Tuesday, May 3, 2016

New album Feast of Villains is now available!

Feast of Villains is a collection of songs celebrating some of my favorite maniacal characters from literature, television, and film. Within each song I tried to evoke a bit of madness that reflects the nature of each villain, while also playing with aggressive synth sounds and rapid variations for those who like to dance while committing mayhem. I invite you now to join me at the table with some of my most wickedly evil friends and enjoy the carnage.




Thirteen tracks, fifteen photoshoots, one extensive video shoot, and so many sleepless nights went into the making of this album. The process began three years ago in 2013 when I decided to create a list of all of my favorite villains and see which ones were the most inspiring and could work based on the sounds I was experimenting with and the danceable vibe I wanted this album to have throughout. Over the course of the next couple of years I created a handful of tracks, but then set them aside partially due to other projects coming up, but also out of my pure frustration with the tracks not working or sounding "evil enough". I mean, how could I have an album about villains when the music sounds so…bloodless?

After months of avoiding the tracks, then wanting to salvage them, then wanting to bury them again, I finally sat my ass down and gave them my complete attention. It was time to quit whining and pay homage to the fiends I was trying to celebrate. So at the end of 2015 I was finally ready and able to funnel all my attention to reworking those earlier songs and also create a number of new ones.

If there's one thing I've learned during this journey, it's the necessity of stepping away from a project. It definitely allows you to come back to it with fresh ears so you can hear what's wrong, or missing, or out of whack. It also helped me to get excited about trying new things and then completely slip into the zone in which I could write more songs and finally polish these puppies into their final form.

So although this album started three years ago, it wasn't until December 2015 that the gears were really turning and burning nonstop.  Since then I have been working round the clock on finalizing songs, creating the album artwork, photographing like a madwoman, and recording and editing footage for the upcoming Room 237 music video. Exhaustion, I know thee well!

This entire project has been such a serious labor of love, blood, and tears, but I couldn't be happier with the final result. A huge thank you goes to Rob Robinson (the amazing Sergeant Sawtooth) for mastering all of the tracks and keeping me going when the weight of this beast was about to crush me.



For your viewing pleasure, here are the final photos that I took for every track on the album in which I either portrayed the villain or tried to capture the mood of each song.  They are the fruits of my madness! Following each set of photos is a link to the track on BandCamp for listening and downloading. Enjoy!

Track 01: Room 237


Track 02: Bloodlust



Track 03: It's a Good Day

Track 04: Forever Knight

Track 05: Lucifer

Track 06: Hannibal


 Track 07: Mother


Track 08: Darkness



Track 09: Lolita



Track 10: Pristine




Track 11: Greed is Good



Track 12: Villain


Track 13: War Boy

Stay tuned for the premiere of my music video for Room 237 coming later this month!


Want to know more about the creation of these photos? Look for a post in the near future discussing the making of each photo including inspirational images, the costumes, props, budget, and editing tricks and apps that produced the final results.







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