With around a week to go until the full launch of Forlorn Hope and Glory, we’re delighted that our good friend Chris Grose has chosen to embed two of our new songs into his MySpace profile:

http://www.myspace.com/chrisgrose

So huge thanks despatched in the direction of Michigan! Don’t forget, if anyone else wants to do this, please feel free.

Meanwhile, time is running out on our special pre-order offer, so if you want our CD at the knock-down price of only £5, you’d better get your skates on and head over to:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/preorder.html

Our good friend Ian Fleming has only gone and set up a group in The Home Guard’s honour on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115742993588

Any and all are welcome to join. Many thanks! Of course, this isn’t the first time Ian has done this sort of thing for us, having previously created Last.fm and MySpace groups for us, which are both still open for business:

http://www.last.fm/group/The+Home+Guard+FANCLUB%21%21

http://groups.myspace.com/TheHomeGuardFanclub

Ian himself will be releasing his own album in the coming months, and you can stay up to date and hear works in progress here:

http://www.myspace.com/varialus

A major shout out to Inclination Webzine for adding five (count ‘em!) of our songs in their ReverbNation player, which you can listen to here:

http://www.reverbnation.com/fan/inclinationwebzine

If anyone reading this wants to do the same thing, please feel free. You can even embed said player in various places across the Internet, such as on your MySpace profile:

http://www.myspace.com/inclinationwebzine

As we’ve said time and time again: you never know where your next listener is going to come from. Many thanks indeed to the good people at Inclination Webzine!

For a first listen of the finished version of Dead on My Feet (Again) – track seven on Forlorn Hope and Glory – you can hear it on the latest NerveCast Show, which you can download from here:

http://nervetonic.podomatic.com/entry/2009-08-12T16_49_59-07_00

We come on at 7:10, but do listen to the whole show and embrace the independent music scene! Many thanks once again to the great guys at NerveCast for all their support and the great work they do for bands that may otherwise go unheard.

Anyway, that’s four songs from the new album you’ve heard already (the other three, including a free download, are here). You have until the end of August to pre-order Forlorn Hope and Glory at the frankly ludicrous price of only £5, which you can do here:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/preorder.html

At some point in the last week, we were played on Last.fm for the 5000th time. We achieved this total in something like 15 months, and hopefully once Forlorn Hope and Glory is uploaded there, the number will grow at an even faster rate!

This milestone is also a great excuse to invite everyone reading this to join in our two groups there. The first was set up by Ian:

http://www.last.fm/group/The+Home+Guard+FANCLUB%21%21

And subsequently Mike created one as well:

http://www.last.fm/group/The+Home+Guard

Everyone’s welcome to join in!

As an addendum to our previous post, we’d like to extend our gratitude to our MySpace friend Aaron. He has become the first person to embed a song from Forlorn Hope and Glory on his profile, as you can see for yourself here:

http://www.myspace.com/aaronemoftx

As well as Turn Me Up, Aaron also has four songs from A Head of Steam in his player – thanks for helping us to reach new listeners!

YouTube may be the most popular, but it’s by no means the only video-hosting site on the web. Our good friend Mike is well aware of this, and he has very kindly uploaded a pile of his fan-made vids of our music to the service. You can see his profile here:

http://www.veoh.com/users/vjsupersaint

He’s even gone to the trouble of creating a group on the site, so if you’re a member, feel free to join here:

http://www.veoh.com/group/the-home-guard

We are exceptionally grateful to Mike for putting in the time and effort to make these videos. We encourage anyone with even basic editing skills to put pictures to any of our songs – if not moving, then how about a slideshow? Just upload it anywhere and everywhere you can, let us know, and we’ll link to it right here. We always say, you never know where your next listener is going to come from!

Less than a week after starting to take pre-orders for our second album, our debut has finally appeared on Spotify. Let’s see if those fancy drag-and-drop link things they were hyping up actually work:

spotify:album:5TlGrZRuADRGg1aIa10tj5

If not, this HTML one should do the trick:

http://open.spotify.com/album/5TlGrZRuADRGg1aIa10tj5

Don’t forget to share it with your friends! We’ve been waiting since March for A Head of Steam to appear on perhaps the most exciting up-and-coming online music service, and we hope that Forlorn Hope and Glory won’t take quite as long.

(Yes, the new album is called Forlorn Hope and Glory – how’s that for an understated announcement? It was an on-going guessing game in our Last.fm groups – here and here – and eventually it was figured out.)

In the few short days since our pre-order system for the new album was set up, so many of you have helped to promote it that we just can’t thank you enough! So, in no particular order, here are the ones that we know about:

First up, a new one – Monica, our good friend in Brazil, gave us a shout out on her blog.

http://basicregisters.blogspot.com/2009/08/home-guard.html

Why not do the same? Mike the Southampton fan did:

http://www.last.fm/user/vjsupersaint/journal

Remember NerveCast Radio? They posted a note about us on Facebook that sparked a discussion, leading us to be referred to as “the herpes of music”! (It was stressed that that was a compliment about our songs being catchy.) Unfortunately, we cant link directly to anything on Facebook, but that’s the sort of quote I’ve a good mind to plaster all over our site!

Last but not least, we can always count on Ian in Texas to post the occasional bulletin about and generally draw attention to us on MySpace (once again, can’t link to it, but it’s there).

Unreserved thankfulness to all of the above – and indeed to the many of you who have promoted us behind the scenes without us even realising. Your efforts are genuinely appreciated!

A new month, a brand new album: the hard work has been completed, and we’re delighted and excited in equal measures to announce that it’s finally finished and being prepared for manufacturing! Tell all your friends! Spread the word! Let the whole world know that our CD can be pre-ordered (at a criminally low introductory price) from here:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/preorder.html

If you place your order now, then as soon as we’ve got the final product in our hands, we’ll package it and put it in the mail to you straight away. The album’s certainly been a long time coming, and as you’ve all waited so patiently, here are sneak previews of three songs, including a free download exclusively for all those wonderful people on our mailing list (you know who you are!):

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/1695765

(If you’re not on our mailing list, you’ll only get the first 30 seconds of Year Zero.)

The confirmed tracklisting for the CD is:

1. Year Zero – A prog rock epic about a Roman emperor

2. Sweating Blood – A flat-out British-style indie rocker

3. Nothing Can Stop You Being Mine – A Queen-ish style slower piano song with heavy choruses

4. One for the Road – Unashamed Britpop with a hint of Sparks and Madness

5. Turn Me Up – Very dark and moody mid-tempo rocker

6. Soldier On – An optimistic song about fighting adversity

7. Dead on My Feet (Again) – Glam rock in the style of Sparks

8. Pseudonym – Early Genesis meets The Doors in another piano-driven song

9. City and Soke – Quite a hard rocker, but with flute

10. Other People – We can practically guarantee you’ve never ever heard anything like this song before!

(You can click on selected song titles above to play/download half-finished work-in-progress demos from a few months ago. Quality varies, but at least it gives you an idea of the final product you will be receiving.)

We’re doing a whole host of behind-the-scenes official stuff ahead of the full launch, including a complete revamp of this site (so that explains things if it goes down for a short period), so check back regularly for more goodies! And please don’t hesitate to spread the above links around the whole of the Internet – we’re so grateful to all those that do…