A band shirt won’t make or break an artist’s bottom line, but it can certainly help in the dismal economic landscape that is the indie music industry. At the same time, there are too many clothes on our planet: the fashion industry is thought to be the source of 2 to 10% of global carbon emissions, and some experts say that the only solution is to reduce consumption and the making. So what’s an eco-conscious musician looking to fill up his van by selling a few t-shirts? Like efforts to make vinyl more durable, eco-friendly products won’t do much to reverse the ravages of global warming, but it couldn’t hurt either. Producing ecological products, however, costs more. For many artists who are barely making it, the choice between manufacturers can mean the difference between a profitable tour and a less profitable tour.

Will your favorite band t-shirt survive you? The answer, like all aspects of sustainable fashion, is complicated. (In conversations about ethical consumption, “sustainable” often becomes a vague buzzword; here, we mean clothing that has minimal impact on the environment and is made using ethical labor practices.) The majority band shirts are made from 100% cotton, which is of natural origin and therefore technically biodegradable material, if untreated. But cotton production requires huge amounts of water and land, making it environmentally unsustainable. A little better is biological cotton, whose environmental footprint is less because it is produced without synthetic chemicals. Ultimately, recycled cotton, derived from post-consumer or post-industrial waste, is considered the most sustainable, but its price is higher. Then there’s the ink that turns a boring t-shirt into a statement of fan loyalty: water-based or plastic. The two have different environmental footprints, and although water can appear like the clean-up option, it can still cause environmental harm if handled and disposed of improperly.

Going through all of these factors takes time and energy, and the truth is often more complicated than the statistics suggest. Many organizations are guilty of greenwashing, a deceptive marketing practice that favors a sustainable image over concrete commitments. The problem goes beyond advertising: a recent New York Times investigation, for example, revealed that India’s organic cotton certification process is rife with corruption. None of this is terribly transparent to consumers or musicians.

“We’ve spent years trying to find a reasonable blank shirt that we believe is actually ethical and that we’ve never had,” says punk iconoclast Jeff Rosenstock. “They have this WRAP [Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production] certification, but the deeper you go down the rabbit hole, the more you see that certification is kind of bullshit. As the leader of the collective Bomb the Music Industry! in the mid-2000s, Rosenstock consciously rejected the concept of monetizing music and merchandising. Fans would bring plain T-shirts to shows, and band members would stencil and spray their logo for free. “It wasn’t always a shirt,” Rosenstock notes. “To our surprise, several people asked us to tag their cars.” By 2010, bomb the music industry! began selling traditional printed shirts, albeit ones that recognized their “cashing in”.

When Amorphis guitarist Esa Holopainen talks about the band’s thirty-year history, there’s a hint of nostalgia for its beginnings in the 1990s, when the Finnish metal band burst onto the scene with scrapbooks. The Karelian Isthmus and Tales of a Thousand Lakes. Since then, Amorphis has released fourteen albums, including that of 2022 Halo, and forged a unique path in the crowded world of extreme music. Holopainen admits he would have been pleased with the band’s early success and never imagined Amorphis would still be around three decades later.

“Oh no. No way,” he says emphatically. “I think it all happened in a few steps. It was already a dream come true when we signed our first record deal with Relapse Records. being able to do the first tours in North America and Europe, I would have been happy with those results already. There’s something about being in a band with the same guys for over thirty years that keeps you going It’s our job — it’s a lot of hard work — but it’s still as good as when we started.

Amorphis is on the road and will bring its ever-evolving soundscape to the Oriental Theater in Denver on Friday, April 22, along with Uada, Sylvaine and Hoaxed. This is the band’s first US tour since 2019, and they recently announced a European tour for later this year.

“We are really looking forward to the shows. It’s been too long since we’ve done a proper tour,” says Holopainen.

While American and Swedish death metal simultaneously grew in popularity at the time of the band’s inception, Amorphis’ sound was always more varied, even sophisticated. The band blended elements of death metal, doom metal, progressive rock and folk music into songs inspired by Kalevala, a Finnish epic poem about the creation of the Earth. But the band were never afraid to change things up, making Amorphis a fitting name. Holopainen laughs at such an observation and explains that the group is “not as radical” as it once was.

“At the time, I think we were doing too much of what we wanted to do,” he says of albums like 1996. Elegy and its sequel, 1999 Tuonela, which relied even more heavily on doom and prog elements. “For us, as musicians, we had to, because we never wanted to get stuck in one form. Today, we mix all the new nuances and influences quite well in our music. Even though there are a lot of different elements from different genres and the musical world, even ethnic music, I must say that we are quite good at mixing all these elements in our music without sounding too different.

Halo is yet another example of this, as the latest release once again feels grand in its overall lineup, fitting right in with the band’s recent release, which includes 2018 queen of time and 2015 under the red cloud.

“It’s been some pretty huge musical journeys the last two releases,” says Holopainen. “There are so many influences from different types of music. If you have a broader taste in music, you’ll probably like one of these albums.

Written during the pandemic, Holopainen believes Halo is “certainly slightly heavier, maybe the overall vibe.”

“It really shows the times we’re living in right now,” he says.

Halo reached No. 1 on the Finnish Albums Chart and No. 4 on Billboard‘s Hard Rock Albums Chart, as well as in the top five of the charts in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria.

“I guess we’re doing something here,” comments Holopainen.

He also released his first solo album, Silver Lakein 2021, which meant “the wheels were turning all the time,” he says.

“It was a very therapeutic experience to do something totally different,” he recalls. “Just listen to your inner self and do what you want.”

Holopainen doesn’t know if, or when, he’ll be working on more solo material. You might think that someone who creates so much music is constantly consuming it, but, he admits, “in my personal life, I’m pretty boring.” He still prefers Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath whenever he’s looking for vinyl. But he enjoys touring with new bands, including Ukrainian Jinjer, who mix new sounds with metal.

“One big thing about the metal scene today that I didn’t understand in the late 1990s was that it was very limited at that time, and from the mid-90s we were taking We already had elements of different music and were doing quite different kinds of death metal stuff. Today I think people are more open-minded to different kinds of music, and the metal scene as a whole has explored that a lot “, he concludes. “I think it’s a good thing, because being too strict about what you listen to does not make sense.

Amorphis plays at the Oriental Theater, 4335 West 44th Avenue, at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 22. Tickets cost between $28 and $200.

Tedeschi Trucks Band has announced a mammoth four-album project titled I am the moon. The four albums in the series – I. Crescent, II. Ascension, III. The falland IV. Goodbye – will be published over four successive months, with the first due to land on June 3. Watch the trailer below.

The albums will be available individually on CD and vinyl, with a deluxe box containing all four releases shipping September 9. Pre-orders are open now.