Writing "Castlevania": Episode 4

In the latest installment, you will hear some clips of the fourth demo for the album. This track, given the demo name of "Holy Water," is about -- you guessed it-- holy water. More specifically, it chronicles the story of how the holy water actually makes its way to Dracula's castle. That title will definitely not stick, so don't get used to it. Or do. Whatever floats your pickle.

I'm getting a little closer to the tones that I want to use for the album. The vocals, on the other hand, are still giving me trouble, tone-wise. But that's why we do this pre-production crap, right? I didn't do pre-production on Mega Beardo, so that's probably why the songs tend to sound better as the album progresses. Live and learn, duders. Live and learn.

Welcome back the whammy pedal! It's been in retirement for the past 10 months.

Epic Song is Epic

I just finished recording the fourth demo for the Belmont album, and...yeah...it's 11 and a half minutes long. Sorry. I honestly didn't expect that at all. You see, when I write a song, I usually keep it under tight wraps inside my brain. When it comes time to start programming drums for it, I usually write out the structure in ways which only I could probably understand, like so...


Believe me. "DT x 4" and "Balls to the Wall Riffage" had some sort of meaning in my head when I wrote it down. Anyway, after I saw the structure written out, I thought, "Surely, this will be 7 or 8 minutes tops." Wrong, Beardo. Very, very wrong.

Though it lacks shortness, it makes up for it with absolutele epicness. I'll post some snippets of it in the upcoming "Writing Castlevania" episode. I'm so happy to finally hear this song outside of my head, in which it has been festering for the past 2.5 years. Now let's hope my vocals don't ruin it.

The Live Debut of Mega Beardo!

This past Thursday, I was asked to take part in a metal show featuring The Kafka Machine, High Stick, and my blackened death metal band Descension Rate. It was sort of last minute, so I'm surprised it went over as well as it did. There were a lot of new faces in the crowd, and it seems a lot of people turned into Mega Beardo fans that night.

Peep the video below for the 14-minute Dr. Wily set. Flubs and mixing aside, I'm pretty pleased with how it went. I hope to do it again (with a full band) at some point down the road!

Beardo Band Camp!

Mega Beardo: A Mega Man 2 Guitar Tribute is now available on beardomusic.bandcamp.com . You could safely bet that the rest of my solo albums will be available on this site from now on. So, if you would like to support what I do, head on over and start clickin'!

Clicky, clicky:



Your support is greatly appreciated!

Surviving Las Vegas

My great friend and fellow 3-Hole Face guitarist, Terry Smith, married his long-time girlfriend in Vegas this past weekend. They had been dating for a coon's age, assuming raccoons live to be 7. But at least they got married in style: at a Howard Johnson, with an Elvis impersonator singing in between vows. All of us groomsmen were sporting tux shirts -- actually, the classiest and most metal of all tux shirts. Though, pseudo-Elvis got a bit too close for comfort when he was grinding away with those hips of his.

Best. Wedding. Ever.

That night, I decided to hit up the BlackDiamondSkye tour at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Only VIP seats were available, but I couldn't pass up a chance to see two of my favorite bands, Mastodon and Alice in Chains, play in Vegas. The VIP table was a good choice, because Bill Kelliher and Brann Dailor came up right before Alice's set to hang.


It's so refreshing when a band that you highly respect ends up being just regular cool dudes. I met Anthrax once, and while John Bush was extremely nice and humble, the rest of the band were either not giving a shit or, like Scott Ian, a complete fucking dickhead. So thank you, Bill and Brann, for being a couple of straight-up dudes. And thanks for playing a kick ass set (you should play some Remission stuff, though).

I might get back to work on the Belmont album this weekend. Maybe not. We'll see.

Oh, and did I mention that I will be performing the live debut of Mega Beardo on October 28? Because I am. And it will be awesome.

Time, I Hardly Knew Ye

Stupid school.

It seems like jack diddly has been going on lately, but quite the opposite is true, I can assure you. Jeff and I have been writing like mad men (yes, the show) for Descension Rate. It seems we are approaching the end of the writing process for our Dark Tower album. We may have too much for one album at this point, actually.

