The Next Album

As I mentioned in a recent article, I've struggled to find the right musical outlet here in Bozeman. This has become more of an issue now that the Danger, Ltd. album and the Scattershock album are complete. I no longer have those projects and their corresponding goals to keep me going and as a result I'm going a bit nuts (yes, even more so than usual...). That, in turn has spawned another one of my "big ideas."

I need a new project, a goal. It needs to be music and it needs to be original songs, not covers. And it needs to be music that's stylistically close to my heart. I listen mostly to melodic sub-genres of metal, e.g. power metal, goth metal, emo/screamo/alt. metal, nu metal, metalcore. It's what I gravitate toward naturally. It's not an intellectual thing, it's about gut instinct. And yet, I've generated very little original music that fits that collection of styles. It's time for that to change. I need to create something that comes naturally, from inside.

I need a band and yet the longer I live in Bozeman, the less likely I think it is that I'll find one here. I need other musicians that live and breath the same musical styles that I do. I need a drummer, a bass player, another guitarist, a vocalist and maybe a keyboardist, all of whom need to have musical instinct in the same rough vicinity as my own. We don't all need to think alike, we just need to have enough overlap to focus on a common goal. I'm beginning to think I need to assemble that band in the heart of the world's best melodic metal. Sadly, that's not here in Bozeman and more and more I think it's not even here in the U.S. Most of the bands I listen to hail from Finland and Sweden, and maybe it's time I acknowledged that.

So my working plan, my slowly crystallizing vision, is to record my next album in some combination of Finland and Sweden. If I can pull this off, I'll identify musicians in Scandinavia that are interested in playing on the album. I will need to develop a budget for this project, because I'll need to pay the players, pay for my own travel, pay for studio time and, most likely, pay someone in that neck of the woods to coordinate things for me. I'm thinking that last role is the key. I need an "associate producer" or "facilitator", someone that has connections in Finland and Sweden and can help me assemble the right musicians for the project and can help oversee the project. If I can find that person, then I think the rest will come together.

To be clear, the songs have not yet been written. That's on me, at least the music. This time around, I'm also thinking that I need to contribute lyrics, unless somehow I get lucky and find someone who's interested in a collaboration, something more than a simple studio musician role. I need to start writing again and at the same time, I need to start making contact with studios and engineers in Finland and Sweden and see if I can find the right fit. There are a lot of challenges that need to be overcome before this becomes a reality, but it gives me something to strive for. A new dream that can pick up where I left off after completing the Scattershock release.

Are you a musician in Sweden or Finland that would be interested in contributing to this project? Are you a recording engineer that can record and mix this project for me? Do you know musicians that would be interested in playing on the album? Are you elsewhere in the world but find the project interesting enough that we should talk? I'm very open-minded about how this comes together, so if you have ideas or suggestions, please get in touch!