User:Warxull/sandbox
Castrofate | |
|---|---|
| Background information | |
| Origin | Elmont, New York, United States |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 2007–present |
| Labels |
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| Members |
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| Past members | Rob Menak The Predator Vin Cin Lewis Rosado Dok Dwyer Tom DeFazio |
| Website | |
Castrofate is an American heavy metal band formed in Elmont, New York. The group was formed in 2007 by vocalist/guitarist/studio bassist and founder Danny Castro. Castrofate's ever-evolving style of complex arrangements features technicality, fast rhythm sections, groove sections, and other unanticipated changes; themes of science fiction, death, war, and religion are prominent in the group's lyrics.
In 2007, the band, consisting of Danny Castro on vocals, guitars, & bass, and Rob Menak on drums, released its debut album Awakening of the Beast on the record label Cataclysmic Metal Records. The second album Cataclysmic Insanity, was released in 2008, the third iHuman in 2009, the fourth Systematic Suicide in 2011, and the fifth Castrofate in 2014.
As of 2014, Castrofate has released five studio albums, toured 8 countries across 3 continents, and filmed 3 music videos of songs from the fourth and fifth albums.
History
[edit]2007: Formation and Awakening of the Beast
[edit]The band officially began when Danny Castro released the first album Awakening of the Beast on Cataclysmic Metal Records on April 24, 2007. It was a collection of songs that came to him when he decided he wanted to have a steady band to move forward and grow with. Danny's cousin, Rob Menak, agreed to help make the album, performing the session drums and recording it at his house using Cubase. Rob helped out further performing a couple of shows with the band. Around this time Danny had taken guitar lessons from Alex Skolnick of Testament (band) who helped a lot with his bending notes in solos and keeping them on-key and stable. The lyrics were primarily sci-fi, and the cover artist was Mattias Noren from Sweden, who also did covers for many other bands including Jag Panzer and Tierra Santa (band). Mattias based the design on Danny's skull tattoo, and they both designed the Castrofate logo; Mattias made the logo of the Castro part when the band was almost called that, taking influence from band names like Danzig (band) and Dio (band). Ultimately, Danny decided it didn't sound enough like a band name, but already had the Castro logo. When a friend suggested he add a word to it like 'fire', Danny was intrigued. Deciding that "Castrofire" would sound too much like a power metal band, when the music draws more influence from thrash and heavy metal and not only power metal, he went through all other word additions until he came to 'fate', and liking how Castrofate sounded. Scribbling the 'fate' part onto a piece of paper with a pen, Danny scanned it and emailed it to Mattias instructing him to put it right on the end of Castro, and thus the first Castrofate logo was born. The logo went on to grace the cover of all five studio albums. A series of shows and festivals were performed in NYC & NJ in 2007/2008, culminating in the bands biggest show to date, opening for Testament (band) at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ, before releasing the second album shortly after.
2008: Cataclysmic Insanity and the Ecuador & European Tours
[edit]The writing began in late 2007 after meeting Vin Cin of Electric Plant Studios in Brooklyn, NY at one of the shows in Brooklyn which he was running sound at. Asked if he knew a good session drummer to help, he said he had the perfect guy, and he wasn't kidding. Known only as The Predator, the session drummer had been on a track recorded at Electric Plant for a soundtrack, which was nominated for a grammy. Upon jamming with The Predator, Danny was completely blown away. The human machine leaves jaws dropped whenever people witness him playing, and he knew exactly what was in Danny's head drum wise whenever presented with a riff. He went on to record the drum tracks on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Castrofate records as well. Late 2007 also saw the addition of bassist Lewis Rosado who ended up performing on 3 of the songs on Cataclysmic Insanity as they were the only 3 he knew at the time of recording because they were the ones that were part of the live set including first album songs. The bass on the majority of the album was performed by Danny Castro with one song featuring bass by Vin. As the band had no lead guitarist yet at the time of recording, Vin started getting solo ideas for certain parts in the songs and when asked if he could add some guest solos, Danny told him basically "be my guest, go off!". The solos came out so good that Danny extended Vin the offer of joining him in the trade-off solo section spots, and playing most of the solos on the album on parts that Danny had not yet come up with solos for, and Vin was ecstatic. It showed in his playing. So Vin effectively rounded out the "line-up" of the second album and inspired the band photos in the booklet, as Danny had wanted it to be a 4-piece band anyway in the first place. The line-up of Cataclysmic Insanity performed at L'Amour (music venue) opening for Raven (band) and the band used photos taken outside L'Amour (music venue) for the booklet. Cataclysmic Insanity was the only Castrofate album recorded on digital analog equipment at Electric Plant Studios, before Vin upgraded to Pro-Tools.
