Well, a bit of good news. I found a cheap karaoke mic here for 20 bucks, and since it's a karaoke mic it has a 1/8" plug, so I can run it straight into my laptop without having to find some adapters. Not the best by any means, but good enough for my bare bones situation right now.

I finished some rough recordings of two songs earlier today, very alice in chains-esque, just to see what I can do with my limited equipment. So here's a song about my soon-to-be-ex wife being a violent alcoholic:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/728 ... 20life.mp3

and here's a lighter song about how I continually mess up my own life and never seem to learn from it:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/728 ... uctive.mp3
(note, the guitar solo in that last one, I just slapped down some stuff in one take as more of a placeholder than anything else, so there's a ton of out of key notes and sloppiness. excuse that)

Heh. I'm not the best singer.

I went and wrote/recorded another Mykridia track for an upcoming split, did a yzordderrex song, and finally a Corpse Arise song for the full length I plan to do.

Finished writing the last new song for Controlled by Fear. So far 13 songs and 1 cover which we don't play anymore. Show coming up this week I am pumped. Having a practice space is great because we can actually work on songs for however long we need to.

Thinking about doing a noise set at some open jam soon. Want to see how fast I can get shut down. Thinking I can get someone to play drums and just improve on stage.

I decided to go ahead and create a new "band" (also consisting of just me, ha) for a hard rock/stoner metal side project. I'm calling it Under a Red Sun. I think it'll be good for me musically, writing lighter and catchy riffs and singing (mostly) clean. It'll push me to write a wider variety of stuff. Plus I like playing bluesy stuff, so I can get that out in here. Quick, everyone like my new facebook page before I put any band content on there! haha
https://www.facebook.com/UnderARedSun

Been revising guitar for the song I've been working on, changed some of the structure and added riffs here and there. I think I'm almost content with it. Content makes it sound like I'm not excited though. I can't wait to write the bass parts since I've only ever played bass in some blues rock improv. I've got a few ideas for that as well as keys, which I'll work on after I've totally finished up bass lines. I'll probably end up adding more to the lyrics when I track vocals. SLK I'll be listening to some of your stuff in a little bit to get a better idea of what you've got, I've seen your covers of Wings of Predation and Abscission and I'm glad you're volunteering to help out. I just hope you don't hear it, shit all over it and then change your mind.

Making a run to the gas station for cigarettes and an something to drink. I'm going to draw draw my project's logo and a shirt design/ album cover for my main band.

Here is a little something I've been working on with my wife.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gXTFmqTmB8

lol sweetsilence. I'll do my best to not shit on it. hahahaha!

My main band Funeral Age is opening for Gorod this Friday, as well, we are doing a short Western US tour in June with our good friends, Thou Shall Kill. Finishing up the writing process for our next album, and hopefully get that recording started sometime in the summer. More info about us can be found in my signature.

I am also in the Atmospheric/Prog Black Metal band, Dalla Nebbia. We are all located in different parts of the Western Hemisphere, but it isn't too hard since our guitarist is the main song writer and records everything with programmed drums, allowing me to get a good idea as to what he is going for. Our debut album should be out soon on Razed Soul Productions, and I will be recording the drums to our second album sometime in the summer as well. We have the songs with Programmed drums available on our bandcamp page...

http://dallanebbia.bandcamp.com/

Enjoy funeral age, I ordered all your material sometime ago, probably from when you posted about it in the promotional. or at least someone did. I'll check the other a bit later. middle of mixing more of what I did above

Funeral Age sounds fucking good. It's what I wish my fucking band would become if it weren't stagnating so goddamn badly

P.S. Screw you ShaolinLambKiller, screw you and your evil wizardry

hahahaha I can't help what I say comes true!

also another track from me and the wife:
http://youtu.be/BhJxDhhoM7I

actually Funeral Age's vocalist reminds me of K.K. Warslut from Destroyer 666, which is sick because that dude's a furious vocalist

I'm churning out plenty of hard rock/stoner metal, and really enjoying it. I just wish I was home with my studio and not around this shitty situation (laptop, one guitar, $20 karaoke mic) that I have right now, to include no real place to record vocals. I'm in barracks right now in west texas for some training so I have to keep the volume down. So when I record vocals I basically hit record and then jump on my bed and throw all the blankets over my head to absorb all the noise, hahahha. It's fun, it does the trick I guess. That, along with me recovering from losing my voice a week ago from a horrible cold makes my vocals not where they usually are, but I can at least get some rough tracks down. I recorded a nice rock song today, here 'tis:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/728 ... achine.mp3
I'm really having a good time recording this lighter stuff, hard rock and all. I'd like to keep it up and release an album or two.

