So, as you may have seen, I've transferred all previous posts I could find from the HV and Black Madness Myspace pages to here. A sign that maybe this year will be different. A sign that maybe, finally, we'll get our asses into gear and do something. But who knows. Firstly, let me go over everything that has transpired since the previous blog update, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away 2 years ago.
To Sever Ties With All Of Mankind
Was completed. At fucking last. We did a limit break on it last March and finished everything. Some tracks only needed some brief remastering, others required the full scope of Chris' updated and epic as fuck new setup (hence why everything else takes so fucking long). Of course, this isn't perfect. How could it be when I wrote most of it? In the end Chris had two songs and an intro, and the rest was all me. Bloodied Earth did indeed make its appearance, the beauty of EastWest's Gypsy helping immensely in the crafting of those sexy violin bits. The mixing is frankly not amazing, but Chris did have to try and get all the programming I'd done in tabbing programs into Cubase and figure out which piece of MIDI info represented which cymbal. With that in mind he actually did a pretty good job. However, I'm well aware that for most of this album, the crash cymbals are almost inaudible compared to the hi-hats and ride cymbals. For this I apologise. I added a new song just before recording, called Vile Incarceration, which is black metal as fuck and just hilarious. Mourning the Souls in Infinite Night proved too complicated to record how I envisioned it, so we just tried our best and released the least shit version. As such, the end results are pretty shit. Hopefully the intentions filter through to the listener though.
It's available for free streaming and (if you're feeling very generous) purchase at our bandcamp page.
Oh the plethora of excuses we could have offered of why, more than seven years after I started writing the lyrics to Fire and laying out the general idea of the album, it's still not done. Simple fact of the matter is cost. Pretty much everything that can be done, is. Music, finished. It could do with another master, but yea. Finished. Al Marsh has put some of the greatest vocals ever recorded onto Air, and Water will likely be instrumental. But musically, it's done. Artwise, it's pretty much done. I can bash out the CD image and back cover at will, I've just been procrastinating due to something very annoying. When I printed the physical copies of To Sever Ties and Après la Vie, I sort of cheated by using photographic paper, as the booklets were basically only front cover and inside bit. Add the back cover and CD art and that's only four things. However, it's impossible to do this for Elemental, because the booklet is 12 pages and I don't know anywhere that sells doublesided photo paper. Nor do I know the industry standard glossy paper used for CD booklets. Thus I'm stuck with a dilemma. Do I just release it online, and print one or two physical copies for Christophe and wheoever at insane levels of production, physically gluing together the entire booklet from photo paper, or do I wait until I can afford to just pay someone to do it all for me? Probably the latter. In any case, I really do hope it will be out this year, but after 7 years of the same excuse, the chances of that? Slim.
To Sever Ties With All Of Mankind
It's available for free streaming and (if you're feeling very generous) purchase at our bandcamp page.
Après la Vie, les Fleurs Fleurissent à Nouveau
This was released the day after To Sever Ties, because it was also limit-broken. In the end, I went way back and dredged up an old idea regarding the Four Seasons to give this album some thematic linking, rather than having it be another collection of unconnected songs. To do this, I challenged my knowledge of Japanese to craft haiku in the original language. Some of them are actually quite good. To match the brevity of the haiku form, I coupled them to four pieces of grindcore music, which I then dubbed haikucore. One piece of haikucore for each season. In spring (春) I placed the songs Après la Vie, les Fleurs Fleurissent à Nouveau, a post-rock/shoegaze song in rondo form about the ephemeral nature of life and the cyclical nature of existence, based upon the death and rebirth of flowers; and Øynene Som Ser i Mørket, a long black metal song about the unknown and opening one's eyes in darkness. In summer (夏), to capture the short span of the season (especially in the UK) I chose I am the Weed, a short punk track expressing individuality, and Shades of Deception, one of only three HV songs in existence I didn't write the lyrics for, a song that is quite dark but wouldn't fit elsewhere. For autumn (秋) I chose Just One Hour (another with lyrics by Idrelle), due to its length and gradual building of both hope and despair, and Faith in Fated Fey (plus its instrumental intro), which looks at the Irish fey and their odd courts. For winter (冬) I chose Stargazer, a ballad about a man who yearns to fly to the stars, but grows old and dies without ever realising his ambition; Wilted Rose, a Shakespearian sonnet expressing more of the ephemeral nature of existence, followed by a traditional metal instrumental track. The last song is a grim experimental black metal track, Du Ciel, La Morte, which sums itself up. The hours of the sun shorten, darkness descends, and life flees.
