Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Q2 2024: Updates

I’m hoping to have a steady flow of album releases in the coming year. I’m in my normal creative energy surge right now, and I got a lot of things to say and a lot of riffs to write, so I’m just having fun pumping that out and then I’ll release them steadily throughout the coming months. I have some other big projects that I hope to begin working on soon that I won’t talk much about here, but I’m excited for the future. In any case, my next album will be coming out in August.

The first single for the new album, “Shutdown”, was released a few weeks ago. This new album as a whole follows similar patterns to my previous four. I think I’m getting a lot better at combining thrash, death, and progressive metal into something unique and personal that I’m very proud of. This album leans more into the proggy side compared to my previous ones, but there are still plenty of thrashy and death-y moments in there. In any case, I’m proud of it. 


What I can say about some of my other big projects is that I plan on releasing a new instrumental metal album under the 71011-NINJER name, as I haven’t touched this since almost three years ago. But I think I’m ready, after doing nothing but extreme heavy metal for the past three years, to return to something more experimental and weird, which is exactly what 71011-NINJER was. I also have other musical projects outside of DOK and 7N that I’m working on, as well as several non-music projects too. Looking forward to continue releasing my art to the world in the future. 


Thursday, April 11, 2024

Mobile Corpse: Written Commentary

Before working on the meat of this album, this was the longest break I’ve had thus far with regards to writing new material for Decimate Our Kind. As is usually the case, the album is a mix of old songs I have leftover from the writing sessions of previous albums (mostly from the Radical Christianity sessions, as those were by far the longest and have the most leftovers), so I already had a good half of the album done by this time. The main part of most of the production sessions consisted of finishing the first track, which I had already started, as well as writing the two other long songs. 

This album continues the pattern that The Prison left off at. Basically my vision was a series of eight albums, and perhaps some break EPs in between, that have a unifying concept that ties them together, obviously inspired by Dream Theater’s Twelve-Step albums. This is kind of considered the “intermission” album of the eight, then the next three are the second half of the main six-part concept, and then concluding with an epic “epilogue” album to bring the grand concept to a glorious close. 


This grand concept continues with the signature song of this album, “Intermission: A Chance to Reevaluate”. This serves as the official intermission of the what-will-be six-part suite that began with “I. Businessman on the Ballot” on “In the Name of Our Republic” and continued on the two subsequent albums. This song is the midway point in that saga, with some (though not as many) repeated motifs. The lyrical concept deals with the state of America from the years 2016-2021, during the presidency of you-know-who, although the lyrics reference American society as a whole, especially with this track, with the theme being to think about where we were going then, where we’re going now, and what our priorities should be. As it serves as an intermission, the album does not begin the way “The Prison” ends. Instead, the subsequent album will. 


The next song is the first part of a separate two-part suite, confined to this particular album. I envisioned this idea as a story of a person who leaves their religion-run town to experience true freedom and exploration for the first time, only to realize that everywhere else, religion controls the lives of most people, and however good or bad, it brings them peace and order. This song is the more energetic of the two, signifying the character’s newfound freedom and fiery desire. This was one of those songs that I wrote part of a while ago, some parts dating as back as 2020. However I thought it fit perfectly with the ambiance I was going with, and after adding more parts to it, solidified it as part one of this narrative suite. 


Part two of the suite is where the title of the album comes from. This is the darker, more gloomy part of the suite, where our character realizes the depressing truth about the role religion has in one’s life. This song was heavily inspired by Opeth’s “The Drapery Falls”. I had just been an Opeth fan for under a year at that point, and I had just rediscovered this song after favoring “The Leper Affinity” as my go-to Blackwater Park song. I loved how melancholic it was from start to finish, and wanted to replicate that atmosphere with this part. I never claimed to be a completely original artist, after all!


This next song was written about my time on Gab. Gab is a notorious far-right pandering alternative social media platform that promotes "free speech", and as someone who is proudly not alt/far-right, I decided to see what it was really like by using an anonymous account, with the goal of trying to get banned simply by trolling its genuine users, and this song documents that whole experience. The riffs and solos were written during the summer of 2022. That period of time between December 2021 and July 2022 was fully spent on writing lots and lots of riffs and solos to pick out the right ones at the right time. In any case, this was also one of the first songs for this album to have vocals recorded.


