WHO AM I?????
Known locally as the Peter Steele reincarnate turned Meat Loaf wannabe, or guy who always wears Gojira shirts, I am a product of music, and that music is METAL. After emerging from a green portal in the UK, I spent approximately the first 10 years of existance brooding in the suburb of Hertfordshire, gathering my strength, before eventually taking the pilgramage to the South West of England, landing in the humble finish town of Falmouth. Falmouth didn't know what landed in it though. I spent most of my secondary school life and the start of my college career persuing a job in the engineering sector, before losing the plan to a sly art course I DECIEVED myself into believing was a engineering course. With no where else to turn, I took the path that required no GCSEs. Music technology. And from that moment I morphed into my true self. The years I spent having music be a side thought with in me, the singing because it was fun, the bass I played because I thought it was sexy, these weren't immaterial pasttimes, they were PREMONITION. I suddenly had a reason to download GuitarPro, learn how to play a real instrument, learn music theory (to an extent). Years in the making came to be. I am a product of music, and now I can forge my own way. KNULLA JA.
What do I do?
I try to spread myself over as many sectors as I possibly can, but my main squeeze is composing and singing, second to playing guitar, studio stuff, live sound, mixing and mastering, instrument technician. I've been taught and have experience in quite a lot of fields, so I do recommend just dropping me an email if you wanna know about anything.
What got me to this point?
My first music experieces come from hearing what my dad played over the typical late 2000s PC set up. He really only had one favourite musician I could name, being Dire Straits and the work of Mark Knopfler, oh and Black Velvet by Alannah Myles also comes to mind. But really, aside from just liking what everybody liked, I had no musical identity until I played Halo. I fell in love with the Halo soundtrack, while probably not as religiously as some other people, the neo-classical work of Michael Salvetori and Neil Davidge (and also Marty O'Donnell but I think I'd rather forget about him) had me by the BALLS. I didn't know how the music worked, I didn't know what went into making the music, I didn't know what in the god damn a time signature was. All I knew is that I love Halo (still love every halo). And I love the sounds that come out of Halo.
But this lead me to a point. Halo could only make so many noises, I'd hit a limit. So I went a little bit further, and after playing halo 2 wayyyy too late, I hit the Gravemind mission. Cortana's blue aritficial breath licked my orange visor and her snarky voice rang in my green metal skull like a bell; "You might consider sitting this one out". THEN THE MOST KILLER DROP C RIFF EVER TO GRACE THE EARTH HIT ME. And the trajectory of my life was forever tainted. I may not have known it yet but adding a youtube ripped MP3 of Breaking Benjamin's Blow Me Away to my 30 song long playlist was the Trojan. I distictly remember a couple weeks listening to I Will Not Bow and thinking to myself "this song and Blow Me Away are pretty cool, but I don't really like the shouting". WELL. About a month later I had finally found a personality in Breaking Benjamin. Now I know what your mind is immediately going to, but NO, at no point in my life was I ever an emo. I honestly have always thought their (atleast earlier) lyrics were pretty cheesey, what stuck with me for Breaking Benjamin was the simplicity in their riffs and writing. I remember loving how many guitars and seperate different lines would go on the rythmn, lead, bass and backing at once, and how it was all so tightly knit together with the AMAZING and CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED drumming of Jeremy Hummel and Chad Szeliga. This may all sound familiar later, but between then and now go listen to So Cold.
Not too long after this, I had started picking up some other bands, the main other two being Ghost and Type O Negative, how I found Ghost is now lost to me, but I remember I started listenening to Type O Negative after knowing of them when a girl I sat next to in class asked me if I know who they were, and after she missheard me say "there are worse bands out there, they're pretty cool" as "they're the worst band ever", I felt bad and decided to give them a go when I got home, and I thought they were pretty cool. Totally unrelated I might've had a bit of a thing for the girl. But don't shame me good luck finding someone who got into Type O Negative for some reason other than attraction to someone else. MOVING ON.
