Phase 2a

It’ll be weird, in a year’s, time to look back and see how exciting these first months have been…

It’s quite cool to be involved in a project where systematic positivity is just implicit in the working of the band. By that I mean; we have unwittingly, though quite serendipitously (though perhaps not quite as accidentally as that), structured our activity into what could become a very useful and efficient tactical and strategic cycle, running something like – Write, Record, Perform.

As outlined in prior blogs the story has been – band together, write tunes, record tunes, do gigs. Not saying this is a novel approach to doing anything, but each project has had multiple aims, set by ourselves, and we seem to be able to jump through our hoops satisfactorily, finishing up in a place where we can raise the bar and progress in a very tangible way, which I find incredibly valuable and is something which has been lacking in most other musical projects I have been involved with…

So now we are back at the stage ‘2a’ of the second phase… writing new tunes…

The first 2 tunes were pretty much written by the time I joined in mid autumn ’09 and the third tune was in a strong skeletal form by the time Ecks joined. The development of the fourth is, for some reason, a bit of a blur, and I get the feeling – though I could be mistaken – that it was ‘completed’ for the sake of getting on stage and accordingly, may very well change structure and (I feel should) be split into 2 songs…

Point being, we are now at a stage where we are largely writing from scratch… sure there are riffs floating about that any one of us may have been carrying for a while, but it’s all new to each other member…

It is noticeable that we are figuring out each other’s writing style and it’s quite fun, and for the most part funny, to see how we communicate, fight for and impress our ideas upon the music. But it’s also noticeable that, between us, we seem to have what I call a ‘good metal head’, a strong sense of good Metal musicianship, which is not something that every Metal musician has…

On the other side, there are some clunky ideas in there that are remnants of the tussles that have arisen in the writing process, usually the consequence of a couple of us trying to micro-manage certain passages of a given tune…

One of the interesting things that I will be watching is how the Rhythm section develops, given that Luke and Ecks haven’t known each other long, and that they are both incredibly nice, polite and non-egocentric fellahs… I’m expecting mintness…

As for me, well, I’ve got work to do too… it’s fucking so cool to have these tunes to sing over; I’m not sure if we are very ground breaking or necessarily pushing any boundaries, but the music we are writing has, to my ears at least, a real sense of Metal and Rock heritage and as the songs are threaded together riff by riff, my ears can hear exactly where the vocals could sit. While this is, undoubtedly, a very formulaic approach to writing vocals, it is such a pleasure to be writing tunes that will be the cause of some serious neck muscle strainage when performed live and may even provoke a singalong…

…like I say, it’ll be weird in a year’s time…

Mint!

b!x