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It's been a while since I've updated my website, so I figured I'd condense everything I've been up to lately in one neat blog post.
So first and foremost, that heavy metal EP I got to work on a while back dropped on April 29th, 2018! The band is called Me Against The World, and the EP is self-titled. This project consists of Ryan Sullivan on vocals and keyboards, Mike Roman (No More Pain, The Mason Ray, Shadow Box) on guitar and bass, and myself on drums. It was produced by Nishit Nandankar from his home studio. The album is available for pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp!
Moving on to May, since then I've been playing with a Chris Cornell tribute band called Channeling Cornell - The Ultimate Chris Cornell Tribute, consisting of John DiStasio on vocals, Matthew Ainbinder on guitar, JD San Jose on bass, and myself on drums. We spent the last few months rehearsing songs from Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple Of The Dog, and Chris Cornell's solo work. We just played our debut show at The Saint in Asbury Park on August 12th, which was an absolute blast! Be sure to keep your ears open for more show dates soon!
Additionally, I've been working on-and-off on a creative project with my good friend Justin Terek. Justin is an incredible multi-instrumentalist, writer, and composer who shares my love for all things prog and metal, so I'm super excited to dive into our collective creative headspace. The project is called Arkitextures, and we will be doing some work on albums that draw inspiration from all over the musical spectrum, (even if they're not all prog metal)! Some of the bands from which we draw our inspiration include Dream Theater (a default for both of us), Haken, Caligula's Horse, Headspace, Between The Buried And Me, TesseracT, Periphery, Native Construct, AIHVHIA, and Sleeping At Last. We're starting off this project with two concept albums; one was Justin's idea and one was mine. Justin's album is called In Media Res, and it tells a science fiction story about a boy who grew up in a lab and was given strange powers in an experiment, who then tries to integrate himself into the real world until he realizes he needs his old environment in order to survive. My album is called The War, and it tells a story about the sacrifices one must make in order to achieve victory in the parallels between internal and external conflict, which can only be done by realizing the true essence of oneself's own nature. I should note that I have no idea when these albums will be finished, but I will do my best to post updates as we hit certain milestones in the process. As of right now, all of the lyrics for The War are done, and a few musical motifs have been written. The first song, Clash Of Morals, has been fully structured out. About half of the lyrics for In Media Res have also been finished, and Justin has been working hard on writing the music.
Lastly, I want to shift focus for a bit from what I've been working on to how I've been trying to strengthen my creative muscle. In the section on Arkitextures, I mentioned how one of the bands from which Justin and I are drawing inspiration is Ryan O'Neal's project Sleeping At Last. Ryan's podcast, The Sleeping At Last Podcast, has played a major role in my learning about the creative process. Whereas most creators just explain the "why," or the inspiration behind what they make, Ryan goes more in-depth and explains the "how" behind his work, and spends as much time talking about the process as he does about the inspiration. This has helped change the perspective in which I approach creativity, in the sense that it's all about the process in which one turns inspiration into art, not the inspiration itself. In this podcast, as well as other podcasts on which he's been a guest, he stresses the importance of balancing input time and output time. In other words, you have to make sure that you're spending time taking in inspiration so that your creative output has a stronger foundation. Here are some of the things that have been inspiring for my creative side as of late:
Music
-Sleeping At Last (Ryan O'Neal's project)
-AIHVHIA (Jonathan Solheim's project)
-All things Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple Of The Dog, Chris Cornell's solo work)
-Ramin Djawadi (film/TV composer)
-Hans Zimmer (film/TV composer)
Literature
-A Song Of Ice And Fire (series) by George R.R. Martin
-The Witcher (series) by Andrzej Sapkowski
Film / Television
-Westworld (HBO series)
-The Marvel shows (Netflix)
-Daredevil
-Jessica Jones
-Luke Cage
-Iron Fist
-The Punisher
-The Defenders
-All things Star Wars
-All things Marvel Cinematic Universe
Video Games
-Horizon: Zero Dawn
-No Man's Sky
Other
-Learning about the nine Enneagram personality archetypes (The Sleeping At Last Podcast and Typology go very in-depth with this)
Wrapping things up, I'm just now realizing that this wasn't as concise as I had originally intended! But on the bright side, we're all caught up; this is where I am right now. Going forward, I plan on staying on top of this blog much more consistently, so keep your eyes and ears out for show dates and hopefully new original music at some point in the near future. There's definitely a lot more going on behind the scenes, but I think I'll save that for when it's further developed. Until next time, cheers!