The album was released on July 5, 2008 with AJ Hauser who designed the packaging of Awakening of the Beast, this time not only designing the package but the album cover as well. Lyrically, the album serves as a sequel to the "Moment of Cataclysm" story which began on the first album. The title track "Awakening of the Beast" as well as the song "Crossing Infinity" tie into the story that would encompass the Cataclysmic Insanity album in a full concept album equal to the story. After some shows in NY including a return to L'Amour (music venue) opening for Incantation (band), Castrofate embarked on their first tour which was also their first international tour, leaving the country and heading for Ecuador in South America. Lewis was from Ecuador, and had the contacts to get the tour booked. Ecuador was a great experience and a successful tour, the band performed headlining shows to several hundred fans at each show, in Guayaquil, Azogues, Machala, Gualaceo, Riobamba, and Loja, and stayed in Cuenca between shows. Upon returning to the states Castrofate headlined and won the Project Independent battle of the bands tour show, and went on to play several NY/NJ/PA shows including a NYC show opening for Dog Fashion Disco at Sullivan Hall in NYC. Danny had begun coming up with ideas for the third album while on tour in Ecuador. Late in 2008, Danny fired Lewis after recurring drug and theft problems, and John Orsi began performing live with the band, as well as Jaimen Shinn who had filled in with the band while opening for Testament (band) and Incantation (band) previously. The band performing as a 3-piece opened for Ill Nino and Otep at the Starland Ballroom, Virgin Steele and 25 Ta Life at Sundance in Rocky Point, Long Island, and several more NY/NJ/PA shows before embarking on the European Tour in February 2009. Performing 18 shows in 22 days and sleeping in bunks on a tour bus, co-headlining under the band Master (American band), this tour was another great experience. Europe (Germany, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic), and the UK (England & Scotland) in many ballrooms and clubs. Once again Danny was coming up with new material on tour, and upon returning to the US and performing at the Crazy Donkey in Farmingdale, Long Island opening for Destruction, returned to Vin Cin's Electric Plant in Brooklyn, NY to record the 3rd album iHuman.
2009: iHuman and the US Tour
[edit]With live fill-in members John Orsi and Jaimen Shinn focusing on continuing their own musical endeavors, Danny Castro proceeded to bring the new music to The Predator and Vin Cin at Electric Plant. With the updated recording equipment at Electric Plant, the 3rd album iHuman was the first of 2 Castrofate albums to be recorded using Pro-Tools. Vin once again played about half or almost half of the solos on the album, a little bit less than the previous album, and Danny handled most of the solos, as well as all of the bass. Musically Danny drew more influence from Danzig (band), Motorhead, Lamb of God (band) and 90's Metallica on this album, adding to the mix of thrash metal influences from Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer, and continuing the vocal-line progression from album to album, after taking vocal lessons from Breck Alan in NYC. The third album iHuman featured cover art by Eliran Kantor who has worked with Testament and many others. The lyrics of the first 6 songs deal with different things such as the comic book character Wolverine (character) in the first song "Freak" and a Star Trek Original Series episode on song 5 "Game Over" as well as a true story that happened that year about the rape and murder of a girl at Yale who's body was found in the wall at the Universally, in the song "Murder At Yale" in which it becomes a government conspiracy. After a sequel of sorts to the first album instrumental "Silent Agony" with the instrumental "Silent Lunacy", the album ends with the "Moment of Cataclysm" Part 3 Trilogy which tells the 3rd part of the "Moment of Cataclysm" story in 3 songs. Upon its release on July 25, 2009, Castrofate embarked on a tour around the US, hitting VA, OR, TX, PA, several shows in Brooklyn NY, NYC and the first show in upstate NY at The Chance in Poughkeepsie NY opening for ZO2, and culminating at The Knitting Factory in Los Angeles, CA. The live line-up for the first half of the tour featured drummer Charlie Zeleny of Whiplash (band), Jordan Rudess, Blotted Science (Alex Webster & Ron Jarzombek), and Rich Skibinsky of Suspyre. Half-way through the tour, Danny became fed-up with the poor performances of the members and replaced them with top musicians including studio drummer The Predator and bassist Michael James of Psychoprism, Within Another, Seventh Calling, and Death Mask. This was a stellar line-up who finished out the tour with excellent performances of the songs from the first 3 Castrofate albums played correctly, and the occasional Metallica cover.
