A Sound of Thunder Presents Queen of Hell: Initium

Merch is arriving! New shows! Queen of Hell Act II progress!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 11:55:45 AM

HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!

Here's a little update from Josh followed by some concert info, pics of merch that has arrived, and a little fun in the snow!

NEXT SHOW: FEBRUARY 15TH IN BALTIMORE! 

Finally we're returning to Baltimore!  We're at Angel's Rock Bar on February 15th and we are selling tickets directly for this one! You'll save a few bucks on fees and we make a few more bucks on direct sales, so get your tickets from us here: https://asoundofthunderband.com/event/5893900/707450829/for-the-love-of-metal

MERCH IS ARRIVING!

Here's what's showed up so far! Comics should arrive soon.  Next we'll be ordering t-shirts,  trading cards and a few small items, and then we'll finally be ready for autographs and shipping! Huzzah! 

SNOW TRAINING

We've been doing some extreme winter band practice and will be sharper and harder than ever! You've been warned!

SURVEY STRAGGLERS

We've tried to give as much notice as possible, and then we gave you even more, but if you have not completed your survey (including checking out and paying your postage on the final page of the survey) your items will not appear in our tallies and your t-shirt(s) will not be ordered. All of the shirts on this campaign are exclusives, meaning we are not stocking extras for the website or live shows. Therefore we will have to lock your survey so that you can't complete it later after we order shirts. This is necessary to make sure that we don't ship out shirts that weren't accounted for in our order, which would cause us to run out of shirts at the end of the shipping process and potentially stiff backers who did complete their surveys on time. When you message us later asking "WTF guys?!" we're going to direct you here. If this is you, please message us directly and we'll take care of you!

QUEEN OF HELL ACT II UNDERWAY!

We can't share much yet but we have made some awesome progress on the next chapter of Queen of Hell this week! Things are looking and sounding very good right now!

That's it for this update. Until next time...stay warm and play it loud!

Cheers,

Nina, Josh, Jesse & Justin

HAPPY NEW YEAR! COMICS ORDERED! UNPUBLISHED DESIGNS!
about 1 year ago – Tue, Dec 31, 2024 at 11:21:49 AM

HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER! 

This is a milestone day for us because ALL COMICS HAVE BEEN ORDERED FROM THE PRINTER! There was a lot of last minute tweaking to get everything just right, and a few cool additions (like a letters page is issue #4). The whole series was 99% done and laid out for print, but when we did our final proofread and quality check we found a number of files that had minor problems but problems that nonetheless needed to be fixed. Nina did a TON of extra work fixing those pages at the last minute, so let's hear it for the real Queen of Hell & Graphic Design! 

As part of those last minute changes and additions we incorporated some design images that we recently found in our archive. Many of you may not know just how long we've been working on the Queen of Hell comic. The very first work ever done towards the comic were the design images below by artist Paulina Ganucheau. These were done way back in 2014! Paulina was the third person ever to draw Udoroth and the Queen of Hell after Nina herself and our main cover artist Dusan Markovic. As you can see her designs are really awesome! 

Aren't those great?!  For those of you who are getting the rare Paulina Ganucheau design variant comics, you'll see some of those images printed on front and back covers of those issues. But we thought they were worth sharing with everyone!

We had a good band meeting today talking about how to do more for social media, including regular fun video updates, rehearsal videos, and live streams. We'll be testing some things out in January and hope to start posting regularly in February, which is also when we'll have our first promo photos of the new lineup and our next gig.

The newly ordered rewards should start arriving at Thunder-Manor next week. Some shipping will start mid-January. We still have to order t-shirts (these were delayed by an unexpectedly high number of survey stragglers) and trading cards (these won't affect many backers and we wanted to put some extra effort into designing these). And of course we'll have a couple of very long autograph days since we're signing almost everything for you! We'll start shipping what we can as things arrive and are signed, and expect to have everything in stock and ready to ship by the end of January. 

