Re: I've started seriously working on this metal thing.
I see you like the ones that throw 4/4 completely out the window, and don't even stay in whatever time they're in for more than a few bars at any point.
Why am I not surprised by this?
I think those two may actually be my favorite as well. It's funny, I haven't seriously played this sort of stuff in ages, or written it in even longer, so your guess is as good as mine as to where it ends up. I suppose I'm trying to straddle a bit of a line between melody and dissonance (particularly on the above-mentioned), and I'm at a bit of a loss re: vocals. Whatever winds up on there in the end will hopefully work though; metal as a whole is not vocal-centric music, and while I've considered putting clean singing over the whole thing just to be a prick about it (see also: liberal use of standard-tuned things that say Fender on the headstock) I suspect a good portion of it would be best served with some combination of DM growls, ugly yelling, Fields Of The Nephilim/Tom Waits-style gravelyness, industrial distortion, and whatever else. We'll see.
Related: I'd love to have a real drummer on this, but finding someone who can A) play it, B) is sufficiently un-flakey to actually do the sessions, and C) is within my meager budget, is probably unlikely.
I credit the Sansmap, and the fact I had to crank the treble on said to compensate for the dead strings on my 'Wick at the moment. Which is fine for mellower stuff, but more abrasive genres generally demand fresh strings. Still, it works out, and I'm pleased with the overall clarity of the bass tone even allowing for that. Also, keeping everything in standard or D rather than seriously downtuning allows me to take advantage of the 5-string's 5-stringness. It's nice to hit a note two octaves below the guitars every once in a while.