Squeezing Five Into Three: The Riff that Keeps on Giving

A few years ago I was asked to compose a song entirely on drums without any input from a guitarist or bass player.  It was an experiment to see what the drums might inspire in someone writing guitar as Loincloth were trying to wrap things up for what would be our final album, 'Psalms of the Morbid Whore'.  I could appreciate the experimental idea behind it but I felt like our writing process, which was even more nuanced and micro-analyzed then Confessor's, would render most of what I might come up with completely unrecognizable.  Plus, I was well aware that my composing style was in such stark contrast to the composing style of the person asking that it would slow things down at a time when there was mounting pressure to get things ready to go into the studio.  What I offered instead was a chance to explore some basic polyrhythmic exercises that I had wanted to dive into for years.  They say patience is a virtue, and in this particular case waiting for the right time to try to process these exercises into riffs worked out wonderfully.  Three years later I am still chipping away at the tip of this riff iceberg.

No Children or Animals Will Be Harmed During the Recording of this Album... Probably

With our new recording in hand I have an opportunity to dig into what few brain cells I have left and try to find the most creative, but simple ways to enhance our songs so that the lifelong fans of our music, as well as the newer audience metal's popularity has cultivated, will be compelled to hit rewind over and over again to figure out what on earth they just heard.  It may seem like an odd goal, but confusing people with positively bewildering music has always been what we as a band, and in a sometimes more obvious way myself as a drummer, have striven for from day one.  It is exactly the opposite approach to writing catchy little earworms.