Some of the musical things I'm doing.
The Grand Inquisitor on Myspace
I'm currently the sole individual behind The Grand Inquisitor, a project influenced by metal and classical music. Other influences include literature and philosophy (such as the ideas of Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer). At the moment the songs are fairly complete in conception but are only slowly appearing in real-live recorded form with instruments and vocals and everything.
Interested in helping out? Can you play an instrument, or can you help record music? let me know! Remove the X's from this email address to get my real address and email me:
XroXdkXXXaroXXmanoXXvichX@XgXmailX.XXXcomX
The ideas are there. While I'm still finishing up lyrics-writing over the next few weeks, working out some kinks in composition, and practicing playing, it's mostly ready and I hope to make something happen this summer. My goal in that would be to make a demo consisting at least of these songs:
To listen to some MIDI songs, please go to the Songs page.
I take particular interest in how metal can be an art form, evolving to be more like classical, and may be a classical music of sorts for a new culture, which will take over when the current one dies.
Sometimes there are songs for which I can't find tabs on the internet. So I decided to tab them out and make these metal classics available for others to learn and put them on MetalTabs. My first post is "Magical Shadows of a Tragic Past" by Mutiilation, which is still awaiting archival. I'm working on tabbing the rest of Vampires of Black Imperial Blood. Afterwards, other projects I'd like to try are Graveland's Thousand Swords, Gontyna Kry's Welowie, and some songs by Sabbat, Sigh, and Summoning.
My first publically available song tab has been posted on MetalTabs:
"Blood of Christians on My Sword", Thousand Swords, Graveland
I also take particular interest in Japanese metal and how it was borrowed from the West, how it was assimilated, and its interaction with both Western culture and traditional Japanese culture, especially religion.
(NOTE: The following project has been on hiatus for awhile.)
I sometimes had trouble explaining metal to Japanese friends. Many of them don't recognize the term and haven't heard of even such mainstream acts as Black Sabbath or Metallica, so I got the impression more had to be done to make people over there aware, despite the existence of important and influential metal acts like Sigh, Sabbat, or Intestine Baalism. For those interested in metal not only as entertainment but as an artform, I think Spinoza Ray Prozak's essay "The Philosophy of Heavy Metal" is still the best explanation of extreme metal. Normally native speakers undertake translation, but since I don't know of anyone else taking on this job, I decided to put my non-native Japanese skills to the test and get help and advice from native speakers when I can. If you're a native speaker of Japanese, especially one knowledgeable about music and / or philosophy, I'd like to hear your criticisms and corrections. Please don't just say it doesn't make sense; please offer constructive criticism, like another way to translate what I'm trying to say, or specific grammar corrections. If you want, I will also acknowledge / credit you in my translation. To this point ANUS seems to speak mostly to Euro-American audiences, and I hope that this will not only explain metal to interested people, but help introduce ANal ideas to Japan and the rest of Asia as well, since many Chinese and Koreans also learn Japanese.
I will post parts of my translation here when I'm able to translated a complete paragraph to my satisfaction.
UPDATE: Here's the first paragraph:へヴィー・メタルの哲学.
I also did the Japanese translation of the International Day of Slayer page. Naturally, if you are a native speaker of Japanese and have seen a problem with my translation, email me so I can correct it.
Reguándóy domum