Developments in the Umphrey’s McGee camp as it applies to the release of Mantis are keeping me pretty busy here. Mostly this is because I’m one of the folks who has invested in the pre-order of the album, so I’m eagerly awaiting any surprise freebies, downloads, etc. While the pre-order crowd waits for the stalled progress bar on the Mantis page to move to unlocking Level 7 and exposing the promise of Level 8 with baited breath, other events have transpired this week.

It seems that promos have been sent to radio stations who are “crunchy friendly” or would play Umphrey’s McGee in their rotation. This promo CD has radio edits of three songs apparently– the already-shared “Made to Measure” which is now freely available to anyone who clicks on the link on the page and signs up for a UMLive account, “Cemetery Walk” which is currently on the band blog complete with a posting talking about the development of the song which started back in 2007, and another track called “Spires” which was apparently aired on a couple of radio stations already.

Click Here to download “Cemetery Walk” (This is the obscured link on the blog page player– so if they take this down, this link won’t work).

In addition to all of this, Thursday this week (12/4) is when the pre-order folks will be able to download “Level 1” of the pre-order bonus material, which has some really cool stuff in it including four tracks of their 2005 Acoustic Christmas Benefit Show. More on that when I get to download that on Thursday.

Stay tuned!