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• Opus 3 Jazz Trio

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All throughout these decisions are choices that people made through the summation of previous experiences in their apparent perceived lives. If you call this falling domino effect fate, then free will itself does not exist, and habits are the hardest of all to break. Habits are ingrained parts of a person’s psyche and where they seek comfort. In order to break someone’s habit you have to shatter their reality, and even then, that person might still end up right back where they started. The action does no more than put a bandage on a gaping laceration.

When does one person decide to help another? To what effect do they decide to help each other out?

Is the help out of pity? Then it is sympathetic in nature.
Is the help out of compassion? Then it is empathetic in nature.
Is the help out of regret? Then it is commiserative in nature.
Is there no help? Then it is apathetic in nature.

The more emotional vesting one person has in another, the more ‘caring’ they will show towards the person in need. What is this apparent cost of caring? Emotional vesting is directly proportionate to the distance two individuals have. These are distances in space and time. As the distance becomes greater the caring becomes less until caring becomes an afterthought requiring effort, which is an inconvenience to most. If you do not care effortlessly, then others call you insincere in your caring.

There is one decision that most people tend to overlook. That decision is when to stop caring if they started at all. Akin to coming out of a hangover, there is no gradient from one extreme to the other. One instant you sit there reeling in gut wrenching guilt, and the next you want to take on the world for all it is worth for new adventures.

This dividing line itself is a silent one, since you cannot seek it out; a silent hidden dividing line between empathy and apathy. When you cross it, all that you know is that you crossed it. Usually you realize you crossed it after the fact never pinpointing when or where you transversed the line. You will not even realize you accepted passing over the line into a new apparent situation. You will just come out on the other side in a different mood or outlook.

Until that time comes when you stop caring, just continue drifting. Drift far and wide for when you completely stop caring, you can start caring yet again. Emotional vesting is not a zero balance account. There is always a balance in there as you receive and give emotional stimuli. However, people set up different accounts and decide to give of themselves to those closest to them. Sadly, there is always a desire as a pack animal, for humans to give of themselves to strengthen the herd.

Fear those who pity you, for they look down upon your weakness.
Fear those who show regret, for they project their past onto you.

Respect those who know you and will not help you, they have their own issues to deal with.

Honor those that show compassion, because they are taking time out to help when they could be anywhere else doing anything else.

Sincelery,
Leo

“All those who will never know of my lust are all those that constantly feel my wrath.”

Featured Tracks:

• Virgins O.R Pigeons – Existe
• Ouzo the Band – Light Shadow
• The Lyre Effect – Flying High
• This – The March of Being Into Nothingness
• Alaz Suel – Hey Hey
• Key of Mythras – WCS

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• Mindsight – Steal This Moment
• The Influence – Slippin
• Figo – Time to Get Even
• Blacktop Harrison – Polarvoid Ipswitch
• Piranah – Stupidity
• Chingazo – My Disease

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Its arm with sinuous claw stretches out towards me, and touches my right shoulder before I had a chance to dodge out of the way. Its touch is warm compared to my coldness. Then with energy expended, the arm falls limp to the bamboo mat. The resounding thud, followed by the long drawn out exhale becomes the last sound from that side of the dim hue of the black-lit room.

The silence becomes deafening at this point as regret starts to take hold. Quickly silencing that bloody roar with classical music from the stereo, I reminisce on an evening unfulfilled. In retrospect, tonight chalks up to a poor decision, and nothing more. Irony is that the Noble and Sentimental Waltz from Maurice Ravel fills this room of the dead and the damned.

There will be the need for much explaining come late afternoon, since the dawn has already come. Odd, it would appear that this is now the screenplay for a situational romantic comedy. What went wrong? Habit or convenience? They will all sit around and wonder what went wrong; he seemed like such a nice boy. That is what they’ll say when he vanishes for a while. When he simply goes….

For now, the trusty trench coat will double as a blanket as I will sleep on the air mattress in the other half of the room. For my own protection, I remove the Katana from behind the pillow of the bamboo mat. What little good the Katana did me though. They offer not protection from home invasion, especially when you invite the marauders in.

