I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a massive fan of the work I do with Autumns Eyes, and calling that selfish or arrogant seems like such a foreign concept in the context of what I mean with that statement. Why else would I pour the entirety of my very being into such an outlet if I didn’t love it with everything I had to give? Music isn’t just a hobby for me, it’s a calling. It’s something that exists within me, and I am merely a vessel to channel it out into the world on the off chance there’s someone out there who will connect to it as much as I have.
Every musician has a different path to follow. Some look for fame, others look for monetary success. For me it’s more about the simple love of creating in the studio. I am by no means a fan of live shows, and while I’ve had great memories both performing and watching live concerts, they just aren’t my thing. I’ve always been a fan of albums and the work that goes into creating them. I have a few handfuls to call my own, but not all of them are my cup of tea this far down the line.
To take stock of what I’ve done, I decided to rank all my albums by how often I still listen to them with pride and enjoyment. Some of them are still revered in my collection as magical moments I still have yet to figure out how I captured, while others reflect times of personal turmoil or utter disappointment. I’ll spare you the bullshit remarks that typical artists give about how “that’s like ranking my children” and tell you straight up that some of my albums sound so bad you’d think your ears were being electrocuted. Perhaps that’s just the creator being his own harshest critic in this case, but these are based on my own opinions, so take that with a grain of salt the size of Saturn.
#14 – Expanse of Eternity
Released: 1999
My first attempt at writing and recording was a “holy shit” moment. It felt incredible to piece ideas together like a musical puzzle. Sadly, I recorded on old four-track tapes that degraded over time. Even if restored, they were harsh-sounding sketches that showed I needed more skill and refinement, which I thankfully developed in the years that followed.
#13 – Unless Nothing
Released: 2003
Many of these older albums are lost in a haze of drug-induced creativity, which was one of the reasons I stopped doing that stuff so long ago. It clouded my judgment and my ability to think straight, which affected my music in ways I wish it hadn’t. Unless Nothing had a few interesting bits, but for the most part it was disjointed songs that needed a home after not being good enough to appear on the In a Sense album released the following year.
#12 – Unreleased
Released: 2009
While not an official album by any means, Unreleased became a small collection of exactly that, unreleased songs. At the time it felt necessary to keep pushing content despite the lack of any continuity within the “album,” and hindsight has reminded me why that may have been a bad idea. The one shining light on this collection for me is the track From Within, which is a ten minute long track that I pieced together in real time. Meaning I literally sat there for hours upon end coming up with parts in real time while recording and mixing the song. Something that is typically done in stages with more preparation, but in this case, I feel its spontaneity lent itself to the final result.
#11 – Cover Songs
Released: 2015
I fucking hate recording covers. At first, it was fun to dissect songs I loved and put them back together, but I never strayed far from the originals. Changing too much felt sacrilegious, like I’d be disrespecting the writers. Even the cover of Love You to Death, which still stands as my highest viewed work on YouTube, was a dreadful process. I did it to pay homage to Peter Steele on a tribute album, but the work pales in comparison to the original, which I consider to be one of the greatest heavy songs ever recorded.
#10 – Downfall of Giants
Released: 2002
With much of the material stemming from re-recordings of songs that appeared on the previous album Remember the Victim, there’s nothing new to explore here. Downfall of Giants was an excuse for me to “fix” what I felt was wrong with the previous versions of these songs, and toss in a few new ones for good measure. Lyrically, these early songs of mine are such an embarrassment, as again, they were mostly fueled by drugs, which in turn caused me to spout off sporadic thoughts of everything from relationship drama to Lord of the Rings references. Sometimes all within the same song, which is causing me to cringe even just describing that.
#9 – Remember the Victim
Released: 2001
I have such fond memories of recording this album in a tiny apartment in Boston with a close friend of mine who showed me the ropes of how to record on a computer. Since the computer was in his room, there were many nights he would be asleep while I was recording, so to avoid waking him up I developed a strange technique for screaming vocals. I ran the microphone through a distortion pedal and whispered into the mic in a unique way so that it actually resembled screaming. So listening back, it might sound as if I’m giving it my all inside a vocal booth, while I’m actually whispering quietly so as not to wake up my roommate. All in all, this album always takes me back to a great time in my life. While things ended abruptly with my roommate due to some pretty shitty circumstances, I always look back on those days with fondness, and this album is definitely a reminder of that.
#8 – Abandoned Expression
Released: 2005
Reflecting on this album I tend to think I had a lot of balls for recording music like this when I was drenched in such a heavy metal-saturated world at the time. Some of these songs sound like they belong on the Weather Channel or playing inside an elevator of some cheap hotel. As corny as they might come across, they are some of my favorite songs for those very reasons. They are also some of the most mocked in my back catalog, as my wonderful friends over the years have continued to remind me by constantly singing the catchy parts back to me in a lovely impression of my nasally whine from back in those days.