Everyone, we just want to cap off this update with a huge THANK YOU & HAPPY NEW YEAR! We know this project (if you were on the original music campaign) has been extremely delayed, but we're coming out of it with a newly invigorated band and the first chapter of our massive dream project done! It's all thanks to you! So please accept a big pat on the back and virtual hug from the band, and go out there and have a great New Year's Eve and very happy new year!  You rule!

Cheers, 

Nina, Josh, Jesse & Justin

Original art arrives! Pins & patches ordered! Survey deadline!
over 1 year ago – Thu, Dec 19, 2024 at 01:01:09 PM

HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!

Today the original artwork from Queen of Hell: Initium has arrived from artist Mike Ratera in Catalonia! Spanish customs held the package hostage for several weeks and we were starting to fear the worst but after significant hassle they finally released the package and it is now in our hands!

Mike did such a beautiful job on the artwork that we wanted to show it off in an extended video below:

Surveys are now locked but if you decide you want a page of original art you can grab one at this private pre-order link: 

Also when we listed the items ordered in the previous update we forgot to mention that the pins and patches had been ordered! Yay!

 We went a little extra with the pins since they were the most popular add-on, so they will all be packaged on double-sided full-color printed cards featuring Queen of Hell and Udoroth! We approved the final proofs for those today.  (This was like the fourth round of proofs for these. If you sometimes wonder why things take so long, it's often because there are lots of revisions and proofing going on behind the scenes with our various suppliers to make sure things are just right!) 

We've been continuing to work on our printed comics quote today. We locked in all of our final quantities for every variant yesterday, and are updating that information with our printers today. We hope to have the order paid for tomorrow.  Nina will have to port the comic covers and pages onto our printer's templates, and then we'll finally be to the printing stage!

As we mentioned in the last update the next big item to order will then be the t-shirts, for which we need to have everyone's backer survey responses. With that in mind...

OFFICIAL SURVEY DEADLINE

For you survey stragglers, we can't keep everyone else waiting any longer.  Therefore MONDAY, DECEMBER 19TH IS THE OFFICIAL BACKER SURVEY DEADLINE!  We have tried to reach you through Kickstarter updates, BackerKit e-mails, e-mails from the band account, and today Josh even tried again from his personal e-mail address. There's nothing else we can do. IF YOU DON'T COMPLETE YOUR BACKER SURVEY BY THE DEADLINE YOU FORFEIT YOUR STUFF.   Of course we will try to accommodate you as much as possible, but we can pretty much guarantee you will not get a t-shirt, and when it comes to other limited items that may run out you will be the last in line! (Cue the riff, Ronnie!)  

(If you miss the deadline we are going to refer back to this update. This is our last attempt to notify you!) 

That's it for today, Legion!

Cheers,

Nina, Josh, Jesse & Justin

Survey stragglers & items arriving!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Dec 17, 2024 at 12:59:24 PM

Hey everyone, this is mostly a duplicate of the update we just posted on the original Queen of Hell music campaign, BUT...

Just a reminder that if you backed both campaigns, then we do need you to complete a backer survey for both campaigns!(Some people have been ignoring reminders because they completed one survey and thought they were all done.) 

Ok, here's the update...

HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!

After a short break for our big annual band Christmas party this past weekend, we're back on the job! 

Huge thanks to everyone for their support and patience! We have some survey stragglers who we need to reach, so let us get tough for a second. Grrr! 

Survey Stragglers

• For those who have not yet completed their surveys you are now officially delaying the project for everyone else. It's time to stop ignoring those reminder e-mails! We can't fix our quantities for our orders of some items until you respond! 
• Also, heads up, IF YOU ORDERED A T-SHIRT AND YOU DON'T RESPOND TO YOUR SURVEY BY DECEMBER 23rd YOU WILL NOT BE GETTING A SHIRT. (How can we order your shirt if we don't know your size or which design you want?)
• Reminder that we did not collect postage during the campaign. We are collecting postage now via the surveys. If you don't respond to your survey that means you didn't pay for postage and we can't ship ANY of your stuff. 
• You have to complete check-out of the survey in order for your items to show up in our tallies for orders. That means completing the final screen where you pay for postage.

