Metal Reviews

It will be fucking amazing if Adveser ends up being the new Kamelot vocalist. I hope he does it.

Hi Bruce

I moved into an apartment and spent the last 2-3 months practicing and getting everything together. I moved in there with my PA, a mic and my computer and didn't have TV or the net to distract me. In some weird twist I actually started remembering early childhood memories of not being able to speak at all and struggling for years (?) to reproduce the 150 sounds that I heard when I heard a voice and remembering how I finally broke through. My mind put those memories in a box and hid the key so I wouldn't remember the trauma and would spend the last 10 years practicing. Now it has unlocked and one day a flash made me remember how I talked, so now there isn't anything I can't do. I had suspected some sort of Autistic symptoms for some time, but that information I hid from myself so I would not fear what must be done makes it obvious.

Without getting too much detail involved, all my recordings sucked until I figured out that I had to use the line-in jack on my new sound card and the PA system to get the signal to line level. You see, the mic input on a computer cuts off frequencies, which does not sound very good when my voice exceeds the human range of hearing and can do what hasn't been done before. My neighbors basically made it clear to me that continuing to practice was irrational simply because there were a few songs that I couldn't get 100% perfect when the vocals were clearly multiple performances mixed together on the record that I insisted could be done all at one time just as perfectly.

Looks like I'm selling my shitty car, doing some research, making some phone calls to labels and management to get a hold of some people and hauling ass to either Sweden, Italy or Germany depending on what comes through. Hopefully Fabio is joining Kamelot. I have a feeling Olaf Thorsen might want to think about hiring someone that practices his songs daily for seven years, speaks perfect American English and can hit the highest and lowest notes ever recorded and everything in between. See, Rhapsody could offer me a million bucks, but not if Olaf and Vision Divine offered me a couch to crash on a a pack of smokes a day.

I just feel bad for the guy that he had to go back to Labyrinth when he left the band to start his band where he could live his dreams without Brian Slagel, et al telling him he had to cave in to some sort of expectation or commercial concerns. He made all mine come true, so I'm going to take his dreams to the next level. He has my eternal loyalty if it were to be possible to work together. Fabio and Michele are insanely good, but it's something extra when you don't need to do more than one recording to sing vocal harmonies. Yes, I'm saying I can do a three or maybe four part harmony all at the same time. So I have the cash and the pipes, just gotta find out who's sitting at home trying to find a singer who can pull off their insanely technical material. It will be somewhat surreal to soon one day get a call to perhaps teach someone like Lione to expand his range up another octave or so.

So it is an exciting time and I find myself asking the same questions that my heroes write in their lyrics (Am I Dreaming?) because no one expects the very thought of changing the definition of "possibilities." When that becomes their reality and having so many tell you that questioning what is going on by saying it must be a misunderstanding or my mind playing tricks is just the cowardice of fearing change and the responsibility.

Looks like I'm either going to end up auditioning for Kamelot, Rhapsody (of fire) or Vision Divine right of the top of my head depending on how it plays out. And that scares me a little that I can't choose to believe it is wishful thinking to avoid what I understood when I have been fortunate enough to see when time and space becomes a singularity.

I think you know what I mean my friend, if the usual suspects that have nothin good, bad or ugly to write, that is okay. They will just resent the music they love for it, if wrong.