The Inner Workings.

Behold the Wicked is our brand new record which is (hopefully, 95 percent sure unless meteors strike!) going to be out for download and purchase starting February 12th 2010.

We are NOT DONE with it yet. We still have about half of it to track and then we got'sa mix it, BUT I am confident, partly due to how quickly we've been getting these songs down and also due to the overall enthusiasm for them that it will launch as we want it too.

These songs are really exciting to us for a lot of reasons.

1-It feels good to play ALL of them. There's the arty track and then there's the odd duck, ( a reverb soaked introduction with smoky dark guitars that sets the tone for the record and a southern rock twanged upbeat song) but it all took sort of unified approach. It is simple.

WE ARE A ROCK BAND. nothing more and nothing less. So lets play like it.

Once the tone for this record had been set, we got the vibe and direction of what we where going to do, It all fell into place.

I originally wanted to write music that was more acoustic and folky and bluesy. little more rootsy and little more smoky feeling over all. something really different from our ep and demos.

This leads to....

2. don't force yourself to write the music, it will come to you as it should via the universe and the other powers that be. (television, nature, good and bad experiences, ice cream, swimming,)

7 months ago I pushed myself to try and write music that wasn't in me yet. This kind of gave me a writers block of sorts musically. I believe i was trying to write things that my heart wasn't into.

This came to more light as we started playing live almost every weekend and working on playing LIVE. playing LIVE is where it started to come together for me outside of the band musically.
I realized what FELT good.

ROCKING OUT

Songs like Salvation and Breaking Free really worked up there. really made people listen and we had fun as band play them (and those kinds of tracks) more then anything else in our setlist.

On our EP we had this goal of showcasing that we didn't make the same song twice. that every song had its own personality and sonic existence form its brothers. I hope and think we accomplished this to a degree.

That changed for me after we played those summer shows. I had begun writing and writing and writing! these dark, wicked sounding melodies and riffs and minor key arrangements and dissident, fast, sludgey music was coming out of me. Sounds i didn't think i could write, things i didn't think i would maybe even like....

Now, from the above sound i just painted you a picture with, you might be expected some sort of melodic thrash metal record.

We have certainly taken our sound on this record into a darker place and into a more driving, heavy and at times bluesy and punkier version of our band. It is ascending to avalon. Just a lot heavier.

This record is by no means this HUMONGOUS GIGANTIC LEAP from our sound(s) established on the EP and our demos. We are still in there. We just really magnified certain elements of our sound, the ones that felt right. still feel right.

So when you download, pick it up at show, punch the fat kid who sings out in the parking lot and grab and handful of 'em an run, You'll know that this record is completely intentionally a hard rock record. a heavier, darker, physchey, bluesier and even punked up version of us, but we are this.

We don't confine to any certain soundscape. I don't want us to every feel like we have to make something because of somebody or because we have too. That destroys artistic integrity. that destroys the freedom that making art gives life too.

on that note, I have a log of ideas and fragments and riffs and some chord progressions building up-I learned to write what feels right. That was the inner workings of things that made this whole thing hyper warp towards completion.

Next time we sit down to write a record, It will be very, very different then this record. You'll still hear the band. But it will be different. How? you'll see....I know, but lets let this new record simmer for a while then we'll really shock you by the end of 2010......Christmas will be really interesting for us....

Take care.

Ryen