The Warpriest

Short story: I’m a vintage musician writing heavy metal with a doom vibe in my spare time. Lyrically I focus on fantasy type lyrics that are allegories of modern life. I write, sing, record and play all the instruments.

Long story: I’ve been playing music for over 30 years now. I started playing bass and eventually moved to guitar and singing later on. My inspiration comes from anything that has a great riff from the 60’s on up until now. The bands that I keep in constant rotation are Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Dio, Witch Mountain, The Skull, Randy Rose, the Sword and Orchid.

History: Back in 6th grade, chorus was mandatory at my school, and I hated it. So the opportunity came up to join concert band. I wanted to play the cool instruments, like trumpet! 😀 (Or drums or the saxophone) I ended up with the trombone (cue sad trombone). We didn’t have a lot of money, so I ended up with this rusted, beat up one in a huge case that would pop open on occasion and spill everything out. Like the time I was hurrying through a cross walk.

A couple of years later, one of my friends that played sax in the band wanted to start up a jazz band. He asked me to play bass. I was game. So we hit all the shops and bought me a cheap Gibson Epiphone J style bass (with a nice case that I still have) and a lousy Fender practice amp. That was the end of the band and the beginning of my love of playing. I still have that bass. It’s dismantled and the frets ripped out, but I still got it. I spent the next few years sitting in my room trying to figure out how to play it. I didn’t have a good ear for picking up songs, so I stuck with noodling out my own. I sucked. And my neighbor let me know by banging on the wall. Or maybe that was appreciation? It wasn’t until I met a coworker that played guitar that I was able to jam with someone and learn a couple of tunes. I think my first one was “Rip it Out” by Ace Frehley. At the time metal was big in the 80’s. Especially hair metal. I gravitated towards bands that were a little rougher, like The Cult and Guns N Roses.

By the early 90’s I was in full swing playing in a couple of bands here and there. I had bought a used Les Paul copy, 4 track and a drum machine, and was trying to figure out how to record my own songs. It was a brutal mess. Living in South Florida at the time I found it hard to find musicians that wanted to take things seriously. I don’t blame them, the sun and beaches are only five minutes away. Grunge had now hit in force and a lot of hair metal types went to lick their wounds and talk about the glory days. I embraced it. Some of it hearkened back to 60’s and 70’s and had some grittiness to it. Sadly I missed out on a lot of underground bands that were making some great music an wouldn’t discover them until the internet came along.

Towards the end of that decade I focused more on my career and family, so I put away a lot of my equipment, and would dust it off now and then. My kids thought I was a rock star at those times. 🙂

Finally i got tired of not doing anything, so I got all the equipment out, opened up Garageband and start seeing what I could do. At first I was happy to just write some songs again. Then I decided to push them to sound better. The result is what you are listening to now.