Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Shifting lyrics

Hi guys, we had some request for our lyrics so here they are:



1. MUDRA: IN ACCEPTANCE AND REGRET
If fate so rules and I should feel
the miseries of life,
before I see another day
let my body slip away.
Yet i’m alive.
Yet i’m awake.
She who wants perfection,
and weeps for what can never be,
sets this curse.
Her dances are unreal,
ravished by a light,
a flower beauty 
blew in a garden
not unfold.
The jewel-girt arms sway the sound.
Crush my love.
Crush me faith.
Leave me with no trace,
because nothing’s gonna change.
Anticipate it.
Many hearts have been saved this way.
Many hearts have been wounded this way.
Many hearts have been saved this way.
Because love can heal for real.
Because love can hurt for real.
Many hearts have been saved this way.
2. 7th MOON
I see the sky turning white
while the stars split in thousands of colors.
I read in these people's eyes a great excitement
for the seventh moon.
This night that shines is scaring me.
I'm the dead that walks the earth again.
3. CAOFEDIAN
It's by rising and rising
that we shake hands with the sky.
Craving and longing
for us to live on the stars.
We climb thousands of stairs. 
Breathing until choking, 
the sight blacks out
and I will fall.
From the stars to the sky,
I want to fall. 
From the stars to the sky.
From the sky to the ground.
I will not wait.
To the stars,
over and over. 
Walk through the sky.
Climb,
over and over again. 
I won’t wait
until the end of my days.
My arms will sway,
I’m no longer afraid.
Falling.
Fall down.
I won’t wait.
Not another day.
So far so good.
So far so good.
4. DRIFTING LIGHTS
instrumental
5. BLACK WAVES
Black waves rise
as the shadowline,
sprawling to capsize on themselves.
We, lonely, endeavor to climb.
Behold.
We move in waves today,
drifting away
and never turning back.
Slow down.
Slow down.
Black waves tide:
the surface shines,
the flow
rises again.
It shoves you,
wherever it takes
you won't know this.
6. HADES
“Sleep silent.
It's so hard for me
away from you.
You're a voice in my head.
Somehow someday
you'll follow me
down to the end of the earth,
where you can be born
with a reign on your fingers.”
“You stole my soul and i love you
you swept me off the ground,
spoiling me with promises
just to keep me bound to you.
Hades, Hades, Hades, 
it feels like a stain.
I no longer love you.
It's a mad conviction.
This is a mad conviction,
falling on me.
Falling on me
and relentless grinding on me.
Slow endless nights
at the well,  empty bottom,  
and words I could say
find no ears.
Dry ticks mark time
as love grows quick with seeds,
but spring holds its breath in wait,
it's too late, goodbye.”
7. PROMETHEUS BRING US THE FIRE
In bloom, the sun ended his own way
and a man moved a step for 
a world to come.
With no bother and no pleasure 
took the flame.
Losing the shine
when the struggle claims,
past heroes die today.
Bring us the fire.
So we're alive
and we are wired 
along these ways.
Closing the eyes,
the feelings are left apart, 
denied.
Gaze now the flame.
It burns our world away.
The weight of a shade
as light as our blame.
Falling as rain. 
Coming to drain.
Watching me drown.
All we are losing this strife.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

gTar: technology, entertainment, guitar!



guys, i hate guitar hero.

it's not about the videogame itself. everybody would like to be angus young and not only for his schoolboy outfit! and by the way i also am a guitarist and i obviously love to play on a stage.but guitar hero always seemed to me like a way to pretend to be a rockstar without any fucking chance of being one. i mean, you turn on the thing, play that plastic little guitar, do the perfect riff and get a million point. then? what do you get then?you get nothing, because that's where guitar hero fails. thinking that the videogame is somehow similar to playing in a band is like saying that doing cookies with your nephews is like running a three-star restaurant. "it ain't the same fucking ballpark. it ain't the same league. it ain't even the same fucking sport."

anyway this is different. someone finally add some tech to a guitar in a very useful way (not even that robot guitar by gibson ever conviced me 100%).the guys built a guitar, put one lights on the neck for each string and each fret, plugged it to an iPhone with a special app they built and that's it. it teaches you how to play, showing you where to put your fingers, muting the wrong notes if you want to and adding some drums, bass and other instrument to it.maybe it's not the perfect way to be the next guitar hero, but it's a great way to approach the instrument in a very easy way. i dig it!

click here to see what i am talking about!





