New Video “Rise” Available!

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Kill Ritual New Video and Single “Rise” Now available!

Kill Ritual has released a video for the song off their upcoming release Karma Machine that will be made available on 9/18/15 through Scarlet Records. The video was shot at Soundwave Studios in Oakland CA. with Mike Sloat (Testament, Machine Head, Lynyrd Skynyrd) directing and features the bands new revamped line-up and sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6wNWhRzdJY
Kill Ritual:

David Read Watson-Vocals

Steven D. Rice –Guitars

Koryun Bobikyan-Drums

Bobby HQ Storm-Bass

Kill Ritual-Karma Machine

1. Just A Cut

2. Rise

3. The Enemy Inside

4. The Key

5. Karma Machine

6. My Green Room

7. Kundalini

8. Land Of The Dead

9. The Camera’s Eye

The CD was produced and engineered by Steven D. Rice and mixed /mastered by Andy LaRocque.biopic2015

The Making of Rise

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This past July we headed up to San Francisco to do a video shoot with Mike Sloat. While shooting the video we all took turns with my ZOOM Q3HD video camera and created this short clip for you all to see pending the actual video that will come out prior to our album release on September 18th, 2015 on Scarlet Records.

We hope you enjoy it and climb aboard the Kill Ritual train that is just about ready to take off! We are already working on a tour to support the album and should be on the road early 2016.

Rock On!
David

Beliefs

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What do you believe? Do you believe in yourself or something outside of you?

This is a struggle for most of humanity. Wars have been fought over belief systems. Tolerance for another’s beliefs are rare in the big world picture.

Why?

Well… from what I can understand, and this is just my perception from years of ‘beliefs’ is this… The more people you have on your side, the stronger your beliefs. Kind of why different religions knock on your door to try to recruit you into their sect. If you are alone in your beliefs then you feel that maybe your beliefs really aren’t what they are cracked up to be. That is, if you don’t do your inner work.

What is inner work?

Inner work is meditation, alone time, time in nature and away from the computer. It is very important for you to stop the chatter going on in your head. Many think that meditation is sitting in the lotus position and chanting ‘om’ for 30 years. How debilitating is that? Very! Meditation is this…. taking deep breaths and letting go of your thoughts. It’s really easy, but everyone thinks that it’s impossible. Believe me, my head is going 24/7 most of the time. I can stay as busy as the best of them out there. But there are times that I’m driving, singing along to the radio and just concentrating on that, nothing else. If you can get yourself to just focus on one thing it will open up the flood gates and allow Spirit, God, Energy, whatever you wish to label it as, in.

Believing in yourself is the key to happiness. It’s not a new car, or a new guitar or microphone. It’s believing in yourself. I know you’re next question…. “But Dave, I hate myself. I think I’m an awful person. If you only knew the real me…”. Yeah, I get it. Boring! We ALL have that same conversation in our head. That is your ego. Something I always say is this… Leggo my Ego. Let it go! Make it take the back seat. Reassure it that you know what you are doing. This is how you start… all of those limiting beliefs of yourself you need to focus on. Look at them and ask yourself where they came from. You might have to dig deep and it might be scary but the results will be miraculous! Believe me, I’ve done it. I remember while in Summit Education back in 2003/04 I had to sit with myself and recognize why I was the way I was. Owning every mistake that I’ve ever made and letting go of mistakes that I thought that were something I did only to find out they were planted there by somebody else.

When someone says you are fat and you go into a deep depression is it because you’re fat or is it because somebody a long time ago told you that you were fat? That’s just an example, but belief systems have a way of manifesting themselves into reality. You might be fat now just because somebody said that you are. Pretty fucked up, huh? That’s the way we operate when we don’t believe in ourselves. Many years ago I fell into this belief system as well. It happened to me with singing! Yeah, right, singing. Something I love to do and something I’m really good at. How the hell did that happen?

When I was young I used to sing in church. I was actually the youngest member of the church Choir in South Hadley, Massachusetts. I took voice lessons, played piano and I was an actor as well. I loved the arts. When I was in school this is where I would hide. In the music room. Everywhere else I felt like an outcast. I remember singing the song ‘Babe’ from Styx in front of all of my friends in High School. How embarrassing. They laughed and I receded more into my fragile shell. Now if I had believed in myself then their laughter would have mean’t nothing but I was walking around with this belief….. My father was a musician and he cheated on my Mom and was a pretty heavy drinker and they eventually got divorced and she has hated him ever since. I equated cheating and drinking and divorce to music, so what did I do? I joined the Marines. I guess I thought I could shake it off. Let me tell you something…

Whatever your calling in life is, no matter what, it will eat at you until you either die, or until you submit to it. So you might as well start now. Focus on what makes you happy and go for it! You’ll be scared, but so what? Do you think that money will make you happy? No. Doing what you love will make you happy and everyone around you happy. Don’t buy into the bullshit of the ‘have/do/be’ energy. That’s backwards old paradigm thinking. Start thinking ‘Be/Do/Have’.

Be who you are authentically

Do what feels good to you and then you will

Have happiness.

Namaste,
David

P.S.
About my Dad. I love him and people do change. He is a testament to that. Our parents do the best that they can in the moment that they are where they are so don’t blame them for all of your pain and misery. Once you own your own pain then you have the power to make it go away. Peace!