"Sarcophagic" is another song written during 2022, but this time it was around August when I started writing this song. This song builds off of a single riff that I wrote, which was a very simple chromatic thrashy riff that serves as the basis for the song. The lyrics are about the hypocrisy of many so-called "pro-lifers", who ironically support the most anti-life actions whenever it suits them best. Another fact about this song is that this was one of the last songs I wrote before my life completely changed as I started my first semester of college in fall of 2022.


"Autocratic Skirmish" is a very short, very simple instrumental. I wrote this in 2022 with the idea of "if I were to write a short metal song for a chaotic section of a first-person shooter video game, what could it sound like?" I was deep into DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal at that point in time, and I was discovering the awesomeness of Mick Gordon's metal-as-fuck soundtrack. It was never my intention to replicate that djent-y style with this song, but that was definitely the inspiration for it. I always pictured a Call of Duty-style fight going on in the background with this one.


"The Carnivorous Spirit" is another song that is part of a multi-part suite. In this case, it concludes the "Nine Sins" trilogy that began with "The Malevolent Father" on "Wheels of War", and continued with "The Psychopathic Son" on "The Prison". Each one of those songs is divided into three segments based on three of the Nine Satanic Sins. Musically, they each showcase the more evil, haunting side of my sound, and lyrically, they deal with my interpretations of the meanings of each of those sins. "The Carnivorous Spirit", dealing with the final three sins, concludes the trilogy, and I tried to allude to the religious content and continuity with the titles representing the Father, Son, and Spirit. There are many other hints and nuggets that I put into these songs as well, but I won't discuss them here.


As has been tradition with my albums since “Thrillingly Dead”, I have been including a remake of an older song of mine on each album. Since “In the Name of the Republic”, I’ve chosen to put those songs at the end of the album, as opposed to slapped in the middle on “Thrillingly Dead”, “Hogs in Badges”, and “The Chosen One”. The reason is because I wanted the albums to be a complete listening experience separate from anything I’ve previously done, whereas previously the remake was considered part of the experience. This time around I chose “Subzero and Subhuman”, the 8-minute song that concluded side one of my third album “Plagues and Commandments”. I actually made this remake around a year ago to be used in the future, and it felt like this was the time. This makes Mobile Corpse my second-longest DOK album and my longest single-sided album, at just over 72 minutes. 


I know it's extremely commonplace for musicians and other artists to refer to their latest work as "their greatest yet", and I too am guilty of doing that for several of my albums, but I truly do feel that this is my most profound representation of who I am, what my music is, and what I am capable of doing as a guitarist, songwriter, lyricist, and amateur harsh vocalist. I feel like I am getting better at fusing death metal, progressive metal, and thrash metal, my three favorite subgenres of metal, with each album that I write, and I'm already thinking about the next one.


Monday, March 18, 2024

Q1 2024: Updates For Whoever's Reading

I don't even know what I'm doing here anymore, not gonna lie…but I do have a following of sorts, and I do enjoy writing, so I might as well update whoever might be reading this on what's been going on. Anyway, I recently completed my eleventh studio album under my "Decimate Our Kind" artist name, titled "Mobile Corpse". I know people are bored to death of artists talking about how their latest work is their "greatest yet", but I am genuinely proud of this one. I feel like I'm finding my death-thrash-prog-fusion sound more and more with each album.

I am thinking about pursuing other musical projects, however. I don't plan on stopping Decimate Our Kind, however, as I genuinely do appreciate what's been going on here. My following is small, but it's the biggest following I've ever had for a personal passion project, and I genuinely appreciate all who do listen to my music. I am still planning on more DOK material to come out later in the year. But at the same time, I think about doing something different. As is expected of most artists, after all. It's not easy doing the same thing for years on end.


Some things that I thought about doing were going back to my previous musical project, 71011-NINJER, which was entirely focused on instrumental music from whatever genre I felt like dabbling in. Obviously the quality is much lower compared to what I've produced with DOK, but I do still think about that project often. The thought also crossed my mind of creating an entirely new project, focused on soft, clean/acoustic-style rock. But these are all just ideas in my head at the moment. Regardless, I have a new album being released in April, and if you feel compelled to do so, I would appreciate you taking a listen. Thanks for everything, if you're reading this.