I do not trust this one; I think I should hold the pair close to my chest while I sleep. A slight churning in my stomach starts to take hold as the room itself becomes dizzy.

Dizzy with a rising hatred from having compromised and succumbed to habit. Dizzy with a wrath gaining up from the bowels of my innards outwards towards the throat. The gag reflex starts to take hold as previously drinking salty tears and smelling flesh of soot and ash overcome the senses. Acid reflux fills my mouth as I force a swallow, one of the last bits of lucidity I remember from the evening. Convenience tastes a lot like bile at this point.

I managed to drink too much, and not enough all at the same time. Yes, I will probably wake up very enraged from this occurrence. Perhaps my dreams will calm me. However, tomorrow probably starts with waking up very angry. Was there any other outcome?

Sincelery,
Leo

• Whitesnake – All For Love
• Against the Wall – Nights of December
• Amorphis – Alone
• Runon Fragment – Misunderstood
• Scilter – Face of My Hero
• The Divine Madness – Crawl

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If you can’t sell five copies of your CD, how do you justify getting 1000 made?

If you don’t promote your shows, booking three a week won’t make you famous any faster.

If you can’t get the drunk and desperate 35-year-old bar fly who has a permanent spot at the end of the bar to go home with you, don’t even try going for that gorgeous 21-year-old who is only there to see her boyfriend’s crappy band.

If one of those XXL energy drink canisters doesn’t wake you up, you should probably get some sleep.

If you can’t make it heavy in standard tuning, tuning down to G isn’t going to make it any heavier. But it probably will loosen a few bowels. THAT’S metal!

If you can’t squeeze a halfway decent guitar recording out of one microphone, two usually isn’t going to make the situation any better.

Having more than one cover song in your 45-minute set doesn’t prove your “versatility,” it proves your awareness of the fact that people would rather hear someone else’s music than the music they scraped up five bucks to hear and see you play.

If your songs don’t sound good on an acoustic guitar they’ll most likely not sound good on a 7-string plugged into five Marshall stacks (unless, of course you’re pulling out some Tom Morello shit… but chances are you’re not Tom Morello).

If your three-piece band doesn’t sound good, adding a keyboard player, a violinist, a DJ, five backing vocalists, another couple guitar players, an entire horn section, an accordion player, four more percussionists, a xylophone player, a designated screamer, a few dancers, and a huge laser light show won’t make it any better.

If you can’t write a good song with just three chords, don’t expect your songs to magically become brilliant masterworks of music when you throw a few more chords, four guitar solos, and a couple breakdowns in. That being said, if you only use the same three chords for every song you’re going to be boring as hell.

If your amp sucks and your guitar sucks, adding a bunch of distortion pedals and rack gear won’t magically “take the blanket off” your amp.

If you can’t make crappy gear sound decent, you have no right to get good gear.

If you can’t play to begin with, getting a custom guitar and a vintage tube amp won’t magically make you Jimmy Page.

Most importantly: Why are you charging five bucks for your three-song demo you recorded in your living room using the built-in mic on a cassette recorder from 1987 when Clear Channel is blasting the latest Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback turds on 97.9FM at no charge to anyone listening?

• Shadowside – Baby in the Dark
• Ion Prophecy – Reflection
• Sideburn – Ghost of 1980
• Circle of Thieves – Vaporizer
• Mudvayne – Dullboy
• Mudthurst – Living Like a Rock Star

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If given more emphasis the sighs and winces could become the wails of an opera singer, a black metal singer. Given more puissance, they could even shatter glass windows and frames. Given direction, they could share with the world misery and despair. In its current state, it just sits there on a bamboo mat shivering with skin barely clinging to its raw and ruby flesh. Upon closer inspection, I can see flexible cartilage where both flesh and muscle are no longer present. How much cannibalism has this one done on itself?

If it donned a heliotrope cloak complete with a pewter gothic ankh pendant, and directed the sorrow outward instead of inward then perhaps one would not see the gaping exposing wounds. Instead, it continues to tear away at itself as piles of sinew fall to the floor. The sobbing grows louder now. This situation might require a larger clean up in the future than originally anticipated. If it did don a heliotrope cloak then it would not be here to begin with. Such is irony.