Oh, and since lighter stuff like hard rock is more radio friendly, maybe I'll get all over the radio and get a record deal for a million dollars and retire at age 31!!!!!!!111!!!!!one!!!!!!

I've been writing more acoustic stuff. The metal doesn't come yet.

At this pace the next FF album will be like a weird Kveldsjanger.

Sounds fine by me, man.

Demoed some new Blacksoul Seraphim riffs that were sent to me a little while back. It's a LOT different. The first Blacksoul record that I didn't perform on was this kinda gothic funeral doom thing with some faster moments at times. The new disc that I'm drumming on so far sounds like Alcest mixed with Opeth; very airy post-black metal with pretty much no doom metal left in the sound.

Also, wrote my Blasphegram lyrics the last few days. Cole and I are finally getting around to the guitars, so it seems that everything's sailing smoothly in regards to this particular project.

meet with bassist of my doom band yesterday and we wrote and recorded some stuff for a new band where it's all just bass and drum. pulsating and heavy. it's neat. and recorded 2 KP tracks while I waited for him.

My vocalist got done mixing the third song off the album today, came home from work and switched on the computer to have a listen and holy fuck I am so excited to get this shit released.

Well, I keep writing this depressing folky stuff. I wrote an acoustic piece that I'm very pleased with, especially cause it can be expanded nicely into metalness. I'll try to make some snippets/demos for the world to see.

There's probably a 50% chance that my doom/thrash band will be releasing our shitty demo in the next few months. It'll probably be sloppy as hell, but I just want to get something out as a band.

Trying to fucking keep up with all the shit I have going on musically, while still working like 50 hours a week in a kitchen.

Luckily, some of the shit I am involved with is slow-moving because old people have families.

My main band is finally getting over the hump of a new guitarist and parting with our vocalist. Fuck, we haven't played in forever and it was going so well.

This week's been pretty busy. Formed a new black metal band and had a great first jam, practised with the folk metal band, and tomorrow I'm jamming with a new blackthrash band. And we've got a couple of pretty big gigs lined up already, which is pretty cool.

My band's (Illusions Dead) demo has been mastered, and we plan on making a limited physical release of the better songs there. They will all be available on the internet soon. I don't quite know what genre label to put on the thing for the metal-archives page, etc. It's death/black metal, or black/death metal, but we also have mellower songs and some rather melodic riffs. It's not really melodic death/black metal though, since the singature melodeath and meloblack stuff is missing.

I guess we can put death/black metal since even Intestine Baalism is just death metal, and they're far more abundant in melodies.

Edit: typo

Don't worry about that too much dude. Using a long-ass genre tag will attract less metalheads and more guys-with-big-piercings-and-flannel-shirts

Yeah, I guess. Death/black metal is just slightly problematic since we sound nothing like those extremely dismal, dissonant bands that get the same label.

So jammed for a sludge band last night and blew the speakers on my cab. Luckily I have another one! Kind of wrote a song anyway, going to be long drawn out jams and some fast parts thrown in there.

I managed to set up a show for both of my bands for June 22nd. There may be rushing leading up to it since things are just coming together for both projects and the turnout will be small to nonexistent, but I'm excited to be playing a show for the last time in 7 months and curious to see what it's like to play two sets on the same night. I shouldn't get the songs confused since the setups and sounds of both bands are very different from one another so it's more of a question of stamina than anything else.

I've also been in the process of jamming with another drummer and may be setting up a third project in more of a death/doom or death 'n roll vein. Curious to see how that turns out as it is a style that some of my friends have wanting to see from me for a while now.

I've always wanted to play two sets in a day, seems like it'd be chaotic yet awesome feeling the accomplishment of doing so. In the past week or so I've just been building more endurance with the drums, trying to get faster blasts with one foot down and eventually I'd like to learn double strokes but I'm not sure how easy that'd be on my pedals, that and I don't really want to get into the habit of doing it that way. Sure it's faster but I feel that I'm going to sound more fluid doing it the old fashioned way along with being able to keep in time better. Practicing gravity blasts, I just need to work on getting a more consistent volume with each strike and switching out into rolls/fills faster, that and I'd really like to get it down with my left hand so I can use more cymbals easily. My violinist has been writing a new song recently making it our first new one in a little over a year and everything he writes just gets better as time goes on. Gonna make this one our craziest yet. We're going to learn a few covers that include Crown of Horns, hopefully The Frantic Pace of Dying, Lie To My Face, Freezing Moon, a Gorguts song, and Raining Blood. I don't care how many people have covered that song or how it's "the" Slayer song, I've always wanted to play it live. It's just so fucking powerful and with Jeff passing I think it would be appropriate. We'll probably end up playing it in Bb since that's the lowest note of the violin and we play Hammer Smashed Face in Bb, do you think that would make it sound okay or should I tell him to learn it as it is?