Thursday, May 17, 2012

Pay to play



in these last days i read a lot on facebook about this thing. vivo management seems to be selling out slots for total metal festival, the biggest heavy music fest in southern italy (here's the link to see the bill/cost). testament are headlining, but i don't know any other band in it. 
all right, i am not a walking metal-wikipedia but as far as testament are headlining i expect other popular bands to be in it. that's how festivals usually are. you bring a bunch of very popular bands and gather all their fans in the same place for one day or two. yep, it's that easy!
so why there are no other popular bands playing at total metal festival? probably because total metal festival doesn't really seem to be conceived as a proper festival, but more like a "pay to play with testament contest".

so, what is pay to play?
well, it's quite easy... you pay some money to play with your band in a specific gig, tour, show, etc. it's not something new, it's very common and most of the small bands you see touring out there with your favorite-super-mega-hit-band did pay some money to be on that stage. 
so un-drop your jaw, boys. pay to play is now, pay to play is real, pay to play is at your door!

what's wrong with it?
well, honestly nothing (ok, now drop your jaw). or at least it depends.
i don't think pay to play is such a big scandal by default - unless you pretend to make a festival to suck some minor bands dry - and i'm going to say why.

suppose that you love your band so much, music is your life (especially your music) and you want your dream to come true: you want to be a professional musician. 
well, we could say it's quite similar to running a restaurant. so you have your little restaurant outside your town, you serve superb food and you already spend some money on buying the gear that allow you to cook your dishes. you have been serving food for some time now and you have some "fan" that comes to your place, enjoy your food, headbang with you and vomit on your shoes. well, that's fucking great, what else should i ask for?

now a couple of years has passed. you keep serving your great food, headbang with your customer and clean their vomit off your shoes. well... that's a fucking nightmare! nothing has changed! you put so much passion, time and money (yes you did) in it and it's still the same fucking hole. 
you can't stand it anymore, you want something more, you want your restaurant not to be just a small town diner, but a proper world-famous "ristorante italiano"!
how to do it? well, first of all you have to invest some money. buy some books and learn more recipes, renew your gear so that you can actually do those recipes, do some advertising campaign and eventually move to a big fancy place in the center of the city. that's how new people will see your place, come to your place, become your customer, call their friends and come back to your great "ristorante italiano"!

now, let's go back to music life.
you have your band, you did a couple of good album (at least according to what magazines say), you have your own gear with your own sound, you have your fans. anyway this is not enough, you want more, you wanna go big, you wanna be a pro band. 
how do you think you do it? you must invest some money. you must take your music to a lot of people, you must promote your music both indirectly (advertising, reviews, interviews...) and directly (tour, tour, tour!), in other words you must move you restaurant to a big fancy place in the center of the town (and work for people to like your music... but that's another big theme we will discuss it in the future).

finally, is pay to play bad? there's no straight answer to that. 
if you're paying to take your small band in tour with the rolling stones for a couple of weeks, it's more than fair. you are no one and they are the biggest living band on earth. don't expect mick jagger to come begging to you for your band to support them. that's not gonna happen. ever.
instead, if you're paying to play a 20 minute show, in front of fifty people drinking beers waiting for the one and only popular band performing 5 hours later, well that sucks. a lot.

so the question is not "is pay to play bad", but "is pay to play worthy in this very specific occasion"?
consider the cost, consider your band, consider the chance you have: how many people will come to the show? is it a good crowd for your music? will they be interested in the genre you play? what can you get from this investment? what else can your band do with the same amount of money? so, is it worthy?

now choose and don't be ashamed of your choice, since you did with both your mind and heart.

a.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

writing a new album?

yes, we are. i just posted the news on facebook and got some attention from our fans. much more than i expected.
so i wondered, maybe you thought we were dead or dying or not feeling that good.

well, as you probably have read before, we have been through some hard times, but this is not the end. at all.

wanna know what's going on right now?
two of us are dealing with some serious situation at their jobs, closing the past away and starting a hopefully brighter professional life (yes, music is not our job. don't even ask it, it's old-fashioned).
another big boy in the band is moving to a new house. unfortunately his old house hosted our rehearsal room too, so we are looking for a new one. and by the way it seems we just found one - i'll keep you posted on this.

in the meanwhile, we are trying to write new stuff, looking for a new sound, studying different geometries and balances to build our new soundscape. this is gonna be different than anything we did in the past and i am so excited about it.

so, finally, stop your music player and put on some music you never heard before and wait for the spark..
ask your closest friend, read your favorite blog, pick it up randomly but try and try until you find that shiny sound that makes you stop doing anything and drag you into the musical flow.

i just found it and that's the shape of music to come.

a.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

why are we doing this?




as you may know we've been in quite awkward situations through the last times.
i wrote about it, some of you write me back, i had been thinking about it for a while and since those days i saw many other bands in the very same condition.

finally we put our emotion aside and tried to focus on the rational part of the problem until we found the core of it. now it's time to medicate us and that's exactly what we are doing right now. we have new song, we have new strength.

this morning i found this video on the net and it seemed to me like a unavoidable part of the medication. that's why i'm adding this piece to the jigsaw. i hope this will complete the picture as it did to me.

a.