The last few months have been by far the most productive, back in Summer 2010 whilst I was travelling through parts of Spain and Morocco, the 2 things I was carrying musically was my laptop, with all my song parts on, and eventually a 3/4 Classical Acoustic that I picked up in a small, but extremely impressive classical music store in Barcelona (If there was a Metal shop selling Flying V acoustics, I would have been with it, but I was low on money and starting to get withdrawal symptoms from not playing.) It's a weird thing to look back on, especially when you consider your spouse's parents being around all the time you're practicing and writing small parts of songs, but eventually I got it going, and ended up getting about 3 songs and 10 to 15 sections done in the four or so weeks we traveled round.
That was basically the thing that sparked the band off again, and got me working towards it properly and attempting to organise everything, without bothering about all that stuff, I essentially continued the writing process through the end of 2010, making some good songs and sections that could be used elsewhere. Now I'm sat with so many files I can barely even organise or look through them, but the important thing is the Folder on my Desktop marked 'EP'. That folder holds the 6 tracks (and 1 intro) that will compromise the EP that will get recorded and released in the first half of this year. I'm honestly really excited by the idea of finally getting all this done professionally, even with the Multimix and H2 that I've got, it's not ever going to replicate the feel of being in a Studio working on this properly.
Looking through all these recordings and files, it literally documents as far back as 5 years worth of my life's work, and yes, most of it is terrible but you wouldn't really expect much else from someone who started doing bands as soon as they started playing an instrument properly. Lots of awful, awful riffs mixed in with some strange lyrics that definitely used to have meaning back at some point. Looking through them is fairly unnerving... Look:
These flames were lit by the tears of millions of children,
The People who died due to poverty and war, (Chorus)
Not because of you, you were never important that night,
The flames were Set. A. Light.
What does that even mean? I know where it's coming from in terms of subject matter and meaning, but why was I even writing that back when I was 15? I didn't know shit back then, I was just a kid who was happy enough to basically run around the streets of a town at night, get arrested and do loads of stupid shit, those lyrics weren't even something that seemed to be an outlet to rid myself of those thoughts, they just seem to exist purely because I wanted to try and write something meaningful. God alone knows, there's some songs in there that do have some sort of real meaning, but it's so easy to tell the difference between the two feelings.
I'm looking at them now when I'm gearing up to write lyrics to 5 or 6 new tracks that I've been making along with a friend/band member, and in all honesty looking at how I've matured in the last few years makes me know whatever I'm going to write about is going to actually mean something properly. I've always got something to say, I've been in a world 5 years longer in a position that shows me the World in a completely different light, and it's been bad and good, but why focus on the good when I want something slightly poignant, but mostly aggressive and angry. It truly is a comfort to know I'm entering what might be the easiest part of the songwriting process with a clear mind and a full head of ideas, it's also amazing to be able to pick anything up that has words on and instantly be able to riff them into a song structure with ease, all I can really say is I'm looking forward to getting this done and moving forward again with the band, or what we have of it currently.
In all honesty, I believe this will lead somewhere, with the effort we've put in this time there really is some great riffs and song parts, and I'm not one to say everything we've made is amazing, there's parts I enjoy and parts I wonder about, but at the same time I wonder about all of it, because to us what might sound good, may be terrible to everyone else. The bottom line is once this is all finished and recorded, it's done. That's all that really matters because then it's done and finished and we can finally aim to get somewhere and have the thing in our hand that we need to get there. Now is the time to do this.
The music industry is hard to get into is it? Bring it on.
