Usually when I make a record there isn't much second guessing, I just get started and finish it up pretty fast! Sometimes I wrap it up quickly because I am simply sick of working on it and want to do something else. This time it isn't happening that way at all. This new album, presumably a solo one under my own name, has already gone through a few incarnations.
First it was a blues album. Bad idea. Never before did I lose interest in the material so quickly. It was to be a break from Heavy Metal. Well, the act of writing a batch of blues tracks and recording raw demos was enough to send me racing back to Slayer, Pestilence and Infernal Majesty albums in addition to the entirety of the Shrapnel Records catalog. Some sort of new beast is emerging and I am excited about it although this is the most painstaking writing process as I've thrown out so much material. Digging deep to only keep and rearrange; the golden riffs, solo interludes, melodies, structures, etc. I know exactly what I don't want this time around.
I'm looking for something with the dark impact of Slayer's "Hell Awaits" fused with a classic Vinnie Moore album (or something like that). To put it in simple terms, furious and evil thrash shredding metal...but it has to have an original twist somehow. I've done it before but this time is HAS to be so much better. Do I bark, sing, keep it instrumental? I don't know yet....
I don't like to write about such dilemmas because I find it narcissistic to publish your thoughts in the middle of a creative process....after all, everyone and their dog is holed up creating their musical masterpiece right?
I am definitely not saying "look out, this is gonna be so great"...because I really don't know what the fuck. I just know after over twenty or so albums, this one feels different. I'm not enjoying it but I am seeing it through.