Thus, this album. Despite it growing out of To Sever Ties as an afterthought, to take the brunt of some of the former album's excess, I actually prefer it. There's more of a sense of adventure. This probably represents the pinnacle of my songwriting as of now.
Again, available to stream online or buy at the bandcamp page.
Elemental
Oh the plethora of excuses we could have offered of why, more than seven years after I started writing the lyrics to Fire and laying out the general idea of the album, it's still not done. Simple fact of the matter is cost. Pretty much everything that can be done, is. Music, finished. It could do with another master, but yea. Finished. Al Marsh has put some of the greatest vocals ever recorded onto Air, and Water will likely be instrumental. But musically, it's done. Artwise, it's pretty much done. I can bash out the CD image and back cover at will, I've just been procrastinating due to something very annoying. When I printed the physical copies of To Sever Ties and Après la Vie, I sort of cheated by using photographic paper, as the booklets were basically only front cover and inside bit. Add the back cover and CD art and that's only four things. However, it's impossible to do this for Elemental, because the booklet is 12 pages and I don't know anywhere that sells doublesided photo paper. Nor do I know the industry standard glossy paper used for CD booklets. Thus I'm stuck with a dilemma. Do I just release it online, and print one or two physical copies for Christophe and wheoever at insane levels of production, physically gluing together the entire booklet from photo paper, or do I wait until I can afford to just pay someone to do it all for me? Probably the latter. In any case, I really do hope it will be out this year, but after 7 years of the same excuse, the chances of that? Slim.
Vampire Rising
Now this project there is actual movement on. The story is planned so much I could probably turn it into a novel with minimum effort. Musically, out of 15 tracks 13 are completed, with Chris planning to start work on the final two once he's finished his A-level composition pieces. Lyrically, much the same. Out of 14 tracks needing lyrics, 11 are completed, and at nearly 5000 words already I think this will probably go down as the most lyric-heavy album of all time. My lyrics on this album are fucking amazing, if I do say so myself. I already thought I was pretty good after Ghostly Notes of Haunted Nights, but this just takes the cake. And eats it. Anyway, some tracklist and brief descriptions:
1. One Misty Sanguine Night - A minor-key adagio with haunting use of strings and choirs, building to a crescendo through dissonance.
2. Vampire Rising - It's been re-recorded and re-worked a little from its Anger of a Nation, Doom to Us All appearance, but it's still the same song, and still doesn't have a bass.
3. Athanasia - Similar to Vampire Rising in style, with some lovely dissonant riffs, strings and synths and a strong bassline. Little twist at the end to lead into the next track.
4. The Exodus - Strong Persian influence on this track. Also one of my personal favourites. Good riffs and strong use of world instruments.
5. The Piquant Taste of Youth - Thunderstorm, erhu and good bassline, plus another dissonant guitar track. Also some crazy prog shit with piano and violin. Also has a nice epic bit 2/3 through.
6. In Pursuit of Identity - Indian as fuck. Imagine a black metal song in a raga mode. Can't? Well, tough. That's the only possibly way to describe this.
7. Ascent to Authority - Classical instrumentation and black metal this time. Oh, and baroque. This song will baroque the shit out of you. It does me. Especially in that middle-8.
