Who am I?

Personal Journey

I guess there are two sides I should shine a light on:

First the music side of my work and secondly the writing side.

I think the writing side is a lot easier so I'll start there.

Like many introverted children I spent a lot of my time reading and while I rarely find the time nowadays to really do this, I missed the time when I spent multiple days in a row doing nothing but reading. And like the nerd I am, it was almost exclusively fantasy or sci-fi.

I am also the kind of reader who needs large stories. Rarely am I happy with just a single 300 page novel. I need more.

I can't really tell what books shaped me the most, there's too many I've read and hopefully much more to come but if I had to put some recommendations out there it would be Die Zwerge by Markus Heitz, Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and the Askir series by Richard Schwartz.

My first steps in writing were back in school when I wanted to write a sci-fi novel that didn't contain any human characters. And while I do not dare read it at this point lest I die of cringe, I think the idea is still good. I even made it beyond 100 pages.

I remember taking notes for the next chapter after handing in an exam early because I wasn't allowed to leave.

At some point I dropped that project and wanted to write a list of interconnected short stories about multiple worlds. Think a little Lovecraft with some Planescape. Just a little one off with a fantastical world and maybe a single idea I want to explore, then it's off to the next.

My current project Weltentod actually started quite some time ago in 2016 or 17. And since I can be extremely stubborn I'm still clinging to it and expanding and refining it.

Now for my musical journey.

I was never actually that invested in music as a child. I didn't really listen to anything until I was like 15 or 16, I think. I was in love with a Queen best of album my parents owned but that was pretty much it.

I discovered Iron Maiden through the The Best of the Beast album. I was fascinated by the album artworks for a while at that point, particularly The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, but I never listened to any of them. Just took out my dad's CDs and looked at them.

I took the album onto a skiing trip and listened to it on the bus. That is where I fell in love with metal. For the next few weeks I was so pumped. I didn't know music could tell stories and paint images.

For the longest time I only listened to Maiden. I then gradually expanded. For some time I had a Manowar phase I'm not particularly proud of.

The next really important album is Beyond the Red Mirror by Blind Guardian. I don't even really remember why I bought that particular album. I think I had some money and went on EMP. I bought a red flannel shirt, a beanie and that album.

I think I remember a German Metal YouTuber talking about BG and I just bought it on a whim. To this day it's one of my favorite albums and definitely my favorite Blind Guardian album.

Now we're getting closer to the end of my time in school which marks 2 important events: Me buying a bass guitar and getting into harsh vocals.

I think EMP had a PR thing where you could win either a guitar or bass guitar and I entered. That was preceded by a long decision time whether I wanted to learn to play guitar or bass guitar.

I didn't win but in the end I bought a cheap bass guitar and that set me up on the path I am on now.

As for harsh vocals, that is purely Jonathan's fault. The Anthropocene Extinction by Cattle Decapitation had just come out and he sent me a link to Manufactured Extinct. I was hooked.

Here I am now. 10 years later. And I still can't do those melodic highs!