A blog about the fire…
From my band’s blog: blogs.myspace.com/empyreon
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Last night myself and Mike had gone to the studio to prep on our live show when lights began flickering on and off mid set. Seeing as though we’ve experienced our share of music building fuse blow outs, when the lights went out we played it nonchalant and expected power to be back up momentarily. It wasn’t until we saw one of the bands down the hall fleeing with their gear and yelling something about a fire that we stood up, grabbed our personal bags and fled as well.
Myself and Mike were the last 2 people out of the building, and when we reached the top of the stairs to our basement level studio building (consisting of only 4 practice rooms) about 5 fire trucks came screeching in and setting up for what seemed like an apocalypse. Several minutes later we were surrounded by 7 fire trucks, ambulance, and NYPD. The empty white faces of the 3 bands who were in attendance to watch our building being hacked to peices and watered down said it all. We were all in shock and anxious to know if everything we own had been destroyed in the fire, or destroyed by the 50+ firemen on the scene.
It seemed like an eternity, but I now calculate that we waited for 6 hours in a frozen anxious stomach turning state. At around 2 am they had finally cleared out enough CO for us to enter the basement with out a gas mask. Armed with nothing but flashlights (because there is no more ceiling, let alone lights) we slowly paced down the hall in 1 foot of water revealing, in flash-light tunnel vision, the immense damage the situation had caused. There was no more walls, ceilings, doors, or anything that resembled band equipment, the scene looked like debris from a massive hurricane.
Our room is the last room of the hallway, and as we drew closer the damage seemed to get worse, we prepared ourselves for the worst and it was finally time to see where Empyreon stands through out this ordeal. Surprisingly, most of our equipment managed to make it! We let out a huge sigh of relief as we entered the smoke filled area of our space. Although we know some of our stuff is damaged we also know it could have been so much worse from the looks of the room right next door. With it being pitch black, and supplied with only shitty flash lights, it’s still hard to say exactly how much of our equipment is damaged at this point. However, in the next few days we should be surveying damage reports and have an understanding of what to do from here. We do know we’re looking at a few grand in damages so far from hose flooding.
We had been working hard on setting up a record release show in a couple weeks, but with the current state of our room, equipment and time, we’ll unfortunately have to cancel these plans until further notice. Our planned release for “Beyond Perception” may be a bit delayed as well, although we’ll more than likely release the LP on it’s own and begin our live set once we’ve recouped.
Our apologies to our fans and friends who have been patiently waiting, but we’ll keep you guys posted in the upcoming weeks of Empyreon’s return!
- Frank
Empyreon