I've also been collaborating with my friends Joe, Nick, and Mark on a new project. We haven't decided on a name yet, but I can tell you it starts with a C. Feel free to guess. The music we have written is more on the fun side of rock, and less on the technical side. We're writing pretty quickly, with 2.5 songs already fleshed out. So we should be gigging in no time.

Unfortunately, this past month hasn't seen a whole lot of progress on the Belmont album. I did, however, record the demo for the album intro over the weekend. It's simply titled "Simon," and it's been sitting around in my bowl of noodles for two years now. I remember when I first wrote the melody and chord progression, it sounded like a huge rip-off of Between the Buried and Me's "Foam Born (a) the Backtrack." So I had to consciously get it away from that, but I was listening to a lot of BTBAM at the time, so the influence is still there. Quit reading about it, and starting watching it instead. Allow me to explain in Beard-o-vision!:

What are the haps, sir?

Last week's Descension Rate show went pretty damn well. The big surprise? Our dumb corpse paint stayed on the entire show. We probably have decreased on-stage temperature to thank for that. There were quite a few new faces in the crowd, which is a good sign for the local metal scene. We also premiered our new song "The Glamor of the Empath," another one of our Dark Tower-influenced doodles. Jeff was disappointed, but I had tons of fun with it. And it got the biggest ovation of the night.

So what's going on with the Beardo side of things? I've been writing lyrics and laying down demo vocal tracks for the Belmont album (yeah, I think I'm going to call it that). I've been asked to include a track on an upcoming local music compilation. So I just finished editing a shorter version of "Creatures of the Bloodline" to include on that. It's weird editing a narrative-heavy song for length, but it is being listened to outside of the context of the story. I'll include more info on this compilation when I find out about it. Until then, Jeff and I have some Descension Rate writing to do, and I'll probably start working on the next Castlevania tune very soon.

Oh, and Byzantine is playing at 123 tomorrow. Hell. Yes.

What a lovely day for metal

Descension Rate is heading back to 123 Pleasant St. in Morgantown for one of the two shows we have planned for this semester. What? We're busy dudes. We go to grad school full time and work full time. Metal can wait. Or can it?

High Stick is filling in the headlining slot, and will be there to provide all of your favorite classic thrash metal chart-toppers.

This may be the last show for Beloved Dead in Morgantown. Stan has been a good friend of mine over the past 7 years, and it will be weird not having him in town anymore. Beloved Dead has been a staple in this music scene for a while. But he's off to better things, and we all wish him luck. He still lives in the most metal place I've ever seen. And it's full of Rickenbackers of all kinds. Let the jealousy commence.

Writing "Castlevania": Episode 2

The album isn't going to be given a generic name like "Castlevania." Until the album is written, named, and all of that other junk, these little episodes will be named accordingly.

This episode has a clip from the end of the tentatively-titled-but-will-probably-stick "Medusa's Scream." The song clocks in at around 10 and a half minutes; it's quite possibly the longest song ever written about killing the floating head of Medusa with holy water.

New Tunes (Always) On the Way

Over the past week, I have been trying to finish up the next Castlevania track. I started writing the song about 14 months ago when I first had the idea for the album. I actually wrote the first couple of riffs when my left ring finger was still broken. I was bored, okay? You tell a guitar player he can't play for two months, and see what he does. That's right, he learns how to play power chords with his ring and middle fingers.

What I originally thought was going to be a fairly straight-forward hard rock tune turned into a 10 and a half minute monster. But the song is about killing Medusa with holy water, so try fitting that inside less than 630 seconds. Expect some video sneak peekage of that song soon. It's another 7-stringer.

Descension Rate has also been toying with a new tune, currently titled "Odd Lane," but that will most likely change once the lyrics are written. It's a riff-o-rama with some weird drum pattern changes, so we're still getting the hang of it. We should have it ready to roll by our show on September 9. We're also trying out a new ivory-tickler, since Jason decided to step down.

Now, I shall sign out with something that makes me smile. Welcome back, Cornell. We've missed you.