2010-2011: Relocating to Binghamton, NY and the Systematic Suicide album
[edit]After moving upstate to Binghamton, NY, Danny Castro took the search for the right band members for Castrofate to a new place. While searching, Danny began writing the 4th album. Realizing that already having 3 albums out and observing the release scheduling of the bands that influenced him, he decided to start taking more time perfecting the music. Between writing, Castrofate performed many local live shows auditioning members for the band. In 2011 with 13 songs written and the most of any Castrofate album, Danny returned to Electric Plant in Brooklyn, NY with The Predator to record the album using Electric Plant's Pro-Tools set-up once again. Systematic Suicide ended up being a very old-school thrash metal featuring a lot of fast songs. Only 4 of the songs had the slower groove feels, and "United" would have been a 5th, but deciding 5 was one-too-many slower songs, Danny shelved "United" until the next album, where it eventually fit perfectly on the 5th album. The 4th album ended up being more like Awakening of the Beast in that not only did Castro perform all of the bass again (as on iHuman as well), he also performed all of the guitar solos again with no guest guitar solos. Subconsciously feeling that the search for a stable-lineup might be futile, and resigning to the fact that it might always have to be live fill-in musicians, he entered Electric Plant with all of the guitar solos written and figured it might just be easier to perform live with fill-in rhythm guitarists. Vin Cin did end up playing a guest keyboard part on the album, in the outdo of the song "Fear of the End", and there was also a guest violin solo in "Behind Our Eyes" which was performed by local Binghamton engineer Ryan Parks who had helped with pre-production demos for the album. Those were 2 out of the 4 slower songs on the album, while the other 8 songs were consistently fast old-school thrashers very much in the style of old 80s Metallica. The thrash-fest of Systematic Suicide was released on October 2, 2011, once again featuring cover art by Eliran Kantor (Testament (band)). The first show supporting this album was a show at BB King's opening for the Metallica/Beatles mash-up cover band Beatallica with returning live fill-in member John Orsi this time on live rhythm guitar, as well as Michael James returning on live bass. One of the NY shows in late 2011 featured the return of Rob Menak to help out once more filling in on drums. Rob did an excellent job learning songs from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Castrofate albums and performing a set of songs from all four albums. Late 2011 saw the filming of the very first Castrofate Music Video, for the first song off Systematic Suicide entitled "Revelation (Truth Be Told)". Still on his own in the band, Danny flew to San Diego to film the video with top video director Joe Pine of JNP Productions.
2012-2014: Performing, writing, searching for members, and the 5th self-titled ‘’’’’Castrofate’’’’’ album
[edit]2012 began with more local upstate NY shows, a show in Connecticut, opening for Possessed at BB King's in NYC, and the only Castrofate performance at the upstate festival Nikstock featuring Dok Dwyer on bass who had been playing local shows in Kirkwood, NY near Binghamton earlier in the year as well. Danny Castro had also flown Joe Pine of JNP Productions to NY earlier in the year to direct the second Castrofate Music Video, which was track 2 the title track of the Systematic Suicide album. This time the video also featured occasional live-drummer John Lonergan playing along to The Predator's drum tracks in the video. Bassist Dok Dwyer went on to be a member of the band for 2 years and performing on the 5th album. The self-titled Castrofate began when Danny Castro brought most of his new music to his cousin Rob Menak who was open to jamming and writing. With Rob, Danny arranged 7 out of the 8 new songs for the next album along with one of the songs from the DC solo album, before Rob got very busy once again with his career and life. Danny decided to go back to 8-song albums, figuring that some of the most classic and timeless albums had only 8 songs, so why make it too long. Simultaneously Danny had been writing a solo album and a secret project album, each 8 songs, and together with the 5th Castrofate album, would make 24 songs in total. For the solo album and secret project Danny worked with The Predator once again for the drums/arrangements. this included the other 7 songs of the DC solo album, the 8 songs of the secret project, and one song for the Castrofate album. The idea was to have Rob do guest drums on one song of the solo album, and for The Predator to do guest drums on one song of the Castrofate album, to mix it up, and so Danny & The Predator brought the 7 DC solo album songs, the one Castrofate song, and the 8 secret project songs to Vin's Electric Plant and laid down the drums. The Predator, who is notorious for knocking out incredible drum tracks within 3 hours for one album, and mostly first takes, knocked out half the material for these 16 songs on a Friday night, and the other half the next morning. Danny then took the drum tracks back upstate to local producer Nick Killmeier at Crossfire Productions in Kirkwood, NY and began to work on the rest of the tracking for the solo album and secret project in November of 2012. The recording set-up there was Cubase which was what was used to record the first album Awakening of the Beast. Dok was brought in to the studio in December to record bass on the song "New Religion" which would eventually be track 2 on the new Castrofate album, and Danny laid down the vocals on it. Around this time Danny also decided to create some tribute band alter-egos for Castrofate, where he would take the band out under different monikers to cover songs and continue the live band member auditions. The main one was the tribute to early Metallica called Hit The Lights as this was closest to the Castrofate style 4-piece line-up with him on vocals & guitars, but he also created the moniker of Devilock to pay tribute to The Misfits and War Pigs to play tribute to early Ozzy-era Black Sabbath. With Devilock and War Pigs though, he only sang freely without playing guitar as well, which is also the idea of the solo band. One of the live members who played some of the tribute band gigs was a lead guitarist named Tom DeFazio. Tom had professed to being a huge fan of Castrofate's music and so he was invited in January 2013 to add a guest solo to "New Religion" completing the song as a teaser for the album which would be released 12 months later. Dok contributed the lyric writing of the song.