This is where it get real. GOJIRA. The first HEAVY heavy metal band I felt comfortable feeling proud to listen to. I was pretty late to Gojira, they got their big break opening for Metallica in 2012, I started listening to them in late 2019, just before Fortitude came out and just before Covid shut everything down. My first Gojira song was Stranded, which is a bit strange looking back at it, since its a bit of a relative outstander from the rest of their songs, people will label it as being "radio rock" but those are the kind of poeple who expect artists to release the same album 5 times in a row. I distictly remember thinking to myself "this song is pretty cool, but I think this band is a bit heavy for me". It was already over at this point, I just hadn't realised it yet. Maybe a few weeks later, atleast 4 more Gojira songs on my playlist, Another World, Born in Winter, Born For One Thing, The Cell. Another few weeks, another few songs Flying Whales, The Art of Dying, Clone, Backbone, Silvera, Where Dragons Dwell, Space Time, you get the idea. Gojira made me feel comfortable listening to death metal, they made me feel comfortable admitting that I think shouting is actually pretty cool, that maybe there is a point to this music, this writing style, "this band is actually pretty similar to Breaking Benjamin", "wait maybe there's a point in all this vaguely Buddhist stuff he's shouting about". From there it's rather simple, Gojira and Breaking Benjamin into Opeth, Opeth into Katatonia and Devin Townsend, Devin Townsend and Ghost into Faith No More, Faith No More into Meat Loaf, it all comes full circle.
"WHAT IS UP WITH YOUR VOICE?????"
ITS A STORY. But what I tell people when I don't have time to talk is "yknow Corpse Husband? Same thing kinda". If that satisfies you then you're finished reading this section. If it doesn't, then: I am the inventor of what is typically knows as "acid reflux" or "heartburn", and I chronically suffer from it. But it's not your typical "1 in 5 people suffer from" acid reflux, this is some different kind of acid reflux which even I don't even really fully understand. I believe I have total paralasys of the sphincter that seperates the stomach and oesophagus (I've typed that word so many times I actually just know how to spell it), this causes my stomach acid - which may or may not be stronger than typical stomach acid - to reflux up my throat and burn more or less everything. What I suspect is as a defence from the acid, I started instictivly pushing my throat around and back, shifting my voice box about, eventually causing it to start dropping majorly everytime I started speaking, causing a large cavernous gap which allows my voice to reverberate around before blasting out of my mouth, giving me a resonant and deep, but damaged voice. This is actually pretty visible, if you watch my throat while I'm speaking you'll see my Adam's Apple drop about 2 inches, and if I tap my throat I can make a high pitched sound when it's up high and I'm breathing, or a low pitched sound when I drop it when I'm about to exhale and speak. Pretty cool.
I guess I should also probably mention my accent here too. I'm not really sure what's up with it, but my mum's accent is a kind of weird midlands thing, and my dad doesn't really have a solid accent, not even really British now I think about it, infact he's been mistaken for being Swedish, Greek and Kiwi before. I'm pretty sure I take from my dad with most of my pronunciantion, but what I'm confident about is how in developmental years I started to speak like voices I would hear on TV, not exactly sure why QI, but I remember just naturally starting to talking like Stephen Fry or Alan Davies (I love you Alan Davies). Much later in life I started I guess adapting my accent to my voice, I'd always pronounced my /R/ sounds like you'd pronounce your /L/ sounds (watch this Tom Scott video about what I'm talking about) but I started embracing that a bit more, learning to properly roll my /R/s and incorperating it into my speach and singing, just to sound a lil bit cooler. BECAUSE WHY NOT?
But do it scream? Do it growl? I mean, sometimes. I can do a pretty good growl but my voice tends to be VERY inconsistent, and I currently struggle pretty hard to mix growling into singing Mikael Akerfeldt style. And it can wear me out pretty quickly, and my breathing isn't exactly great, and my technique probably isn't that safe, blah blah. CAN I GROWL? Yeah kinda. SHOULD I GROWL? Probably not. WILL I GROWL? Yeah I'll usually just fuckin go for it, what happens happens.
