Thanks!

hey guys. thanks to everyone who came out to the acoustic show. scott said it very well that night, 'thanks for checking out our little experiment.' It was an experiment for us. i personally, have never done anything like that, so i was a bit nervous. we had a shit ton of fun, and hopefully we'll do it again soon. looking forward, back to the routine. practices start up again tonight, and we'll have some more show announcements here fairly soon. the songwriting is warp speed. lots and lots of music. and the funniest thing about it the titles we give them before they have lyrics. our process is fairly simple. when the mood strikes you write, and most of the time we aren't at practice. so, for me, i'll record at home, and send it to the guys, and we'll go from there. but, naming these things is pretty funny. they all have pretty dumb names when they are written. or names that make no sense. i got into the habit of watching south park when i get home from practice. 9 times out of 10 i'm recording after that. so, alot of the names i come up with are one liners from South park. there's one out there called 'mudmonkey' that i took from South park. Mr. Garison was referencing the turd that 'someone' left in the urinal. hahahahaha. i thought it was funny. i also have this picture hanging above my computer. Its a Dali print called 'Apparition of Face & Fruit Dish on a Beach'. Its an amazing picture. I get a lot of wierd titles from that too. Anyways, i gotta get back to the grind. See you soon.

d

tomorrow night!

tomorrow night is the night! first ever B.O.H. acoustic show at Sheas. man, i tell you what, trying to narrow the covers down was kind of hard. adding some, taking some out, shit, even last night we added one. I haven't even touched it yet. but, i'll get it done. I'm pretty stoked about the covers. It has to be the single most 'depressing' set of covers i've ever done! hahahahahahaha. but, they are all amazing songs, one of which is probably one of the greatest songs ever written on an acoustic guitar. Funny story about this particular song. My birthday was about a month ago, and me, becky, and some friends went out to celebrate. We ended up at a bar with a couple guys do covers on acoustics. This was kind of around 11, so i was, well, i had a decent buzz, hahahahaha. Anyways, I told scott i wanted him to play this particular song for me for my birthday. he said that if those dudes would let him, he would. I worked some magic, and boom, scott played this song and had everyone in the place in awe. It was amazing. Thanks Scott! So, i'm excited to play that song tomorrow. Perhaps we'll tell the story at the show before we play it. Scott tells it better anyways.

i think people will be surprised at some of the choices, and i'm sure people expected some of the others. hell, i even expected to play about half of these. and honestly, for me, alot of these songs shaped me as a player, and I can tell they had an effect on scott and josh too. we grew up listening to a lot of them, and they are fun to play. we may have some guests in that set too. We also are going to play the two original acoustic songs 'Would you love me more' and 'Under the cover of night' that are on the myspace page. Those too songs have very special meanings for scott and I, and they come across in those songs. Anyways, i'm not going to give away any more, you'll just have to come and check it out!

d

i just found this....

guess which one is me.....

Metal Sanaz- Dimebag Darrell Tribute Show in Omaha Part 3

yo...

we've been getting ready for this acoustic show next weekend. i'm pretty excited. its kind of wierd though. a lot of people who probably would've blown off a regular show, are excited for this one. i guess sometimes it takes different ways of doing things to get people interested in what you are doing. i will say, i'm excited for some of the covers. By the way, thanks to everyone who has emailed with ideas for cover songs. Unfortunetely, we can't do them all, but we did pick some good ones. some really good ones. so i'm pumped. we are still writing the heavier stuff as well. we've probably got another 6 that we will, from time to time, exchange for some of the older ones on the myspace page. Some of the new stuff is badass. I'm pretty proud of some of them. I did another solo in a song called 'The Acsension of Madmen'. I think i'm attracted to doing that because i've never really done it before. if the song calls for one, then it'll get one. if it doesn't, and some of them don't, then i won't. its another avenue that just adds depth to a song. and i enjoy testing my own limits. (and i just kind of liked this picture...).

d

i feel the need to quantify my review of the 'tallica record. it isn't unlistenable. if you dug anything from the black album on, you'll probably like this one. is it picking up where they left off with Puppets or Justice? No. That's where i was going. I was fairly brutal because everyone i've talked to about it says its as good as those records. So, having that mindset, i was very very dissappointed. just wanted to quantify.

d

becoming the critic....

So, i managed to get my hands on the leak of the new Metallica record, Death Magnetic, today. I've never felt so compelled to publicly become a critic of music, as I write a fair share of my own, and I have wanted to beat a lot of ass in the past for shitty reviews. But, this record inspired me to start commenting (not too mention to check my own shit!). Well, that and Ian Robinson's review of the record. I felt i could do it better. When you spend so much time writing music and studying other people's music, you know where people slack off or really put the time in. So, here we go, track by track. You ready?

Death Magnetic (not a bad title, kind of played out, i would have expected this out of Dave Mustaine)

This Was Just Your Life: Starts off with a heartbeat. Nice throw back to Sepultura, Chaos A.D.. I gotta say, I like it better when Max and the boys did it. At least it was Max's kid's heartbeat and it meant something, and not a weak attempt to be clever. I also have to say i was pleastantly surprised NOT to hear Lars's 'trademark' snare drum we'd been tortured with on St. Anger. Hammett's solo is killer. Good to have him back on his game. It also seemed that they kind of buried Truijio's bass. Can't have him stealing Lar's thunder.

The End of the Line: I think that i wrote the intro riff when i was 14. Not sure though. It became apparent at this point on the album that the actual 'recording' is kind of lacking. There is no punch to the guitar sound, no to mention the kick drum (cause i don't want to talk a whole bunch of shit on the drums, but i will anyways later). In my opinion, this is kind of standard on Rick Rubin recordings. My main focus here was on how bad the lyrics are. Unfortunetly, they don't get better. Again, Hammett's solo is badass. He and Marty Freidman should do a Shrapnel record. That'd be sweet. I'd actually pay for that (unlike Death Magnetic, thanks Lars!).