The thought does cross my mind that if the sound of the quiet sobbing is soothing, what about the taste, and what about the smell? Would that quiet the impending river of doom? Would replacing the source for the patterns of the breath, the wince, and the sigh with something else better or worse? Trading sorrow for joy, albeit temporary joy might just be in order.

Cycling through the memories of smell the first that comes to mind is the taste of blood. It is always the first smell that pops into mind with its distinct rust iron color. Cycling past the first memory, I can recall exactly how this will play out if it continues. The flesh will taste of soot and ashes. The tears will resemble salt. The smell will be a combination of stale cigarettes, unkempt hair, and regurgitated alcohol. The experience will be an empty one, and I will not be any better off for it in the end.

A grimace and a smirk flash across my face on a single thought. Why break a bad routine at this point? This time it could be different. This time it could be different since this one will not be like all the others.

That thought is a great rationalization on false hope. This time will be different, because if all the inputs remain exactly the same then the output can be different regardless of what experience taught us. If you learn to recognize the patterns quickly then you can bring yourself to that inevitable end just the same. You can sit back and go along for the ride of your death. Take the guesswork out of the situation and just repeat the process repeatedly. You are a born natural at it now.

Each time you repeat the process you will get better at the systematic tasks. You will hone your skills, and before you know it, being in this situation will be second nature to you. Since it comes so easily, you might even seek comfort in the situation, be it right or wrong. Rinse, cycle, repeat.

That is when the false hope and rationalizations set in. It is what you are good at, so you might as well enjoy the fruits of your labor. It was exactly upon that thought that the apparent situation came back into focus. The tears did in fact taste salty, and this member of the walking dead did smell of soot and ash. Perhaps I just wanted to see through the eyes of this walking dead? At least that is what I will tell myself later as a rationalization.

Sincelery,
Leo

• Roughcast – We’re Back
• The Dead Popes – Roller Derby Queen
• Dinner With Cannibals – Whipping Boy
• Aiden – Moment
• The Fire Apes – Hey Kate
• No Days Off – This Time

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The desk becomes nothing more than a row of keys. With each keystroke, the beautiful hymns of destruction sound off in the distance.

The glowing flames have a black lit hue to them, and the ceilings emanate from their reflection. Crimson red wax melts ever so slowly onto the floor. Each click and tick of the board itself sounds a note in the scale of the Hungarian Minor. Am I preparing a fugue? In more ways than one, in more ways than one. Such is the incantation of protection from the pure and corruption of the innocent.

A voice starts to speak, “Come back to…,”
“What, the floor? There is great work to be done yet, and I am inspired to do it,” is the response that cuts off the first voice.

“I’ll be here when you…,”
“Yes, you will. You have no where else to go, and no way to get there.”

“Are you always this mean?”
“You are free to leave.”

“I have no where else to go.”
“And no way to get there. Yes, I know. I knew from the moment we met.”

Their voice starts to trail off in the distance as the expanse of the 13-foot long room grows to a thousand yards. Glancing back with a harsh glare, I can vaguely make out the thousand-yard stare, the one that does not hide the blank inner non-workings of the mind.

Usually people wear a mask to protect themselves, but like all masks they generally leave the eyes open to see. Sight works both ways as the predator and the prey have different ways of looking at items. As you look out, others look in.

The prey animal typically has eyes on either side of their head allowing for a wider range of sight. This is so the animal is constantly on the look out for things to run from, and places to hide in. The smaller prey animals are constantly watching out for danger.
They will shift their head about their surroundings constantly on the lookout.

The predator animal typically has eyes on the same side of their head, close together to work towards pinpointing a specific target and then striking at that target. When you focus, you squint your eyes further diminishing the field of vision towards your prey. The predator animals are constantly focusing intent and follow-through for the kill on one item.

When a predator squints, and shifts their eyes back and forth they are preparing to be danger. This shift lasts very briefly for they are about to make a choice. The wounded become easier targets for a trained predator allowing them to conserve energy. Know what to look for, and you know how to respond.

