This statement has been modified in october 2011, after I started to rehearse again with Mactabis.
Black Swords/Optimistic decay has been my most important band/project. It began with my brother and I working together in a synoetic way and most of all as an emotional and philosophical family-community (all the more since my father intagrated Black Swords) with our friend ΚΦ (the parted part of Black Swords that he made a real band).
cueille la nuit has been a kind of Black Swords extention to a close friend and was more co-authoring writing oriented; mostly from that, this band has its own personality. It became something really original, a new artistic vision! Sadly, we had to stop our activities and we have never had the chance to restart.
Mactabis is the organic (self violente) catharsis we need to express all the negativity inside each of us, and it fit perfectly to the state I was in after my father's death (it's strange that we started again a bit after my mother's death while I integrated the band a bit after my father's death, anyway, those two events are a lot different, my father was a lot more to me then my mother was). The other band members are friends I highly estimate! From all the bands I integrated, it's the only one whom I completely feel in symbiosis with!
Mental Vortex was for me a way to make good and original Metal music and to experiment with my vocals by still being accessible enough to play live as often as possible, but, they didn't want to play live as much as I wanted (they wanted good conditions to play somewhere, like Mactabis by the way… Hu! No way!). In almost one year, there members became friends. I'm proud to have been in that excellent band!
Eidôlon/So Far a Way made me learn a lot from every of our mistakes. It was loads of good ideas ruined by one or another, we all made wrong things on it. I cannot say all members are friends, but most of them are, indeed.
Dark Ages was a really great time with friends. At the time, I entered in that band to play with them and to restart playing guitar regularly. I quit after a few months because they didn't need me and almost because I like the band members a lot more then playing their music. Romu's death is till a (mental) wound that hardly heals.
Clouds of Sadness is a regret; the way we parted almost, it was so forseenable, but I did saw nothing because I was too involved on it: I wanted to do big things, and that's how it goes the furthest (if all really want to go far enough and that was far to be the case, as our manager, Vassago, and I realised too late…). Brice is, far, the worst drummer I've ever played with. In a personal point of view, it was an unique experience, we shared so much! There are years that I didn't see most of them, allthough, I still feel some friendship for some of them.
Cathartique is my only escaped band project that worth some words: It was ment to be some french song with philosophical lyrics. I still don't know what happened with Aurore that had to be the emblematic singer of the band… Even though I tried, I had no news from her since that day where we had to meet (to talk about Cathartique) and missed each other for an unknown reason. What ever happened, I still concider her as a friend that helped me to trust in me in a time where I evolved a lot and where that trust was the last thing I missed to become the complete person I am now. I hope one day to see her again…
My experience as a band member is unvaluable and, of course, I really had great times, even through the hardest ordeal. Personal problems made me reconcider my intentions in life and that lead me in a turning point: I decided not to use time anymore to play in a band. So, I left Mental Vortex (and that has nothing to do with what I thought about our last gig together!). Those problems only released something that grow in me for a long time… in summer 2003, I already told to someone (that was a friend) that I was thinking about stopping my musical activities in a few years to only play sometimes accoustic guitar on my own, just for fun.
Of course, I'm involved in a couple and it use to emphases the time it was taking me to be in a band, but it didn't have any other influance on that decision then giving me this vision of things.
So, what's the reason? They are a few… Most of all:
In other words: I was fed up, tired and disillusioned!
My decision softened with time, thus I decided that as Black Swords/Optimistic decay/cueille la nuit and Mactabis are a deep part of me, if one (or more of these) start(s) again, it will be with me and that I will concider any ask for a guess apearence in any musical project. In mid october 2011, Mactabis founded a rehearsal local, so, here I am again in a band. Mactabis vaincra!
Gloom.