I AM \M/artin

I'm \M/artin. I'm a 9-5 slave in finance. I like music, particularly metal. I play guitar and bass, program drums, and do vocals for my own project Malastrana. I was the bassist in the prototype of an awesome Santa Barbara band called Backmask. They are still around today putting out kickass metal. I highly suggest you check them out. After that I went on to grad school and met up with some like minded troublemakers to create a one of a kind acoustic cover band for shits and giggles. I grew up on Van Halen, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and The Doors. The first song I remember hearing as a toddler was "Running With The Devil." The first music video I remember catching my eye was "Jump". Then it was Ozzy's "Crazy Train". I was hooked. From their I moved on to Motley Crue (hey, I grew up in LA), and a few years later I saw the music video for Metallica's "One". Game changer. I would never be the same. From there, I went to the back catalogue and discovered Master of Puppets and Ride The Lightning. A friend of mine let me borrow Megadeth's "Rust In Peace", another friend gave me Slayer's "Seasons in the Abyss", and yet another friend let me borrow Iron Maiden's "Fear of the Dark". At some point, Queensryche's "Operation Mindcrime" entered the picture. And then... PANTERA! Holy crap! These guys pummled like no one had ever pummeled before. I wanted more. I learned guitar and never looked back. Some of my favorite bands include: Nevermore, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Megadeth, Fear Factory, Van Halen, Ozzy, Randy Rhoads, DevilDriver, Tesseract, Pantera, Dream Theater, In Flames, Faith No More, Alice in Chains, Rush, Deftones, Carcass, Meshuggah, Dimmu Borgir, Backmask, Cystrot, 'tallica, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Joe Pass, Soilwork, Anthrax, Testament, Death, Slayer, Prong, Tool, Arch Enemy, Hypocrisy, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Hawkwind, Dio, Sabbath, Motorhead, Deep Purple, The Cult, Roland Orzabal, TFF, Vito Bratta (yes, Vito is a badass player, get over yourself), Peter Gabriel, Converge, Threat Signal, Steve Vai, and the list goes on and on. So expect to read about a whole mix of different metal.