Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

My songs are between 9:00 and 13:00 long, typically around 200 BPM or so, and I finger pick in a quasi-flamenco style right-hand technique on a 10 lbs. 6-string ESP LTD bass. Music is a very personal experience for me to play. Typically, as soon as I get off stage after breaking down equipment, I grab a drink at the bar and shuffle off away from the crowd for a bit to reflect. I fall into a trance on stage if everything goes according to plan, which is what happens when the performance goes the way that I want it to go. It is however, extremely draining.


We have certain songs that are written for improvisation parts in psychedelic drone drops in between Black Metal riffs, using either drums or keys to cue timing back in. It's general structure is progressive tension and release with lots of repetition, but with many small changes over a great amount of time. Asymmetric rhythmic patterns, time changes, syncopation, improvised sections, jazz theory chord structure progression, we've done all of those in different songs at one point or another.

In the older days, we'd just play two song sets because all of the songs were 10+ minutes, so one time we played a 30-minute set for our first out of town show and we played a 12-minute song followed by a 13-minute song. That was a long time ago though. Our solution to this was a combination of trying to write shorter songs, and then learning to play them significantly faster live than on recording, which is why live it's upward to 200 BPM or so.

So yeah, after all of that, and the fact that the entire experience is a very personal, spiritual experience for me, I'm usually quite exhausted when I get off stage.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.