own the legal rights to the name “No Compromise” but do own “NoCo.” Legal issues aside, there are a few other bands sporting the name “No Compromise” and most of them are some sort of religious group which is not at all our bag.

So just like AFI is technically A Fire Inside, we’re still No Compromise – we just go by NoCo. And we happened to figure it out a year later than we should’ve.

For those of you who need help fixing your tags you can always download the copies we offer on the website. They’re all properly marked as NoCo. Trying to fix the existing entries in the myriad of digital distribution systems is about as easy as taking candy from a cranky baby armed with laser pistols. But we hope to be able to work it out eventually once we can disarm that baby.

Thanks for your understanding.

Hello, hello!

I’m very pleased to announce a couple of things. First and foremost we’re going back into the studio in December to record a full band EP of some material we’ve been playing live for awhile and some all new completely unheard stuff. But the best part is we’re getting produced by Scott Spelbring of DragonFly Studios who’s worked with tons of big bands (SR-71, O.A.R., Crystal Method) and some cool locals as well. We’re stoked as all Hell to be working with a pro like Scott who’s going to help push us to get the most out of our sound without going through a lot of bullshit.

No real details yet other than we’re looking at around 4-6 songs and we’re hoping to be done no later than late February. After such a long process with our last release, we feel the need to be efficient and get our material out there quickly this time but without cutting any corners.

While we’re writing for the next release we’re also looking at the possibility of doing a proper release show for Kaleidoscope. Admittedly our three piece configuration is not enough to do it justice live so we’re exploring possibilities of putting on a bigger production. It’s at least a few months out because of the massive amount of preparation that goes into such a show. We’ll make an official announcement if and when we’re able to nail everything down.

We’ll still be playing live – we’re playing a free show at GMU in December as well as The Quarter in Baltimore. Once we finish the new release we’ll be doing a lot more touring and live shows, and we’d love to get out there and see you NoCo fans that have been patiently waiting for us to get your area. You can help by tweeting, messaging, or emailing us venues in your area or putting us in touch with any connections you have.

That’s some of the stuff we’re kicking around. We’re superfucking excited about putting out some more new music and then playing live and seeing all of you guys!

Love,

NoCo

This is our first ever video blog (vlog?). We briefly talk about the new album including ways to pirate our free music.

I also lost all respect for Justin because I learned he owned a snuggie.

Hey guys! It’s been a long wait but we’re finally delivering the new music we promised – an all acoustic album for free digital download.

It’s been an extended, harrowing process to get this all done and it was a learning experience for the band in tons of different ways. We owe a debt of gratitude to all the volunteers and musicians who worked with us, as well as each and every one of you for patiently waiting. It’s a relief to finally get this out.

We’re offering two packages – the free download is 196 kbps MP3s, all non-DRM and nicely encoded. Absolutely no strings attached. Pass it around to everyone, seed a torrent, any way you can spread the word is much appreciated.

For the more serious fan we’ve put together a $5 premium package that gets you your choice of format – 196 or 320 kbps MP3 or Apple Lossless (w4a). We also tabbed out every guitar part in nice official PDFs and Guitar Pro files, included some recording outtakes (bloopers) that I personally find funny as Hell, and track-by-track running commentary on the songs.

We’d love to have your support by downloading the premium package, but really we just want everyone to hear the tunes.

We’re go grateful for all the support. Thanks again and we look forward to hearing your reactions!

We’re back with a brand new website. The design is a bit more friendly and modern, and we’ve got some new features including an actual NoCo store where we’ll be selling T-shirts through PayPal.

The site is very much a work in progress so we’ll be adding more content and ways to interact in the near future. We really want this to become a place to hang out and check regularly.

In the mean time, if you find anything wrong or want to suggest any features shoot us an email at info@nocorock.com or a tweet.

This was going to be a surprise, but we decided we couldn’t hold on to the news any longer. We’re almost done tracking a brand new acoustic album that we’ve been self-recording and producing since May!

It’s going to be called Kaleidoscope and will probably be ready some time in late October as a 100% free digital download.

As a direct result, we’ve been trying to finish the album and not playing a lot of shows. But we missed you guys, so we added a quickie on September 5 at one of our favorite venues, Jammin Java, with our friends from The War Within.

It’s an all ages late show, and as a bonus for everyone coming out to the show we’re going to be giving away some unmixed demo tracks as a preview of the new album before it’s released.

After that we’ll be back to the grind finishing the album, so don’t miss this show guys!

OK, we so we have a fun contest for you guys. Show us your artz skillz! Draw a picture/comic/photo of you or the band doing your part to fight bad music and email us the attachment or link to info@nocorock.com with the subject “Contest.”

You can doodle something in MS Paint, draw it freehand and scan or take a picture of it, as long as it’s reasonable quality. We’ll judge them all, probably laugh at most of them, and pick some winners. Not artsy? Don’t worry, here’s an example I drew of my beefy superhero alterego chucking a grand piano at a cliched RIAA lawyer.

One grand prize winner will receive a pair of tickets to see us play at Celebrate Fairfax this Saturday. The ticket is also good for all the other acts playing including Blues Traveler, The Fixx, Tone Loc, and Phil Vassar! Two other winners will receive a pair of tickets to see us at Recher Theatre on June 20. If we get tons of really good ones we may award some other merit prizes like free shirts.

We’ll stop accepting entries as of midnight EST Wednesday June 3 and announce winners by noon on Thursday. We can’t wait to see all of them.

Disclaimer stuff: Please keep the file sizes under 500k for anything emailed, and only submit JPG, PNG, GIF, or BMP. You can enter as many times as you’d like, but limit is one prize per person so be smart and have your friends mail in your other entries for you.