Book Review: The Heroin Diaries - A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rockstar: 2 comments

The Heroin Diaries - A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rockstar, Nikki Sixx with Ian Gihins, Pocket Books, 2008.

I am currently waiting to write something about one of the most hardworking and dedicated metal band from Malaysia which goes by the name of Hayagriva and I am currently doing some proper research about the band and until I completed this mini investigation, I shall write about something else so that The Bullet Belt would not end up being a lost work like most of my other one hit wonder blogs.

This is not actually a book, but more of a collection of entries from Nikki Sixx’s 1987 diary with additional commentaries by various people who were mentioned in his entries. This is like an additional text book for the hard hitting New York Times bestseller The Dirt, the complete autobiography of his world famous hard rock band, Motley Crue, straight from the horse’s mouth. I will be reviewing The Dirt later. Now, let us focus on The Heroin Diaries – A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rockstar by Nikki Sixx with Ian Gihins.

Nikki Sixx was and still is the bassist and principle songwriter of Motley Crue, one of the most influential and prominent hard rock bands in the history of American rock and roll, if the world would be an overstatement. Their insubordinate and wild attitude both in life and music, on and off the stage, was the elementary constituent that shaped the whole music industry in the 1980’s. Cock Rock, Glam Metal, Hair Metal, Rock Kangkang, Rock Paras, call it what ever you want but it all undeniably started and revolved around bands like Crue when Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were too busy knocking each other off the stage.

Through this diary we can dive deep into Nikki Sixx’s life of rock n roll, booze, drugs and sex. Most of the entries contained either about Sixx doing drugs, trying to be sober, preparing to go on stage and a bit about his fellow band members here and there. Each entries comes with additional commentaries from his band members, former managers, ex-girlfriends and Sixx himself, trying to put in little bits of details about what really happened on various events mentioned in each of the entries. That very much helped the readers to understand what in the name of hell is he talking about.

The lay out of this book is all over the place so you really need to focus on what you read. Ghoulish arts and drawings here and there and most of the contents were either black, white or red in color. It was a bit of a turn off for me because more than once that these horrendous lay outs distracted my eyes from reading the texts. Like I said, this book is just a supplemental read for The Dirt. For those who wanted to know more about Motley Crue, I would suggest that reading The Dirt would be more than enough. For collectors, this is a must.

I bought this book for RM57.50 from Kinokuniya, KLCC on 13th February 2009.

Bands - Filsufatia: 5 comments

Would it make me a self boasting basket case for writing about my own band? I love writing and I love reading my own writings. I have always been my own blog audience. Although, this blog was created for one straightforward reason; so that I can write something about Zubirun and Qharinth, I still need to consume and utilize these empty spaces, at least for the time being, before I have enough materials to write about the above mentioned bands. Until then, I shall write what ever I deem fit for The Bullet Belt.

Filsufatia is my one man band and it has been in existence for quite a while now. If my memory served me correctly, I formed Filsufatia out of boredom, as a bedroom band project, somewhere later in 2004. It all started when I first managed to get my hands on this one cool home studio software called Fruity Loops Studio. Well, it is not until later that I found out that I could actually utilize this loop program to create heavy metal. I started using Fruity Loops Studio since 2003. Back in those days, it was all about RnB and Hip Hop music (hell, I still do the normal music arrangements once in a while). One fine day, I found out that there were some of the loops available in the program resembled the sound of a distorted electric guitar and if utilized and mixed properly, I can actually emulate the sound of a real band. I kind of freaked out. To cut the story short, the rest was history.

I always wanted to be in a metal band because there were always a plentiful of crazy riffs and melodies flying in and out of my head. I have been in a number of bands before but they were either punk, hardcore or pop and never metal. The satisfaction of playing live instruments was there but not in terms of the need to express my heavy metal creativity and originality. I need an outlet to express this fervor for grunting vocals, orchestral arrangements, haunting chapels, dark riffs and corpse paints, thus the formation of Filsufatia as a foundation to gratify my metallic lust and growling desires was the most perfect venue. It was the best venue for me because using computer programs would mean I can continue doing this on my own without the need to go through the painstaking task to recruit band members and when ever I feel like I want to compose songs, I just turn on the computer.