Ok, taking the figurative brass knucks back off for the rest of you...

Rewards 

We've been ordering stuff and working on rewards and more items are now starting to arrive!

So far we have the following items in hand: vinyl, art prints, guitar picks, stickers and shot glasses.

CDs and cassettes have been ordered and are both expected to arrive between Christmas and New Year's. 

Today we'll be locking our final quantities of comics (people have been adding them in the surveys so the quantities were changing) and submitting our order to the printer. 

T-shirts will hopefully be the next big item we order next week. 

Trading cards will likely be the last item we order as Nina and Josh still have some creative and layout work to do on the full set. 

Rehearsal is a little spotty over the next few weeks as everyone has various holiday plans, but in general we're still getting together weekly to keep the new set sharp and work on new tunes. Surprisingly "Lord Shiteater" - conceived as a fun bonus track on the backer-exclusive Demons CD - may actually make it to the live set. It's a real earworm! We'll be discussing our musical plans for 2025, and whether we're going to squeeze out a separate new album before we get to Queen of Hell Act II. We're just starting to assemble our comic team for Queen of Hell Act II with Rafer. And we've just booked two more shows for 2025. Lots of exciting things are taking shape! 

That's it for today, Legion! Finish up those surveys, keep it metal, and whatever you're listening to PLAY IT LOUD!

Cheers,

Nina, Josh, Jesse & Justin

Colors & Letters DONE! Survey stragglers! Cards charged this Friday!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Nov 27, 2024 at 11:34:56 AM

HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!

COMIC 100% DONE!

We've hit a major milestone today. Colorist Max Bayo has turned in her colors for the FINAL page of the entire series!  And on the same day we have approved the lettering for the final issue of the comic! That means that five and a half years after we received the first page of artwork, the creative work on the comic is 100% DONE!!! 

We have a little bit of layout work to do in the extra pages at the back of each issue, which will probably feature some design work and pinups by Mike Ratera, and we have to tweak some of the credits pages with our new publishers from the comic campaign. Nina will be knocking that out next week, and then we should be off to the printer! 

PLEASE FILL OUT YOUR SURVEYS!

The backer surveys are still active. We have responses from 81% of backers on the original campaign and 57% of backers on the comic campaign. If you have not completed your survey yet, PLEASE DO SO A.S.A.P.!!!  The surveys are where we collect your t-shirt design and size choices. How can we make your t-shirt if we don't hear from you? We can't, that's how. So please fill out your survey or risk not getting the shirt you already paid for! 

If you can't find your survey just search for "BackerKit" in your e-mail. You should see an e-mail from us with the subject "Response needed..."   (Or just shoot us a message and we'll send you a direct link to your survey!)

CARDS WILL BE CHARGED ON FRIDAY!

If you've already filled out your survey, note that your card was not charged when you submitted the survey. We have to manually lock all surveys and charge all cards on our end. We're planning to do that on Friday! Just a heads up so we don't catch you by surprise!

OTHER GOINGS ON!

• NEW SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT:  February 15th in Baltimore, Maryland at Angel's Rock Bar!
• SWAG: You're all getting ASoT/Queen of Hell guitar picks. Those should arrive today or Friday. Woo! We'll be ordering lots of other reward items and extras in the coming days. 
• DEMONS: Josh has been messing around with the final bonus track for the Demons bonus CD. Since it's a demo recording we should be able to knock that out over the weekend, and get the Demons CD into production by the end of next week! 
• HAPPY THANKSGIVING: For all of our American fans, friends and family, have a wonderful holiday! 

Cheers,

Nina, Josh, Jesse & Justin