Broken, Beat, & Scarred: are you serious? This should have been on Load. Bad lyrics, beyond lazy drumming, but apparently Hammett flexed some muscle, cause, again, his solo is pretty sweet. He seems to be the saving grace on this record.

That Day That Never Comes: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, really? That'd have been better off using the Drum Kit From Hell, and just sampling the drums. You can start to tell at this point that they picked out their favorite songs from the the first three records and tried to rewrite them. I'm guessing this was a sad attempt at Fade to Black. You can totally tell what influence Kirk had on this record. They're the only good parts. The solo is ok on this one, its hard to solo over shit. I noticed here that the guitar tone on this record is CRAP! Line 6 makes good gear James, learn how to use it!

All Nightmare Long: it seems now that Robert has as much pull as Jason did. They get two or three ideas in on a record, and that's it. After that, its James and Lars (and hopefully a little Kirk). Maybe we are spoiled now days. Lots of good drummers who understand that intensity is key. Lar's missed that boat. The drumming is so far beyond lazy, its pathetic. I think he may have had a Red Bull on the day he recorded this song, cause its the best of a bad bunch. And again, the lack of production seeps through here, and the lyrics are retarded. Solo owned. This should have been a Kirk Hammet solo album, and just had him solo everywhere there were vocals.

Cyanide: This seemed to be one of the three ideas that were obviously Robert's. Not a bad track, not a great one. This probably had a place on Puppets or Justice. Although, I'd die happy if i didn't have to hear the lyrical exhange with the words 'Suicide' and 'Die'. That's beyond played out. Not to mention retarded. Solo=owned. Kirk showed up to play but no one else did.

The Unforgiven III: This is where i will start to blame Rick Rubin. I never ever ever ever ever though in a million years I'd hear a PIANO on a Metallica song. Thanks Rick. The rest is too easy here. The song is terrible. Worse than anything on Load. Solo was sweet, but even Kirk couldn't save this piece of shit.

The Judas Kiss: Not terrible. Could've been on Justice. However, lyrics are still dumb. For the love of God, just let Kirk do it. Just let Kirk do the whole album. Give him a computer, a Tone Port, and the dfh. You'll get the best Metallica album ever written.

Suidice & Redemption: Finally!!!!! NO VOCALS!!!!! The last of Robert's ideas I'm assuming. A throw back to some old Cliff Burton instrumentals I imagine. Something is telling me they didn't play to a click track... Maybe it was a shitty guitar tone over an even worse drum sound. Who engineered this album, Lars?

My Apocalypse: A hint of Slayer here. Albiet, a small one, but its still there. Same shitty Rick Rubin recording, but the vocal delivery is great for thrash. Lyrics are, again, dumb, but the delivery made up for some of that. Solo, again, owned. If Kirk wasn't in this band, I would have expected this album to be from a young local band here in Omaha.

So, to sum up: I learned a few things by listening to this. One, Rick Rubin hires shitty engineers OR does a shit job himself. Two, Kirk really is still the shit. Three, imagine what Slayer would have sounded like with a better producer!!!!!!! Four, James's needs to stop writing the lyrics. And finally, Five, thrash metal musicians just don't age well musically. I kept thinking to myself through this whole record 'shit, Lamb of God could have done this better'. one is left to wonder, did they do this because they really felt it, or because they needed a paycheck?

I don't know, should i keep doing this? I will do it on the next Guns & Roses record, Chinese Democracy, because that is waaaaay too easy, but if you guys are in any way curious, I can do this on a regular basis. lemme know.

d

hahahahaha

these pictures were too funny! working on a lot of acoustic stuff. trying to figure out originals we want to play at the show. still writing a lot of the heavier stuff too. remember what i said about this stuff coming in cycles? I went through another bit of a dry spell where i wasn't writing anything that was any good. but, i'm back on track now. i'm hoping to write a lot this weekend, acoustic and otherwise. we'll see.

d

and here is yet another example of my lame photoshop skills. i'm getting better though. anyways... i hooked up a twitter site for the band. if you have never heard of twitter, its pretty cool actually. its considered 'mini blogging' and it will update to your cell phone. so, if i was to post something (its never more than 150 characters, i tried), you can set it up so it goes to your cell phone as a text. its pretty badass. you should sign up. its free for fuck's sake. i have my own personal one too. that was some entertaining shit. here's my personal one. http://twitter.com/dcdownshift

and here's the band
http://twitter.com/blackonhigh

check it out. its not as dumb as it may seem.

d

NEW SHOW!!!

Well, here it is guys. The acoustic show. If you have kept tabs on BOH for awhile, you'll know that we wrote a lot of the songs acoustically in the beginning. As we started transferring them over to electric, we started writing that way too. Its pretty obvious which songs were written which way. But, now, we are writing both ways, so its double barrell. This show is gonna be kick ass man. I've waited along time to do a show like this, and i'm pretty stoked it finally came around. We had always talked about doing a show like this, but didn't know who would fit. I happen to be talking to Ed from DiFi about it one night, and he was on the same page, so we decided to do it. We figured 'why not'? We are going to do originals and covers, I think both bands will play for about an hour or so, then we may have like a 'combined' cover type set, and Ed may do some on his own, who knows. Whatever works at the time! Its going to be a laid back, good time. I'm excited. You should go! And if there is anything you want to hear us 'try' and play, shoot me an email or email us through the myspace! And yes, the flyer is an testament to my lack of photoshop skills. but, hey, i tried.

d