Wednesday, August 30, 2023

August 2023 - 2023 in Metal

Figured that I’d do something different for this monthly entry. I kinda just want to ramble a bit on how bland 2023 was in terms of metal releases. It’s interesting because 2023 so far has been an absolutely phenomenal year when it comes to other kinds of artistic media, namely video games (Hogwarts Legacy, Tears of the Kingdom, Resident Evil 4, and upcoming stuff like Starfield, Spider Man 2, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Sonic Superstars, etc.). Yet, in my opinion at least, the only good metal album that I listened to this year was Overkill’s “Scorched”. 

I’m especially disappointed in Metallica’s latest effort. While I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s God-awful, it’s easily their biggest modern letdown since St. Anger. It’s just so effing boring from start to finish, and the reason why I felt compelled to aimlessly ramble about them is that so many other metal bands have released wonderful “comeback from COVID” albums (Dream Theater, Megadeth, Overkill, Municipal Waste, Kreator, Exodus, and Iron Maiden to name some examples), yet Metallica go ahead and release one of the most lifeless 77-minute metal albums of the century. 


It’s kind of interesting to me how, despite the fact that so much when it comes to releasing art is mere coincidence, certain trends are more widely followed than others. In 2021 and 2022 it seemed like every metal band was releasing “comeback albums”, similar to how 2016 was such a packed year in metal, but now it’s slowing down again. While thousands of underground metal bands are always going to be active, it seems like the time for more well-known bands to shine ebbs and flows often in unison with each other. I know this is an extremely rambly post, but idk what else to talk about. No real updates since the last entry have occurred.

Friday, July 21, 2023

July 2023 - Long Time No See, Updates, Going Forward

 Be warned: this blog post is quite rambly.

I kind of gave up on this blog a while ago. A lot has been going on in my life and a lot has happened. I gave up on this blog because I didn't really find any motivation to write in it due to a lack of any ideas regarding what to put in this fucking thing. As much experience as I have in writing, I've never really been a blogger. But since my last post Decimate Our Kind has gotten bigger in terms of my following, and I have been "noticed" several times, so to speak, and I've actually started earning money from making music. So I'm primarily bringing back this blog, despite the fact that barely anyone reads these entries, to establish connections towards audience members that may choose to stumble upon these, regardless of how many or how few do.


Going forward, I'm going to try to stick to keeping this blog a lighthearted project. As mentioned before, I haven't much experience in blogging, and coming up with ideas for writing in a blog as specific as mine (with it being an official music artist's blog and all) has never been easy. My goal at the moment is to limit my activity on this blog to writing one entry per month. I'm also going to vary it up a bit in terms of what I write about. I will of course be writing about my music, but I may also write about other musicians and bands I'm interested in, as well as other non-music related topics I'm into (which a lot of Decimate Our Kind songs are about), such as religion, politics, literature, etc.


In terms of what's going on with my music, I'm continuing to spend much of my free time creating, writing, recording, mixing, and producing new original material. Since I do everything by myself on basically an empty budget, that's why I'm releasing new material so often, because I have perhaps too many ideas that I think are worthy of expanding upon. I'm one song away from completing my tenth "studio" (if you count my bedroom/dorm room a studio) album. This upcoming album, along with the previous two and (as of now) the following five, will be connected through a concept that I've already released the first two parts of (I. Businessman on the Ballot and II. The Wall of Nothing). I'm titling the concept "The Fundamentalist Suite" and it's basically a grand metal recap of the past several years in America and how a certain leader changed everything and the legacy he left behind.


I'm also working on another concept in addition to this, titled "The Nine Sins Suite". It's basically my take on Dream Theater's "Twelve Step Suite", except with the lyrics I'm giving my interpretation of Anton Lavey's Nine Satanic Sins, each song containing three parts (the first in the trilogy, "The Malevolent Father", is out now on my latest album, "Wheels of War").


As of right now, the album is slated to be released in October, with two singles coming out in August and September. At this point I don't want to say any more about what will happen next, because everything is unpredictable these days.


I think that should just about do it for this month's entry. I know not many people will read this, so I just want to say thank you to those who do take the time to read my rambly, directionless-as-fuck blog entries.