October Update
Life has been a relentless grind lately, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Between family obligations that never seem to end, health issues that knocked me sideways for months, and the constant weight of responsibilities that pile up faster than I can clear them, finding time for maskeda felt impossible. But here's the thing about obsession – it doesn't care about your schedule. Even when you think you have no personal time left, you make it anyway. You carve it out of nothing because you have to. The brand needed a reboot, and sometimes you just have to force the machinery back to life, regardless of what else is happening around you.
I'm finally starting to feel human again, which means the creative engine is firing on more cylinders than it has in a long time. That fog that settles over everything when your body and mind are fighting each other is lifting, and with it comes clarity about what maskeda needs to be right now. It's not about returning to some previous version – it's about digging deeper into what was always there and letting it get heavier, nastier, more uncompromising.
The sound has evolved because I've gone back to my Chicago roots and really dove deep into what made me hungry for this music in the first place. Industrial music that hits like a sledgehammer, industrial metal that grooves instead of just battering you senseless, thrash that cuts through everything, tighter death metal that doesn't waste a single note, and those older hip hop sounds and house music rhythms that taught me what real groove feels like. These aren't nostalgic trips – they're tools I'm using to build something that sounds like now but carries the DNA of everything that mattered before streaming algorithms and social media metrics started dictating what music should sound like.
What maskeda sounds like today is industrial that grooves with heavy guitars. Not just noise for the sake of noise, not just brutality without purpose, but something that moves you physically while it's dismantling you emotionally. The riffs need to be thick enough to walk on, but they also need to make you want to move. There's a difference between heavy music that just sits there being heavy and heavy music that compels action, and I'm only interested in the latter.
The creative spark comes from the same place it always has – every time something hits me emotionally, whether it's my own head working against me, human rights getting trampled, society eating itself from the inside, or the endless theater of politics that somehow gets more absurd every day. These aren't abstract concepts to write lyrics about – they're the raw energy that drives everything. When you're angry about something real, when you're genuinely frustrated or disgusted or energized, that's when the music writes itself. I'm not manufacturing emotion for artistic effect. I'm channeling what's already there.
One band that's been absolutely destroying me lately is Blood Red Throne. I discovered them last year and their sound is so crisp, especially on their recent albums, that it almost feels like they're making fun of how precise death metal can be while still being completely serious about it. Their nod to traditional death metal is so on point it could be satire, but it's not – it's just masters of their craft showing everyone else how it's done. That level of technical precision combined with songs that actually go somewhere has been inspiring the hell out of me. It's proof that you can be both brutal and sophisticated, that complexity doesn't have to come at the expense of impact.
Living south of Seattle and east of Tacoma puts you in this weird cultural no-man's land where the maskeda brand doesn't fit neatly into the surrounding landscape. The music, the aesthetic, the whole approach is much more aligned with larger city progressive values than with the rural conservative views that dominate out here. But that tension is useful. It keeps you honest. When your art doesn't match your environment, you can't get lazy or comfortable. You're constantly having to justify why you're doing what you're doing, not to anyone else but to yourself. It forces clarity about what you actually believe versus what's convenient to believe.
Let me clear something up about the branding while I'm at it – we don't wear masks. The logo has to do with my name, and people can make whatever they want of it or ask me directly if they're curious. I'm not interested in mysterious persona bullshit or elaborate backstories. The music should speak for itself, and if it doesn't, no amount of theatrical presentation is going to save it. The name maskeda means what it means, the logo looks like what it looks like, and anyone who wants to read deeper meaning into it is welcome to, but I'm not going to hold their hand through the interpretation process.
Here's something else that needs to be said clearly – I don't do any of this for anyone but myself. Sure, I want people to listen, and when they connect with it that's incredibly satisfying, but that's not why I maintain 100% ownership of the brand and music. I keep total control because the moment you start making creative decisions based on what you think other people want to hear, you've lost the plot entirely. The music has to come from an authentic place, and authenticity requires the freedom to fail, to be weird, to go down creative dead ends without having to justify those choices to a committee or a focus group or a label executive who thinks they know better than you do about your own vision.
That independence isn't just a business decision – it's a creative necessity. When you're answerable only to yourself, you can take risks that wouldn't make sense if you had to consider return on investment or market appeal. You can spend months working on something that might only matter to a hundred people, or you can abandon a project that everyone else thinks is commercially viable because it doesn't feel right to you anymore. That kind of freedom is worth more than any advance or distribution deal or industry validation.
If someone asked me for real advice about building their own thing, here's what I'd tell them without any sugarcoating – keep trying, because I'm not there yet either, but if your headspace is better than mine then you've got half the battle already won. The mental game is everything. Your ability to keep working when nothing seems to be working, to maintain faith in your vision when no one else understands it, to get back up after each failure and keep pushing forward – that's what separates people who make things from people who just think about making things.
Most of the obstacles you'll face aren't external. They're not about lack of equipment or connections or opportunities, though those things matter. The real battle happens in your head, in those moments when you question whether any of this is worth it, when you wonder if you're deluding yourself about having something valuable to contribute, when the voice in your head suggests that maybe you should just give up and do something more practical with your time. Learning to shut down that voice, or at least ignore it long enough to keep working, is the skill that matters most.
The reboot of maskeda isn't about starting over – it's about finally having the clarity and energy to pursue the vision that's been there all along. The industrial grooves, the heavy guitars, the emotional honesty, the complete independence, the refusal to compromise for the sake of fitting in – all of that was always part of the plan. Sometimes you just need to get your own life sorted out enough to execute properly. Now the machinery is running again, and it's running better than before.