8. Deadly Compassion - This time it's all Chinese in a Chinese mode. Make of that what you will.
9. Primordial Thirst - When thinking up what would fit this song, I told Chris that he could do whatever, as long as it was in Phrygian mode. What he gave me was a black metal song with more ska hooks than Madness, in Phrygian mode. The cunt.
10. Anathematical Return - This song is weird. Similar to Athanasia, with strings, bass and guitars all in there. Then some really weird riffs that just descend down a scale and just keep fucking going. Then epic buildup.
11. The Epic Battle - Oh the choirs. Oh the epicness. Oh the stupid mass of lyrics. 1300 words or there abouts.
12. Serene Delirium - Yes, I named it after my deceased old band. Because it fits. And really, I've never heard a song more insane. If you have, you deserve a prize. Not even going into detail because it would take a few hundred words to even start to sum up the insanity.
13. TBA - Some sort of black metal power ballad.
14. TBA - Epic as fuck again, fast and chase-scene like.
15. Blood Serpent - Fast, insane, mass slaughter of all your senses. And counterpoint.
So yea, a brief sum up. This album will be adhering more strictly to one genre than any we've ever released. However, within the realm of what I call "Chris BM" (because he hardly ever listens to Black Metal, and because it really sounds not much like BM at all, but sounds like nothing else either so I've no idea what to call it), there are so many songs in crazy modes, with crazy world instruments, and crazy as fuck structures and departures from structure and sanity altogether that it is also probably our most progressive album. If that makes any sense. If it did, I'll be as surprised as you, I assure you.
Lyrically, the album deals with the main character from the original Vampire Rising song, his rise to power in the vampire realm, his quest for identity, leaving the reins of power to his 700 year old Greek lieutenant Athanasia, and Athanasia's discovery and turning of an altogether strange girl...
Album art wise, this time I've fucked myself right off as I'll need at least three models. Though I could use Chris for the main character, I suppose. He has the right kind of severe look, in any case.
But yes, with luck we might finish this too before 2013 is out.
バカ騒ぎ
The album formerly known as 日本！ (Japan!) is now known as バカ騒ぎ (Bakasawagi). It accurately represents what we're actually doing with the album, which is basically fucking around. It also lends itself rather nicely to a pun in relating to the covers album we'll be doing along with it, which we'll be calling カバー騒ぎ (Kabaーsawagi, literally "cover disturbance"). We've still not got a set tracklist for this. We've still not got an accurate timescale. We'll just keep fucking about until we have something to show for it.
Jax Muskly, Robot Pimp
Taking the place of our much maligned amoebic superhero, Buttoi Man, is our new concept album. This, for a change, will be written by me. It's a post-apocalyptic dystopia where capitalism has basically been advanced to its ultimate conclusion: everything has a price. In it, a derelict robot thrown away by one of the huge conglomerates which have now superceded national governments as the central powers of the world becomes a pimp in one of the huge slums that surround the gleaming, air-conditioned cities occupied only by the richest 5% of the world population. His robotic nature gives him some advantages in business, not least that robot parts are less expensive than organs and not breathing is an advantage in a world where air is a commodity.
That's just the setting, no plot giveaways yet.
The music is going to be dirty, grim and industrial. I might also start experimenting with massively downtuned or 8string guitars, depending on whether I can get hold of some. But yes. This might eventually be finished. As of now I'm still trying to get to grips with Cubase and VSTs to make the base sounds so I can send them to Chris, whereby I can put non-programmable instruments on it.
Opera
This will be another 10 years at least. Enjoy the wait.
Other stuff, projects, and shit.
So, Chris is redoing his A-levels and such with a view to getting into the Royal Academy of Music to study a BMus in Composition. As if he wasn't already overpowered enough.
You can also find both of us on Soundcloud:
Additionally, Chris' music Youtube is here.
You might find some vocal-less versions (probably the better versions, to most people) of forthcoming songs on Chris' accounts, especially from Vampire Rising.
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