|
Blackened were brought together by Andres and Yesid along with Jeffrey and Julian in Mushaisa, La Guajira in 2005. The band has been through many changes, one of them being the constant changes of members since then to reach the current 4, having before 7 members. Blackened really consider themselves as a family unit, they’ve grown up together and will always remain together, or that’s what they want. The band actually consists of 1 drummer, 2 guitarists, 1 lead singer, and for almost every gig they have a new and different bassist.
Mushaisa is considered as "the middle of nowhere", it is supposedly a hole where there’s nothing to do. In Mushaisa people had never heard about a metal band before, nobody thought about it. However, four freaks from Mushaisa started a musical attack that combines Heavy Metal with Thrash and Metalcore along with what is sometimes called the Nu-Metal. This is where everything started for them.
Meet Lead vocalist/Andres Briceño, Guitarists/Julian Franco and Yesid Torres, and Drummer/Jeffrey Torres. Each comes equipped with a talent on his particular instrument that combines the kind of music they’ve always liked and finally turning this into their own self created genre.
Formed during the later half of 2005, the band went through necessary line-up changes to arrive at what they now describe as "a family unit". The band started with the four actual members but instead of having Andres a.k.a “Wice” as the lead singer they had Mauricio Villarreal (Ex-Blackened Vocalist) and Wice passed to the bass. They also had another band member, Hector Angulo (Ex-Blackened Percussionist) to give a more powerful sound. The first time they ever played live was in the school playing “Call of the Ktulu – Metallica”, along with a third guitarist in this gig, Johnatan Marin (Ex-Blackened Guitarist), he left the band after performing Metallica’s Call of the Ktulu. This guy played because a former third guitarist, Carlos Arias (Ex-Blackened Guitarist) had left the band with not even one performance because of genre differences.
This performance was not bad to be the first time they played live.
A few months after, in February 18th 2006, Blackened had signed up to perform in the “Battle of the Bands 2K6” directed by Colegio Albania, this was the first Battle of the Bands in Mushaisa. Blackened expected a good performance, they started to look for another bassist, since Andres was going to sing along in the “Un-edited song” with Mauricio. So they found a friend of Yesid and Jeffrey who was Gabriel Gomez (Ex-Blackened Bassist), he was the one playing the “Un-edited song” while Andres sang.
So this was the line-up the band had to play in the “Battle of the Bands 2K6”: Mauricio Villarreal, Andres Briceño, Gabriel Gomez, Yesid Torres, Julian Franco, Hector Angulo, and Jeffrey Torres.
After this the second step was to decide which were the two songs apart from their own they were going to play, and these were: “Question! – System of A Down” and “Vermilion – Slipknot”. They wanted to perform a self made Metallica Medley, but they weren’t allowed because of the time, this was too long.
At the end the time had come, and in the battle they didn’t do well, lots of technical and band problems occurred on stage, and it was not a nice performance, not at all.
After this performance, they ended up really frustrated with everything and inner discussions in the band had started, people told some of them that they should’ve changed the vocalist, and anyways he was not happy about how the band did in the battle, so he decided to leave. After all this chaos, the band separated, everyone going by their way and trying to complete two different side projects that were: “Dark Winter” including Julian and Andres, and the other side project called “Possessed” including Yesid and Jeffrey with Andres and Gabriel, a kind of “beef” and rivalry had started between these two bands. Hector by this time had permanently left the band.
Neither of these bands worked, leading the Blackened members to form the band again.
Rumors of a second Battle of the Bands started. So Blackened started thinking of what to play almost more than half of a year with anticipation. But in one of those band meetings, Gabriel said he would leave the band for genre differences.
So now the line-up had changed, there were left the four initial members Blackened has always been with: Andres, Yesid, Jeffrey and Julian. And they were completely sure they would not let this band down again.
Blackened took a short 2-3 months hiatus and then got back to business. They started practicing. In late November Blackened started recording in their Home-Studio at Julian’s house. The first cover they’ve recorded was “Drowned and Torn Asunder – Trivium” and the song is actually available in their websites.
After this they played in December 7th, 2006 in Mushaisa’s Auditorium, during a school assembly; this was the day they got out to mid-year vacations. They wanted to perform (Sic) from Slipknot and Rain from Trivium, but only Rain was allowed due to time difficulties in the schedule of the assembly.
This was a NEW Blackened, it was an incredible performance, and in this gig they had played with Miguel Ramirez in the bass as a featuring.
Blackened finished recording the cover on mid December 2006, during vacations.
On January they got back to practice to prepare for the Battle of the Bands 2K7, it was supposedly going to be on February, but then it was changed for unforeseen reasons to March 3rd. Blackened by this time didn’t had a bassist because Miguel told them that the play they had had in December was for that time only.
But anyways Blackened started practicing without bassist first, then when Blackened heard “Mike” was going to be vocalist of another band, Sleepless In The Dark (Side project in which Andres is bassist); they decided to try and ask him if he could play with them, eventually he said he could and they started to practice.
Blackened had the new Un-edited song for this battle called “Nothing To Fear, But Fear Itself”, and was created by Julian, lyrics by Andres. This is a heavy powerful song.
Blackened then participated in the Battle of the Bands playing 2 covers: “Duality – Slipknot” and “Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr – Trivium”, this last song was chose during a practice session for no reason, just to change the song and it ended up really well.
Blackened went to this battle with two objectives one of them to make sure that last year was an error and to fix it, and the other to create the biggest mosh pits in the battle, both of them were achieved, those incredible songs, were played by Blackened. People singing Duality, this was never thought it could happen, but it did.
At the end they didn’t end in the first three places, but anyways all of them told that they were happy with the performance they have done, they achieved what they went for, and that for next time it will be much better.
Approximately one week later Blackened started recording “Nothing To Fear, But Fear Itself”, and right now they’re in the process. It will soon be posted on Myspace and Purevolume.
Blackened is thinking to stop playing covers and start with their own songs, they have just started with metal; they’ve always wanted to be in a huge band, that will never change. They don't take anything for granted and will work hard to make that dream come true.
They’ve only just started…
|
