It's Been a Couple Months...Let's Talk Hayoth Again

The very early stages of work on the next set of Hayoth songs has begun.

Nothing terribly developed, at this point. I've got a whole bunch of lyrics on paper, a couple of song titles, and about 6-7 riffs I'm working on. Everything is in flux, of course, but I've been feeling a lot of creative energy in the realm of music. Listening to a lot of The Sword, King's X and (as always) Springsteen.

My goal is to try to find a nice place for Hayoth to sit, sound wise. I tend to have a wide range of influences, and rather than trying to capture some other band's sound, I'm hoping to forge something that's my own. The first Hayoth disk was very much me trying to sound like a 70's blues-based hard rock band - a less talented Led Zeppelin, if you will - and I still like that element. The first disk, if nothing else, proved I could get it done all by myself. That said, I'm hoping to take some of the confessional, storytelling lyrical content of Springsteen and merge it with hard rock, and even metal instrumentation.

Not final artwork (HA!)

The tentative title is Uptown, with a title track called Uptown (Moody's Blues), which, as you might expect takes imagery from Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, and mixes it with some narrative related to my character in Golden Boy. I like the lyrics I've come up with or this one, and the chord progression I've been playing around with. It's a slower, more meditative, yet still electric number. I'm going for a touch of urban jazz/blues. Fitting, since Uptown is home to The Green Mill.

At this point, I have a couple other ideas starting to coalese into songs, specifically a tune called Ashes, and another called Burn. Neither is as developed as Uptown on the lyric front, but I have a basic guitar track for Burn recorded. It's probably the most "metal" track I've done in a long, long time, and certainly the fastest, at about 145 BPM (I know, not really all that fast). It'll be interesting to see how I handle a drum track at that tempo. I'll figure it out, however, as part of the fun of this work, as I told my friend Matt K, is asking yourself to do things just outside your abilities.

I'm hoping to further work on my drumming for this new stuff. I'm well aware it was the weakest part of ...And Getting Dollars Back, but I am happy that it's live, and not a drum machine. That, to me, makes that record the best thing I've ever done, even if it was a "work in progress" as far as learning how to be a drummer, and learning how to mix drums well. I am confident the next disk will only show improvement.

I'll leave you with another link to the soundcloud Page for ...And Getting Dollars Back. The tracks are all still free to download, and this is the proper sequence for the album, as I'm told that downloading will not keep them in the proper order. Enjoy, and I'm always open to comments and criticism.