REMORSE...

It shouldn't have gone this far...

When i just have thought that everything went as planned, something unexpected, rather, something just went wrong along the way... which destroyed the very foundation of the one i was once part of.

It was September 29, a Friday. The first time that i will see them as an audience, and sadly... the last time that i will see them of who they once were.

This will be defined as SuspenDead's mortality. About who we were, what they were when i left the band, and what they have been afterwards.

I have full respects on the band since i started as their bassist. They became the igniter of my talents... and thanks to them, i learned some concepts and got interested to learn other instruments. As i was always saying, ever since we started with the original lineup, the potentials were already present.

I should stress out that i have had high hopes for the band... and along the way i built many ideas for the band's music [just ideas, not applied]. The music was good to begin with, but then i begin to realize that it was lacking a major ingredient after Tristan left/we removed him from the band.

And there came a time that they suggested a keyboardist. Not being mean, but i guess this was the start of SuspenDead's disease [i will become the initiator of the greatest wound later]. The music underwent a major renovation and the keyboards [JB] had a hard time to adjust for a long time, especially for the punk songs. Although afterwards it went out with style, transforming our heavy songs to semi-goth and the punk songs to somewhat punkpop, the keyboards became dominant... so dominant, that the guitar powers went down greatly. This is just an observation, though.

This topic was opened up in one of our meetings. Though the suggestion was "to keep the keyboards volume down and balance the guitar volumes," i realized sooner that it wasn't enough. I thought that even if we filtered it, it would still be dominant and will outstand the other instruments due to the levels. If there was something that the band should do, i thought it should be something like "balance". Though i admit that it was my error, i suggested the "balance" thing as the "volume" thing. I wanted to mean that the balance should be with the "levels" or the skill. Not that highly-expected, but even just at the standard levels should do.

Skill was one of the most important ingredient of a band. The first thing should be "chemistry"... and that chemistry wasn't that strong in terms of music. Yes, our chemistry explodes a lot, as friends... so i thought it would add up to the band's chemistry. But after RevEp's practice last saturday, i realized something important. RevEp have done something that SuspenDead has rarely done: "freestyling". The "thought of Jazz". Not the literal "offbeat, 4-way coordinated" Jazz [i'd snap a finger doing things like Greg Howe does so not now], but the one that is known to be the "meat and potatoes" of Jazz: the "feeling" and "improvisation".

Though we didn't bother to save what we played for more than 10 minutes, i realized that the band already have a strong chemistry and that there's a lot of things we could do with what we've just did. Then i discovered that Dennis' planned "fusion" was possible.

In terms of music, SuspenDead rarely does this kind of thing [except for Dennis and me who usually starts up something when nobody's playing]. But i do remember one time when this idea was implemented: during the making of "Feel no Pain" in the early days of the band.

The original plan was making a fusion, thus the name SentiMetalHardTernativePopCore as the band's theme. But the literal meaning was implemented, not the idea. We have had most of them in each individual songs, though mostly we're playing the heavy songs.

I always thought that "playing for myself and for the band's music" was enough and satisfactory, but now i realized that the people should be able to accept your music in order to be satisfied. I realized this from the biggest event we've been into: 97.1's Summer Sault. We looked like sitting ducks [no offense guys] in that event, seeing the finalists' levels were much more higher that ours. I then realized that our levels wasn't supposed to be for that kind of event yet, and that our supposed-to-be chemistry didn't take effect. I'll say it was "pure luck and influence" which made us reach the finals. Luck, because i always thought we weren't really ready with our current music output... and influence, that's a lot of thanks to DJ Braggy.

It's not that i ain't proud of the music, in fact i really am. It's just that during the finals, everything got obvious: we already lost even before we played. We were, in fact, musically-incompetent during that time. No offense meant, guys.

Then it came into my mind that i already used up four years in the band... and we improved only an inch of the ruler within that timeframe.

