To quote River Tam…. “My Turn”

So it might be hard to believe when you talk to me in person, but I actually have passions and hobbies outside of comics?! From a very young age, music has always had a massive impact on who I am as a person, I come from a musical family so have been surrounded by people doing their own thing and have always been encouraged to pick up an instrument. I’ve now been playing guitar for around 12 years, have played overseas, selling out venues both on Home Turf and in Australia, so safe to say in my younger days I guess I was kind of good at it? It all fell by the wayside in recent years, through overworking and not finding the right setting anymore, I’ve only played one gig in the last 4 years, which is actually a really strange feeling now that i see it in front of me, and I think should be rectified as soon as possible.

Music has always been something I’ve been very passionate about, and I can honestly say that when playing the age old “would you rather” game, it’s always been a no brainer to me that I would rather be blind than deaf. The thought of never being able to hear some of my favourite songs ever again, or getting to just sit with a guitar for hours on end sounds like a living nightmare to me! There hasn’t been a single day for as long as i remember that i haven’t actively listened to something I adore, whether it’s just the one song on the way to work or like right now, where when I work from home i like to just put full albums on and drift away into my writing (For the record, right now, it’s an acoustic Bullet For My Valentine album i found on YouTube). It’s something that can always warrant an emotional response from me as well ,and for someone that finds it very difficult to vocalize my feelings a lot of the time, I always manage to find a song to fit the mood, or even alter my mood with a single song (My Hero will always make me cry, Rammstein will always pump me up, I will ALWAYS dance to ska music).

I guess it was always going to happen, that I liked Keiron Gillen’s writing, from the way he has Marvel Boy act in Young Avengers, to the entire Phonogram series (Which i have to admit, I only picked up recently) it’s clear he has a similar passion and it shines through in his writing. there is just something about the work that he and Jamie Mackelvie do that resonates with me on a level that I didn’t know existed, managing to bridge the gap between two things that i feel so strongly about!

It’s actually an interesting medium, when music and comics cross over, from Corey Taylor writing the concept album “House of Gold & Bones Part 1&2” with a graphic novel as a companion piece to it, and Coheed & Cambria with their ongoing Armory Wars it’s not uncommon for lyricists to also write prose to go with the story. I mean only recently i got the chance to review Clockwork Angels, which was a comic adaption of the prose version of a Rush album. Get your head round that one! However, arguably the King of Lyricist/Musician come Comic Writer has to go to Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance fame. Umbrella Academy got critical success all over the with fans new and old loving it. He even managed to get local boy Grant Morrison to appear as the baddie in MCR’s concept album “Danger Days of the Fabulous Killjoys”!

Music is always going to be a part of my life, whether it’s playing it, listening to it every moment I can (now it’s Rise Against’s acoustic set at Leeds Festival 2011) or going to live gigs (Top 3 of all time in no particular order: Download Festival 2013, Flogging Molly in Glasgow ABC, and Clutch in a tiny 200 capacity venue) it’s always going to be important to me, and has made me who I am today, for better or worse.

So that’s me, I’m a Writer, a Musician, a Reviewer a Barman and a cynical old bastard. next time, we talk beer.

Playlist:
Peter Gabriel-Sledgehammer [See Below]
Journey-Wheel in the Sky
Rise Against-Swing Life Away
Bullet For My Valentine- Tears Don’t Fall
Killswitch Engage- Always
Johnny Cash-Solitary Man

The writer of this piece was:
Chris Bennett
Article: I Hate It Here
You can also find Chris on Facebook