The blank empty human stare is a way of emulating a prey response from a wounded animal. They cannot run. Their eyes go wide, and their brain stops processing, and starts preparing to flee emotionally. It is almost as if the brain suffering from delirium decides to shut down instead of subjecting the individual to apparent danger. The brain will turn back on once the danger subsides. By then, it is usually far too late.

It looks like I have prepared two fugues this evening after all. Behind me, I hear the quiet sobbing of tears from a broken prey animal. Glancing back with a harsh glare I can clearly see fragments of the innocent chipping away. Preparations are almost complete as each keystroke the beautiful hymns of destruction sound off in the distance.

Sincelery,
Leo

• Fallsair – Forget You
• Diary of Dreams – The Darkest of All
• They Fade in Silence – Heartache
• MD – Deep Impact
• 16Volt – The End of it All
• Specimen – Fatal Error

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• The Happy Endings – Get Around This
• The Bastard Fairies – We’re All Going to Hell
• The States – CCTV
• Warloose – Window
• Gidgets Ga Ga – Crime of the Century
• Vox Palma – Made for Moderns

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What is wrong with people these days? Your resentment of the below-average intelligence of the typical bar-going chump is not only understandable, it’s completely normal. After all, at the end of a long week of work people just want to go out to a club with some friends, get a blood alcohol level that’s a multiple of 2, and attempt to pick up someone to share a bed with for a night. You, on the other hand, would rather plop down in front of the glowing computer screen and lurk around MySpace looking for venues and local people who might possibly have the slightest chance of being into your band’s music, as well as sending emails kissing up to promoters and radio DJs in the hopes that one of those contacts will be the one who unleashes your band’s music upon the unsuspecting masses, launching you and your band head-first into superstardom. Or at least that’s how it happens before you wake up stuck to your bed.

Everyone is out there while you’re sitting in your comfy chair in your smiley-face boxers drinking Southern Comfort and letting your waist grow. And you wonder why no one comes to your shows. The best way to get on the radar of everyone who would rather go out and risk getting a DUI every Friday and Saturday night than go home after work and go to sleep early is to intercept their routine. Get yourself in their fuzzy weekend memory banks. In other words: SHOW YOUR FACE! Go out to shows, talk yourself up, meet people! If talking to you about your band is the last thing some guy remembers before finding himself in his apartment at 5am with everything he drank that night coming out of both ends of his body, you might be doing something right (or very very wrong, but let’s not go there).

So get out into the real world, find a show at a decent-sized venue with a bunch of bands you’ve never heard of, and talk to people. Even if you don’t instantly make a ton of friends you’ll still be more productive than if you went about your normal routine of couching it in your apartment with one hand on your computer keyboard and the other hand somewhere beneath your stomach, listening to the radio, and telling some girl on MySpace with “~~<3 I’m Only Jailbait If They Catch You <3~~” as her display name about how famous your band is going to be.

• Feral Children – Zyghost
• Circle Of Thieves – Vaporizer
• Romantacide – Hard To Find
• Romantacide – Save Yourself
• Madison Ambush – From Another Day
• Rough Roostars – Wake Up

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• Dolt – Silence
• Dirty Black Halo – Thanks for the Tragedy
• Downside – Eden’s Cry
• Driving the Fall – In Vein
• Doxology – Runaround
• Death Chant – Evil Green

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• Wil Deynes – Superwonderful
• Killola – I Don’t Know Who
• Maybridge – When in Rome – When in Rome
• The DSC Project – Gamma Omega Delta
• Karasoul – Emergency
• Pukrd Taint – Home

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Has the world turned its back on you, or just this group? Has everyone you have ever known and will even know become a fragment of the mind’s eye? Did you blink on purpose to shut your eye, or did you never possess the ability to open it? Can you forget your past?”

Perhaps that was too long of a response to give when the zombie said, “Wait, where are you going?” Then it started to scamper in my general direction. I could have kept walking, but since I had already turned around to check behind me, I decided to turn around and head back towards sanctuary. The mind rationalizes a lot, and then replaces fact with a skewed fiction. I did realize at the time, I would have to walk right past it shambling towards me. That would explain why I stuck my hand out to help it up off the ground.