In January 2013, it also became apparent that we had to bring in The Predator to complete the drums on the other 7 new Castrofate songs and the one from the solo album that Rob was also going to record on. Danny had lost touch with Rob for 4 months by that point, and after repeated attempts at communication, had to give up and bring in The Predator for the last 8 songs. Instead of going to Electric Plant, Castro brought The Predator straight to Crossfire Productions and laid down the drums for the rest of 26 songs; the 24 of the 3 new albums plus 2 re-recordings of old Castrofate songs from the first and second albums, "Moment of Cataclysm" originally released on the first album, and "A New Hope" originally released on the second album. One of the 8 new Castrofate songs was a left over track from the Systematic Suicide sessions called "United" which fit the sequence of the new album perfectly. Whereas Systematic Suicide was an all-out thrash-fest with just a few slower songs, Castrofate featured a more well-rounded variety of influence and styles of metal. The point was to try to tap in to the magic of other 8-song classics. As the year progressed aside from working on the new music in the studio, Castrofate performed many live shows under its own name with originals as well as tribute shows under the tribute monikers as the member auditions continued. Tom DeFazio joined Danny & Dok officially in the band, and Tom began to enter the studio to lay down a lot of the solos on the new Castrofate album including some thrash trade-off solo sections as Castrofate had done on the 2nd and 3rd albums with Vin. Dok came in and recorded the rest of his baselines onto the album, and the 5th self-titled marks the first time a bassist performed all of the bass tracks on a Castrofate album. As the band worked on the album, they had many noteworthy performances including a return to Dingbatz in Clifton, NJ where they had headlined & won Project Independent 5 years earlier, bringing their Hit The Lights Metallica tribute moniker to complete a great Big 4 Tribute line-up along with In My Darkest Hour, Silent Scream, and NFTB. The album also featured an instrumental song for the first time since the 3rd album iHuman, and the 3rd part of the "Silent.." Trilogy, "Silent Obscurity" was born. Castrofate then filmed their 3rd Music Video, of track 4 from Castrofate album, the song "Shattered Soul", 5 months before the album came out. Once again flying Joe Pine of JNP Productions to NY, filming the video outside the insane asylum in Binghamton, and along the railroad tracks, it serves as the first Castrofate video to show a full 4-piece line-up in the video, with Tom and Dok shown respectively playing to their parts on the album, along with one of the live-drummers from some of the shows playing along to The Predator's drum tracks.
2014 saw the completion of the 5th self-titled Castrofate album, and it was released on March 1, 2014. Featuring an incredible Pushead-styled poster cover by Gina Angiollilo of Syracuse, NY, the album features the best looking packaging and best sounding production so far. The CD comes with a fold-out poster booklet with a Castrofate-logo decal stuck on the front of the jewel case. The layout was designed by Jaymz Wall who has designed many show flyers for the band as well as alot of YouTube video posting. A string of shows featuring the live return of studio drummer The Predator (completing the Castrofate album line-up for the live shows) corresponded with the release of the album. The shows were some of the best performances yet of the band, with The Predator solidifying everything with perfect performances of the Castrofate songs from all 5 albums, as well as full Metallica tribute sets as Hit The Lights.
After a string of solo band shows, Kent MacDonald, who had previously played one of the Hit The Lights shows already, joined the band and began with a few Devilock and War Pigs tribute shows, before nailing a set of Castrofate songs for a 3-piece Castrofate performance locally in August. Kent is a monster drummer who actually has what it takes to perform The Predator's drums correctly.
2015–present: YouTube cover songs & Writing the 6th album
[edit]2015 started off with a new logo for Castrofate, and writing is already underway for the 6th album, as the solo album and secret project get completed. The new Castrofate songs have a slightly more modern edge to them, and the lyrics are going back to the "Moment of Cataclysm" story with the 4th chapter. In addition to new ideas, and the completion of the other 2 upcoming albums, plans are also underway to record a collection of cover songs for YouTube this year.
Members
[edit]Current members
[edit]- Danny Castro – lead vocals, guitar, studio bass (2007–present)
- Kent MacDonald – drums (2014–present)
Former members
[edit]- Rob Menak – drums (2007, 2011)
- The Predator – drums (2008-2014)
- Vin Cin – lead guitar (2008-2009)
- Lewis Rosado – bass (2007-2008)
- Dok Dwyer – bass (2012-2014)
- Tom DeFazio – lead guitar (2013-2014)
Timeline
[edit]
Discography
[edit]- Awakening of the Beast (2007)
- Cataclysmic Insanity (2008)
- iHuman (2009)
- Systematic Suicide (2011)
- Castrofate (2014)
External links
[edit]