Kill Ritual – New album ‘Karma Machine’ out in September on Scarlet Records

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Formed in 2010 by former Imagika lead guitarist Steven D. Rice, Kill Ritual have released 2 critically acclaimed albums, ‘The Serpentine Ritual’ (2012) and ‘The Eyes Of Medusa’ (2014), and are now ready to unleash their fury with ‘Karma Machine’, a powerful sonic beast that can be described as the perfect mix of all the band’s influences. Encompassing 9 tracks, the CD finds Kill Ritual going from heavy to melodic while retaining their thrash roots. The album was once again produced by guitarist Steven D. Rice and mixed/mastered by King Diamond guitarist Andy LaRocque. Artwork was completed by longtime Kill Ritual artist Jobert Mello (Sabaton, Primal Fear, Benedictum). ‘Karma Machine’ also marks the debut of new vocalist David Reed Watson , drummer Koryun Bobikyan and bassist Bobby HQ Storm. The album will be available starting from September 18. www.scarletrecords.it
​The track listing:
1. Just A Cut
2. Rise
3. The Enemy Inside
4. The Key
5. Karma Machine
6. My Green Room
7. Kundalini
8. Land Of The Dead
9. The Camera’s Eye ​
The band have also finished shooting a video for the song “Rise” at Sound Wave Studios in Oakland CA. with Mike Sloat (Testament, Machine Head, Lynyrd Skynyrd) that will introduce the new line up prior to the September 18th release.
Kill Ritual 2015:
David Reed Watson-Vocals
Steven D. Rice-Guitar
Koryun Bobikyan-Drums,violin
Bobby HQ Storm-Bass

Kill Ritual Video Shoot update

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This past Wednesday evening went very smooth. Kore picked me up at the airport and we met for the very first time and hit it off right away. He drove me over to Steven’s house in San Jose where again I was greeted as if by an old friend. The only person we were waiting for was Bobby who was driving up from LA.. When Bobby finally showed up, again, it wasn’t like we were all meeting for the first time, it was as if old friends were just getting together again. Music speaks louder than words they say, and they (whomever they are) are correct. There is an unspoken language between musicians. We’re a different breed, non-conformists, most of us growing up the same way. Most growing up, going to school, having really horrible grades, some dropping out of high school and some barely making it through. Why is this? Our minds think differently. We are artists and 99% of all artists have a hard time fitting into the society that demands the 9 to 5 day job, making a certain amount of money, etc. Those of us that do this become depressed or go into a beat up mode because we think something is wrong with us. We don’t think linear. So when musicians get together it is usually this way. Because we are with our tribe.

Kill Ritual

Thursday, the 15th of July, we headed up to San Francisco to Soundwave Studios to do the shoot with Mike Sloat and his crew. One thing that I loved about the whole process is that Mike never asked any of us what we wanted. It was his vision and he knew exactly the shots he needed to get what he wanted. There wasn’t any of the questions that you normally get with a video shoot like, ‘So guys, what do you want me to do?’ Nothing like that at all. His vision, his shoot… we just played along and enjoyed the process. NO more than five hours later we wrapped it all up. Super productive day, sweating our asses off from the lights, guy liner smeared, exhausted and exhilarated.

We can’t wait to see the final product no more than we can’t wait to present it to the world. We are proud of what we created and confident that you are going to love it as well. Make sure to check out the Kill Ritual page for updates.

Peace,
David

Video Shoot

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This coming week I will be flying up to San Francisco to do a video shoot with Kill Ritual. I’m really excited for a number of reasons….

  1. This will be the first time that I’ve met my bandmates. Crazy, huh? Yeah. In this day and age of the internet I can do recordings all over the world. I remember meeting Ged Rylands for the first time maybe a year after we recorded Dreamworld together. Long gone are the days of sitting in warehouses jamming for hours on end. Is it something I miss? Definitely. You get a good sense of someone’s character by spending time with them. Eye contact, hanging out, etc. So in todays music world I do the best I can to communicate with everyone over the phone, skype, email. After a while you get a sense of who the person is. The flip side is that you can do a lot more in a lot less time and you aren’t limited to location. For instance, Kill Ritual has members in LA, San Francisco and Vegas. That never could have happened 10 years ago. As far as Kill Ritual goes, Steven and I hit it off pretty quickly during the writing process of this album which we started back in February. My hat goes off to him because he had actually done this album months prior with the previous singer so for him to be going through this with an new guy, new sound, new lyrics…. whew. Let’s just say it would have been very difficult for me to do that and I’m grateful that he never let me hear the other vocals. I naturally would have had that it my head and wouldn’t have been able to come at it with fresh ears. He didn’t have that option. It took him a few to get used to the new sound after listening to the old sound for so long. All I can say is this album is going to be epic.
  2. We’ll be in the famous Soundwave Studios in Oakland where so many bands have played that the list is daunting. Bands like; Testament, Metallica, Exodus, Primus, Tesla, Faith No More, etc…. etc…. to infinitum.
  3. The video will be shot by Mike Sloat who has shot video for Testament, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Staind, Tom Waits, etc. We’ll be up there for a couple of days for the shoot and hanging out together.

We’ve got labels behind us on this that we will announce shortly, with album release dates and tours in the works. So keep your calendars handy and I hope to stop by your hometown soon.

Peace,
David