Well it's past noon in our neck of the woods so we'll reveal that this was quite obviously our April Fools joke. Despite a few heated anti-major label tirades posted below, you can rest easy with the knowledge that Horse The Band has not become one of the eggs in Warner's incubator. We thought this year's lie was a little more off beat and almost believable until you got to the "specially designed Mentos tour bus."

Oh, and the tour dates should have given it away. While I realize it may have been too much to expect US schools to teach even the most basic geography of Canada, I did figure that some of you would pick up on the impossibility of the tour routing. Par exemple, there's around 6119 km of road between Vancouver and Halifax (that's 3802.17 miles kids), so playing one a day after the other, then heading up to Rankin Inlet (which is in the arctic) would be pretty difficult.

Thanks to Horse The Band for being good sports about this and thanks to Punknews readers Sickboi, Fuzzy, KirbyPuckett and P-Fresh for contributing to the web of lies. Merry Fishmas! -Adam

Horse The Band signs to East/West; summer tour with Stretch Arm Strong, Lucero

The latest in a recent rash of signings to Warner Bros. "incubator label" East/West, self-proclaimed "Nintendocore" group Horse The Band have joined up with the label. The band will be releasing their as-yet-untitled new album on their own East/West imprint, Yamauchi Records, on August 2nd. While an official press release has not been drafted yet, the band's PR representative confirmed the signing in an e-mail to Punknews earlier tonight, stating:

The band are very excited about the opportunities associated with this… Their number-one goal right now is to get endorsed by Nintendo; they're also bidding to be one of the opening acts for Weezer's full US tour this fall.

Continuing on the touring topic, the band's previous summer dates with Mikoto and The Number 12 Looks Like You have been put on hold indefinitely, as the band will be hitting the road with fellow recent East/West signees Lucero and Stretch Arm Strong on the first-annual "Fresh Faces Tour." The trek, sponsored by Mentos, will find the three bands traversing North America in a specially designed Mentos tour bus. The tour will spend June and July criss-crossing Canada, before entering U.S. soil in August and September, lining up with the release of Horse The Band and Stretch Arm Strong's respective major-label releases. Free samples will be handed out at all tour stops.