I was asking myself what was wrong. What happened to the potentials? As for Science's definition of Potential Energy, it was defined as "stored energy". If it were to be released or used it would be called "Kinetic Energy". I realized that we got stuck knowing we had potentials and have no idea how to release those potentials. I already made MIDIs before for basis, but those weren't enough to wake the potentials.

So i decided to do a "suicide"... which sadly became the time limit of SuspenDead.

"There are times that you should lose some to gain some..." this is what i thought. If i really love the band then i should do whatever it takes to make the band better, even if it requires my expulsion just to wake the potentials up. I did everything that i could do for the music, so i think i already did all that i could do... and there's one last thing i haven't done: kill myself. If i leave the band, to the least they'll get tense and do whatever it takes to use their potentials. And i tried to anticipate everything that might happen after i leave; from Dos' entry and 3ple's transfer to the bass [and another thing that i tried to prevent from happening]. I even suggested these to K2 but i guess it just happened naturally and not because i suggested the new lineup.

Though K2 said the only thing that happened was: there came a reshuffling and there was really no effect of my absence, i think of it otherwise. The good thing is the band's progress went up and they tried to make some major improvements. That last gig i could say it improved a little and was catchy [the audience were reacting to it especially on the song "In Control"], but i can't say their full progress. [Vic was absent during SuspenDead's final gig so i can't really say how much they have improved completely] If they were complete maybe i could see the music's progress. Yes, i did see them play this last gig, but i still consider having Vic around if i was to observe their progress.

Seeing them play is one thing, seeing them play together and complete is another.

Going a bit off-topic, but a bit related. I remembered posting on my Tabulas with the topic: "What is a True Friend?" [i forgot the title]. Are those the friends you can count on? A person whose always concerned? The friends who will support you until the end? Those who ease your pain? If i were to look back, having those qualities ain't good enough to be considered a "true" friend. For me, it's called "true" friend because of the word included in it: TRUE.

If you were to have a true friend, it's a kind of friend who'll tell you everything ranging from your rightfulness up to your wrongdoings. It's something like: "If you're right, you have my support... if you're wrong, i'll tell you that you're wrong even if you get mad at me." It's a kind of friend that doesn't spoil you. In one point i was proud of the band, because it has that kind of quality... thus we never had problems in SuspenDead before. I've always told Kat and Edsel this during the BH days. I guess it faded away for some reason.

I guess the biggest mistake was due to a "major misunderstanding". I thought that everything was over after my "suicide" issue, but it so happened that Dennis' "criticism" was misunderstated as "insult" or "discrimination". I should agree that Dennis shouldn't be using harsh words if you're just criticizing due to the effects it may do to the soft-hearted, but i do agree at one point that if SuspenDead cannot handle a bandmate's point of [lemme say this] "painful" criticism then you're never ready for the music industry. There are lots of the worst sharks out there that can say worse, much worse that you might punch that guy whose criticizing with harsh words... you might even want to kill him.

From this point, it was all over. SuspenDead went with a decision to stand alone and leave Dennis behind, having the reverse with Dennis [which is leaving SuspenDead behind]. Either way, it's over. I tried everything to prevent this to happen, i already anticipated that SuspenDead might end but not this quick. It's only been two months since i left the band, and now the band's gone. Although K2 said that their team would still be "them", i'm having a feeling that the output will be much different. And he said that Vic already lost his morale of playing with a band so they should stop for a while.

I feel bad for Vic... and i was blaming myself because of it. I could have prevented his beating if i came earlier before the final meeting with me, the night before i decided to quit. I didn't want the blame to bury him, all i wanted was a major renovation. And now that Dennis made statements about the band's current levels, he got buried deeper. I really think it started because of me, even SuspenDead's disbandment.

I'm having a bad feeling that things may get worse if RevEp and the former SuspenDead [i don't know if they'll be changing names] meet up with each other. I will be hoping that i'm wrong and that both parties wouldn't open or make any issues from now on.

I am totally disappointed with the results... especially myself.


* I knew my mistakes. It shouldn't have turned out this way.

So much for my birthday present. =[