The mist is very thick, and the fog has a sticky hue to it. Its hand was cold, but mine was colder. Its gaze was cold, but mine was colder.

Pizza always tastes better the day after you wanted it, more so than the day you actually want it. The absence is where the desire grows. In addition, we had already had a “moment.” Who is to deny that “moment” a chance to blossom into a lily, or a chaff of wheat ripe for the scythe.

I shall have a moment with pizza in the future, when sustenance is required as opposed to when wants take the place of needs. The needs say to retreat, the wants say to hunt. Why can’t one have it all? Just change the nature of the hunt to accommodate the retreat. This sounds simple enough.

Some call it settling, and others call it cutting losses, but there comes a time when one makes not the best decision, just the best available decision. This decision in the end always leads towards an empty feeling coupled with the driving nagging twinge of “what if.” That “what if,” gets louder and louder, especially if potential gains walk into the room.

However, chasing an ideal is just as dangerous as settling. If you chase an ideal, you may never find it, and nothing may be good enough either. The one who chases ideals is never grounded, and never complete. They might excel, but that is quite the cost.

Where does one compromise and meet in the middle? Where does one not settle, but not waste time chasing ideals? The answer lies in enjoying the here and the now while keeping the future in mind. Stay grounded, but gaze 45 degrees off into the horizon as opposed to straight up, or down at the ground. The answer lies in having an open mind.

That way you can see what is directly in front of you, and at the same time see what is off in the distance. Is this a compromise?

I guess you could say my fascination with death is the experience is one thing I will eventually have in common with every living thing.

Can you forget your past? Because it will surely forget you.

Sincelery,
Leo

• Aetherius – The New Way of Thinking
• Brookroyd Lane – Slip Trip and Fall
• Burn Theory – 24-7
• Fonic – White
• 36 Crazy Fists – We Gave it Hell
• Epic Turn – Disengaged

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Hey… you…I got a secret. No seriously. I’ll tell it to you. Shhh! Don’t say anything. I figured it all out. I did. Seriously. And I’m willing to tell you. Just listen. Check it out. Those bands. Certain bands. Whether they’re really good or just totally suck. They bring out a bunch of chicks! Like, really gorgeous dumb chicks! In DROVES! The kind of girls whose mere existence made you want to pick up an instrument to begin with! Every show! Every damn show they come out to see the band! You work TIRELESSLY to get your band’s music and name out there, while these assholes do nothing but post a MySpace bulletin at the last minute and instantly bring seas of gorgeous girls. How do they do it??

Well, my friend, it’s actually quite simple. I shall call it the Dane Cook effect. Do you really think that if Steve Buscemi’s career consisted of over-pronouncing words, coming up with nicknames for fast food places, and jumping around like a frat boy after a few too many beer bongs he’d have college girls masturbating to his entire catalog on repeat? It’s the same way with you trying to make some good-looking girls laugh by telling that hilarious joke about the sex change operation: You get looks of disgust and then the girls ignore you, while the dude with the popped collar tells the same joke a couple days later and is met with roaring laughter by the same girls. No, it’s not fair, but the truth is that girls like pretty boys. Even back to when you were a kid and all the boy band shit was shoved down every teenage girl’s throat. You’d flip the channels and land on TRL and see some psychotic chick standing out in 15 degree NYC weather for three hours just to tell the cameras “I requested Backstreet Boys because they’re so hot!! Woooo!!!” These are the same brainless chicks who go to a show not to enjoy a band’s music, but just to see them presented on an elevated portion of the room as if those guy are the only ones to step foot on that stage. Oh, and they just so happen to be playing instruments.

So rest easy knowing that, despite the moisture levels of their fans’ vaginas convincing them to endlessly blabber on otherwise, it really does have nothing to do with talent. And also take comfort in the fact that once another band of dudes with nut-huggers, brand name polo shirts, and stylishly almost-too-shaggy hair starts stealing the spotlight, the band you’ve been envious of for so long will only have their music, stage show, and promotional skills to rely on. And that’s how it should be.