As for my solo project I'm just about finished with the guitars, going to re-write the intro since it sounded too much like a Boris song in my eyes. Just have to keep jamming on a couple sections of it to make sure I like it how it is and then start fucking with the harmonies. I've got a few bass parts down, actually writing stuff on it has shown me a new love for the instrument. It's just so much different from a guitar than I ever really cared to think about. I drew a logo that I like but I really don't think it suits the music very well, looks more like a brutal death logo than something that I'd like to call progressive black metal. We'll see what happens. As for the drumming, SLK, I'm going to go ahead and program everything out and if the end result doesn't agree with me then I'll scrap the programmings and hand it over to you to do what you will with it. I've just been getting more ideas lately that I really like but if I can't get it to sound the way I have in mind then fuck it, I'd prefer to have a better drum sound with you behind the kit over what I've written sounding like the latest government robot that can shred the fuck out.

Jamming with my bandmate today, looks like we'll probably be able to get a demo done relatively soon. Looks like we'll have to use programmed drums, as I don't have the proper mics/recording equipment for my drum set. We have more than enough material done it's probably going to be 5 originals and 2 covers, we were thinking maybe Sabbath's "Under the Sun", Man's Gin's "Nuclear Ambitions pt2" or doom version of Death's "Evil Dead". It's going to be doom with prominent thrash sections, the occasional weird psychedelic part and a bit of a hardcore punk influence. I'm exited to finally get some music recorded.

No problem sweet silence. Just give me heads up.
And I remember the days of playing multiple bands at shows. The most I ever did was 4 of my bands on one bill. And I didn't even book it. Just happened that way cause I didn't do booking except for one band. But I constantly played shows were two of my bands would be playing on it. The most strained night was actually me playing in new orleans, LA with one band and then playing in mobile, AL with another. Basically I played the nola show, immediately loaded up and drove directly to mobile and set up and played that. And hell wasn't like I got paid for any of it cause any money made just went to merch. But hell at least I can say I did something like that.

just mixing some stuff tonight. tmwr will be recording mainly some KP.

recorded a ton of older KP songs that were meant for an earlier release but got deleted. I think I did 9 tracks today. maybe a bit more. who knows I have 5 more to complete out that release and I'm currently writing to a follow up ep to Kp's last full length.

Well my Swans cover is online: http://pathsmetal.bandcamp.com/album/failure

I think my second demo is going to sound like a combo of this sludgey/industrial weirdness mixed with the post-black metal/blackgaze/insertothersillygenre of the first demo.

I'm really liking how this mix is turning out for the challenge songs I did. bout to head to the shed finish up the KP material and probably by the time I'm done with that the vocalist of 54R will show up and lay down tracks and then the rest of my doom band will show up for practice and then later the bassist will stay and we'll record some drum and bass PV. all depending how long everything takes. Then come home and probably record some more vocals.

New Sorrowseed song is being released tomorrow. We got the final mix from our engineer today, edited a few details, and it's ready for public exhibition. I'm sure at least some of you will find it appealing.

Put a link up I'll def check it out.

Got a lot coming up, going to be on two splits and a 6 way comp with the band Foiled, Waves Crashing Piano Chords and Sordo and so far its all exclusive tracks. Playing with Water Torture soon as well.

Sometime in the future I will be doing an hour long noise jam with Waves Crashing and synth noise veterans Foot and Mouth Disease and he is going to put it on 8-track. However I might want to see if we can do a powerviolence thing as well with guitar, drums and noise.

http://officialsorrowseed.bandcamp.com/ ... hierophant

Here it is. As the link says, it's called "Scourge of the Hierophant". Best way I'd describe it is it's our take on thrash metal.

I'll be completely honest - the riffs are wimpy and sterile, the vocals fell completely flat, and you would have to be doing Confessor-style whole song drum fills to make it interesting. It doesn't feel aggressive nor energetic like thrash, doesn't have that feel nor the atmosphere of black/gothic metal. You're doing fine, but the rest of the band is not.

To be fair, this wasn't designed to be one of the more black/gothic songs on the album. There are other songs on the album that fill that role. The gothic element overall has been greatly decreased on this album; there are still keyboards and piano, but there are no Flowers to the Furnace type songs anymore. The heavier elements of the first album are the main focus of this new album.

Doesn't have much atmosphere or feel in general, I find. Sounds like the music is trying to decide whether to be heavy metal or try out a little speed, but the vocalist is drowning out the conversation. Decent fills, though, Subrick. What's up with your other projects?