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Hello there.
It was just over a year ago that our record "The Hands That Thieve" came out, and it was quite the nightmare for us. We won't bore you all with the details of our battles against the record label we were unfortunately signed to, so here's some actual news that will affect everyone that placed a pre-order through our webstore. As you remember the label in question refused to send us our own cd's so that we could fulfill preorders and has since refused to pay any royalties from any of the money our music makes them. Members of the band have only seen the record at shows, when you guys bring them and ask us to sign them. But we'll get to that at a later date. Today we are announcing that we will immediately begin shipping the "mystery gift" we promised those of you that ordered the cd a year ago.

We were determined to make sure those of you that supported us when we were down and struggling would get something as good as or even better than the cd you'd hoped would end up making a home in your cd collection. This is what we will be sending you: It's a cardboard digipak cd case. Inside you will find a 24 page booklet, chock full of photographs and poems (10 poems, to be exact). Also in this cd case is a blank cd, with a lovely design printed on its front surface. You can use the blank cd to store your digital files, as a coaster, or even to burn your favorite songs. Any songs you want to put on it, you can put on it. You can put any amount of songs on it, as long as that amount will fit on a standard CD-R. You can burn 2 songs, 30 songs or even 10 songs, it's up to you. You can find music to burn onto the cd on the internet, or even ask fellow fans of bands you like to share their favorite songs so you can burn them, as long as you do so legally, or whatever. Then when you're done burning the cd (it takes a few minutes, but it's really quite simple to do), you can put the cd on your shelf, in your car, wherever. There are no words on the cd (besides the poems), no bar codes, no logos, no mean-hearted little dogs, nothing. It's just a blank cd that we're providing for you, along with a booklet of poetry and photography. That said, this will be a limited edition item, obviously. Once we're done sending them out to those of you that preordered the album and chose to wait to see what the mystery gift was, we will sell off however many we have left and that will be the end of that.

So! We're going to be very busy for the next few weeks while we wade through our seemingly never-ending list of addresses and package and send off a couple thousand of these little guys. Please bear with us while we ship these out (remember we are a tiny outfit). We know you've been patient for the last year and we cannot stress enough how much we appreciate it. If you have any questions, shoot us an email at store@riscmail.com or call us at (213) 278-0283.

For those of you that might feel that we've left you a little too much in the dark regarding all of this; we can only apologize (and we do, wholeheartedly) and offer you this explanation: We've had an extremely difficult year and a half dealing with an awful, awful record label and their lawyers. We plan on telling the entire story eventually but we simply cannot now, while it's still unfolding, for legal reasons.

Thanks again for your support and understanding. See you tomorrow, for more and potentially equally awesome news.