Have you ever considered making a heavy metal track of space music for Star Citizen?

I play in a heavy metal band. That's a surprise for you. I do play. It's a local band. It started because they called me two or three years ago asking if I could help them make the orchestral arrangements. And I said okay. I always loved metal. I'm a metalhead. I love all good music. There's bad metal and there's good metal. I love good metal. And there's a new band right now whose singer I really, really love hearing, which is Spiritbox. It's freaking amazing. If you haven't heard her, you have to hear her.

So they asked me, and I said, okay, send me the songs. The first impression I had was that the sound was very unpolished. They recorded it in their living room. But there's a very deep meaning in each song. The band leader is very kind, and it has to do with his mom's death. So he created a band, and the first track that I got was a letter from him to his mother in heaven. So it was metal, but not just nonsense metal or metal just to say bad things. It was metal with some soul in it, and I really liked it. So I mixed it. It was terrible because the stems were not professionally recorded. But I mixed it with all my plugins and sent it to them, without orchestra, just synths and everything, and they really liked it because it sounded almost like an album already. And meanwhile they invited me in because they enjoyed what I'd been doing with them. When they invited me into the band, I said I didn't want to perform. I just wanted to be the side guy that would arrange stuff, but they really insisted, so I'm a pianist, and I play synth and piano on stage for them. I don't think metal should have a big thing on piano, at least not in this band. I think it's good to be there to give a modern edge with the synths and the production. There's a video of me playing with that band. At some point I will share it. I think we will have a video clip soon, but I haven't had time to work with them for quite some time because I've been busy on Star Citizen, because that's our priority, of course.

But it's good because it gives me a new perspective on how they think about music. The drummer is not too musically educated. The bassist is now his son, who plays very well and is very musically educated. The singer is a COVID nurse. She actually volunteered to be one of the first nurses to go against COVID here, which is amazing, because at the time no one knew how bad it was. She's shy, but when she gets on stage, she sings quite well. One of the guitarists knows how to read music and plays well. The other one just plays by ear. So it's interesting to see how all those musicalities work. And I like to work in a team, so that's a good team.