To enter, you have to jam out some blues.

So I did.

Problem is, I didn’t want to go to the trouble of using an amp or anything, so I plugged the Tele’o'doom direct and used some free plugins for the sound.

Problem is, I couldn’t decide between the fake Marshall, fake vintage fuzz or fake Boogie tones. So I just gave up and layered them all in together.

I also used some new free delay and reverb plugins I found to round out the sound.

So even when I don’t win, it was still good as a tonal experiment. Plus, both of my fans get to here a new tune.

Do-do-do Daaa-Daaa Do-do-do

This is that, but played in my usual metal style.

I recorded this at the end of 2008 for my own personal use, but I thought someone out there might want it. It’s a full “band”: drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitars, and it really cuts through any background noise.

I’ve never not heard this when my phone isn’t on silent.

Image tapped from wikipedia

Image found by groping around here

The title should give away the theme, and then some.

Especially if you speak ancient greek and can therefore understand the title of the suite.

This part is the obligatory instrumental introduction.

Starts with a soft bit, blippy synths, jazzy drums, soft pads and some noodley clean guitar solos.

Gets heavy in the second half.

I’ll explain it all when I get to the end of the set of songs.

As much as I can anyway.

Image demonstrated from here

It is used to describe how a certain weapon feels.

As I was reading it I felt that it was a good phrase that sums up how I felt whilst finishing the book.

The song itself is…. weird. It is based around the D#/Eb Moorish Phrygian Scale with a 9/8 time signature, which those who understand what that means would know is not a basis for any kind of normal pop music.

In terms of instrumentation it is mostly synth driven, with a few guitar solos laid over the top in strategic places.

Genre wise, I think the music by Fear Factory, Liquid Tension Experiment and Frank Zappa I listened to last night might just have influenced the style. It ended up in some kind of weird avant-garde jazz fusion place with an industrial edge in the percussion.

Hence me calling it weird.

Of course they could be mischievous at times, and I like the idea that every good thing has a dark side. No matter how good something appears to be, there is a capability for it to be evil.

The song itself is an instrumental based around some tribal beats, with some heavy grooving riffs and a lot of dissonance in terms of note and chord selections.

And yes, that picture is completely unrelated…. but it looked tasty.

Image tasted from here

Not entirely sane.

Soft intro with pads and soft guitar solo, rocking middle with keyboard and guitar solos, a bass solo and then the slow, crushing destruction of the end.

Exactly the kind of the unexpected thing you should expect from me.

Picture teleported from here

Not much to it really, just some slow, heavy blues that may drift into stoner territory.

Although no blues tune I know uses a dance drum loop like that.

But what do you expect from me?

Because I can.

The title is derived from the fact that it is in the six tone symmetrical scale, and since it is the devil’s number, I needed something evil. The quote I used was pulled from that well known source of evil, the Bible. Ephesians 5:11 to be specific:

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

The song is not exactly what you’d expect from me, but how anyone can ever know me and not expect the unexpected is shocking.

At the end of the day, it is nice to hear how evil a double bass, cello, viola and violin can sound without any distortion, overdrive or other modern audio magic (except the stuff that allows my macbook pro to sound like a string quartet in the first place).

Image plucked from here