I have been releasing demos every year since 2006 and it was loads of fun reading comments and feedbacks, be it negative or positive, from those who have been kind enough to spend their precious time listening to my music. You can always sell tons and tons of records and get a huge paycheck for your work, but at the end of the day I personally believe that the best accolade for a musician is when people tend to appreciate and value his works.

Orchestrated under the influences of three legendary home grown bands in the likes of Sil Khannaz, As Sahar and Riusgnal, I do believe that, with the right formula and ingredients, local bands can be as much as fundamental as any metal bands coming from the outskirt of Europe, United States or the isle of Great Britain. Originality is and has always been the key for any local bands to smell the scent of success. For instance, I am still in awe each and every time I put on Pendita Gila. One word that I can use to describe that record is precision. The riffs were very much haunting, mind sticking, awkwardly groovy and the fact that they used a drum machine made the record even more defined and original than any other metal records available during that time, locally or internationally.

As for As Sahar and Riusgnal, it was the idea that made them into icons. The music was a beautiful amalgamation of brutality and straight forward melodies, although not as original but it was the fact that both of these bands introduced the idea of incorporating Malay occultism and mysticism in their lyrics with heavy metal that had made them into pioneering bands. It was really an eye opener and it caught my attention. It was from the brilliant and luminous idea of these bands that made the music eventually evolved into a whole new heavy metal genre, what is now called Eastern metal. That’s originality my friends. I even dare to say that it was the idea to incorporate Ulek Mayang into thrash metal that made Cromok ever so popular with the Australian Metal crowd back in the late 80s. Rather than turning to Lavey’s Satanic Bible for lyrics, you can always turn to your own backyard.

With Filsufatia, originality is still way ahead of me. I am still struggling to capture the grandiose of heavy metal music but who knows maybe after a while, after I have exhausted all these crazy riffs inside my head, I will finally be able to see a point where I can be original with my music.

Filsufatia on MySpace.

East Coast Extreme Metal Assault - Kelantan Metal Army: 2 comments

It is obvious that my first rant would be on Kelantan Metal Scene, my good old home town. I am quite delighted when I first encountered a number of serious Kelantanese bands trying to make it big in the Malaysian metal scene. When I was still living in Kota Bharu, punks and skinheads were all over the place and to find one decent metal head back then was like finding a needle in a haystack.

It is always amusing to have in mind the fact that one of the first few Malaysian metal bands who were responsible for the pioneering of Death Metal music in Malaysia and one of the first to release a death metal album was a bunch of long haired metal loving pretty boys from Kelantan, Suffercation. Suffercation’s first album, Days of Darkness which was released in 1992 was the most brutal, highly technical and most intense, not to mention the top notch quality, death metal record ever to came out from Malaysia back in the old days. Suffercation took the scene by storm.

Positioned north east of peninsular Malaysia, Kelantan was and still regarded as a very socially conservative and Islamic state with open metal shows, among others, were constantly monitored and rushed by the intolerant local authorities. Being under the administration of the theocratic Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party for more than 18 years, Kelantanese metalheads had to put great effort to keep abreast with the contemporary growth of the Malaysian metal in general.

Over the past few years, despite the fact that they were under constant surveillance of the bigoted religious authorities, Kelantan Metal scene managed to survive and evolve within the rampant and extensive obstacles thrown to impede the movement. The Kelantanese metalheads even managed to systematize and organize themselves into one vigorous terror front which goes by the name of Kelantan Metal Army, a small dedicated group of metal enthusiasts committed solely for the elevation and appreciation of extreme music in a land where no music could thrive.

With strings of successful heavy metal gigs and their annual Extreme Terrorism metal shows, Kelantan Metal Army earned their much deserved reputation from their fellow metal compatriots for their never ending efforts and endeavors, trying to bring in renowned Malaysian metal bands to play in Kota Bharu.

Newer local bands under the wings of Kelantan Metal Army, in the likes of In Torment (brutal death metal), Dark Regime (brutal death metal), Incarcerate (death metal), Diman (melodic black metal) and Slaughter Soul (melodic death metal/heavy metal), just to name a few, were proud torchbearers trying to put Kelantan on the map of local extreme music following the path paved by their older sibling, Suffercation.

All hail Kelantan Metal!

Kelantan Metal Army on Myspace.