#7 – In a Sense
Released: 2004
Recorded in my parents basement after moving back to Connecticut from Boston, In a Sense was as raw a record as I can ever recall recording. The vocal isolation was done by hanging sheets in a square shape around the computer chair, with a cheap Samson condenser microphone positioned right in front of my face. Listening back, if I close my eyes I can still smell the sweaty cigarette-soaked stench from that room, as I poured all of my frustration into that record. Not being able to find a job, having my relationship fall apart with the girl I loved, and losing my sanity to drugs all burst into a combustible pile of melodies that fueled my screams into what I consider my most aggressive album to date.
#6 – Broken Leaves and Haunted Streets
Released: 2013
A re-recording of the songs originally written on Expanse of Eternity back in 1999, Broken Leaves & Haunted Streets was a perfect opportunity to give those songs a proper home. I am particularly proud of the guitar solo on Threat of My Extinction, as it was the first “official” guitar solo I had ever written after learning the guitar back in the late 90s, but was never recorded properly. While I don’t listen to this album much these days, it does hold a special place in my heart just because of how precious these songs are to me. Being the first of many melodies to come, I’m glad they finally received a good recording to capture whatever it was that was going on in my twisted little head at the time.
#5 – Please Deceive Me
Released: 2012
I fucking HATED this album after I recorded it. What an absolute nightmare. It came about during a time when Autumn’s Eyes was lighting up with fans all across the internet before social media was what it is today. I had thousands of fans on multiple sites contributing everything from fan art to long letters sharing their own connections to the music. So I felt a strange sense of pressure to deliver an album that they would love, and at the time I felt that I failed in that department. I was going through multiple surgeries on my right wrist, which sent me into a spiral of painkillers and unmotivated fog. Looking back, I can appreciate it so much more only because it was probably the first album where I really started putting some serious weight behind my lyrics. While the music struggled to find its voice, and my own voice struggled to find its pitch, my words resonated deeply not only with myself but with the fans who found meaning in them as well.
#4 – Surrender the Fire
Released: 2008
Widely considered the heaviest record I’ve done, Surrender the Fire was the truest expression of my inner demons. Equal parts aggressive and obnoxious, the album features no clean singing, only an abundance of ghoulish growls that were a delight to record. It also includes one of my favorite songs, Feast of the Dead, which marked the first music video ever shot for Autumns Eyes. With little to no pressure during its creation, it was possibly the most fun I’ve had writing and recording. Funny enough, with the least amount of stress, it became the most widely recognized album, with Feast of the Dead even reaching MTV2 in a Halloween-themed feature.
#3 – Grimoire of Oak & Shadow
Released: 2024
The newest of the bunch, an album that was just as therapeutic as it was detrimental to create. Writing for this one started years ago, almost directly after Ending Life Slowly was released in 2017, and boy did that process drag on longer than it needed to. That not only sucked the life out of any spontaneity, but it also caused the tracks to become overstuffed with parts they didn’t need, and production that failed to reflect their true power. Typically I would record an album with drums, guitars, bass, a couple keyboard tracks, and vocals. Maybe a few sound effects peppered in here and there. This album had so many keyboard tracks, I needed to buy a new computer just to keep up with all the software synthesizers I had running at the same time. The songs are some of my best work to date, structured and pieced together in ways that I love to reflect on. Even the lyrics have a poignancy that never fails to extract emotion out of me, but the production is like a fat pig, overstuffed with too much food for its own good. On the bright side, that overdone production creates a great listening environment for those who love to hear something new with each listen. Overproduced, yes, but also endlessly layered.
#2 – The Awakening of the Sleeping King
Released: 2007
A real drum kit! Finally! I’ll never forget my friend Ray lending me his drum kit at the time to record this album, something I will forever be thankful to him for doing. I bought a ton of cheap microphones and taught myself through trial and error how to record a massive drum kit in real time while putting together an album. Another friend of mine, Matt, actually gave me the title idea as well. He and I were reflecting on the album’s production, and he mentioned the title of a book he had as a great title for this album. It fit perfectly, and to this day I love going back to these songs. They have such a unique personality, and I feel a great blend of all the styles I’ve grown to love and attempted to inject into my music. It’s not perfect by any means, and there are a ton of mistakes, but I think that’s something more bands should explore in today’s musical landscape. Perfection has become such a template for so many artists that they lose sight of how music needs to breathe to give it feeling and purpose, not become a slave to tempo-locked grid mapping on recording software. The Awakening of the Sleeping King is a messy, rough production that I am intensely proud of, and I will always look back on it for inspiration and influence on all the other albums I pursue in the future.
#1 – Ending Life Slowly
Released: 2017
What I consider to be the “quintessential” Autumn’s Eyes album, Ending Life Slowly has a perfect blend of all the things I’ve tried to capture in the past. Its production is clean, simple, straightforward, and a great reminder of why I started doing this in the first place. The opening song Death of October came to me while doing dishes in the kitchen, and became one of, if not my favorite song ever recorded. So many songs here I go back to with such love and gratitude, much like Far Away From Fading, which acts as a constant reminder to respect the past while still moving forward. I love this album for its vibe, its meaning, and its honest reflection of who I am as an artist. It’s become so beloved that I’ve begun modeling the next album I’m recording after this one as a rough blueprint of where I want to go both sonically and lyrically. If I can get even half the magic I found here, I’ll be satisfied.
