matthew joel

If you haven't yet download: The Great Lakes EP

2010-11-19T01:25:00.001-08:00

plus, its free!

http://matthewjoel.bandcamp.com/album/the-great-lakes-ep

Bank Heist: The Kingdom

2010-11-19T01:22:00.000-08:00

Bank Heist: The Kingdom
coming in december.

The Rocky Mountain EP

2010-11-19T01:19:00.000-08:00

Matthew Joel: The Rocky Mountains EP

download for free at: http://matthewjoel.bandcamp.com/album/the-rocky-mountains-ep
released: Nov 19th, 2010

Get it on itunes November 13.

2009-10-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

New Blog!

2009-06-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

from now on I'll be posting over here:

http://matthewjoel.tumblr.com

check for updates frequently.

electro-dancing-goodness

2009-05-14T01:01:00.000-07:00

here's the deal:
latley I've taken a break from writing songs with my guitar and have focus all my musical attention on writing songs with my keyboard. The result is a new project, and a new record. I'm calling the project Bank Heist, you can visit the page here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bank-Heist/80539864171

and I'm calling the record's Final Crisis. I have part of it uploaded on the facebook page, make sure you check them out, and if you're enjoying it, send me an email and I'll send a link your way to download the whole thing.

b.heist@live.com

love,
matthew joel

more songs!

2008-12-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

If you want to hear a few more songs from the new EP, got take a visit to my sixtyone page.

thesixtyone.com/tworstenemy/music/

exciting news

2008-12-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

The EP is finished, as of this afternoon.
I am happy to announce the track list has grown from 6 to 8 songs.
I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to distribute this, but I think that how ever it happens, 5 dollars is the price I'm leaning towards selling it for.

It's possible that my near favorite part about making music is seeing how the things I write are all apart of me, and fit into my story in one way or another, even if it's unintentional, or I don't see it at first. Now I don't think I'll go so far as to label this record as "concept", but there's defiantly a bit of a story line.

here's another sample to pass the time. Some of you may have heard the demo, I've mixed it up a bit, dropped it a half step and added some other fun things.

enojoy!

...

Comfort in Conflict.

2008-12-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

Involving stories are built around conflict. With out conflict, there is nothing to be resolved, nothing to learn from, and nothing to give the story relevance. As humans in a world of prosperity, health, and resources, we need conflict. We live for it. Conflict is the force that gives meaning to our own stories. Day by day, life is lived in anticipation for the issues, problems, and disagreements that are sure to rise. Smoke alarms are installed, security systems are instigated, second keys are cut, godparents are assigned, car insurance is bought, diets are started, and savings accounts created. All of this is our indemnity, our protection against the conflict we are sure life will bring. Even as we work through and tackle the conflict of every day life we seem to be preparing for an ultimate conflict we believe to be in store, that one car accident, that one fire, the one death, the one thing that will give life meaning. Conflict is spoken of as a poison, an inconvenience, but while it does bring pain, the truth is, if this conflict never comes around, if the rising action never leads to climax, if the plot line of life is flat, our stories are incomplete, our personal legends unfinished, nothing has been overcome or accomplished. Such is the bliss and contortion of life in the depths of prosperity, and provision, as I know it. My only problem is that I do not have one.

As a first year student at briercrest, born to a pastor, raised in the church, taught with only the highest quality of Christian elementary, middle, and high school education, fed three meals a day, separated comfortably from the pain and disarray of war and poverty, I am the embodiment of this anti struggle. My life doesn’t know pain. I find my self drowning on the dry land of my life own story. Lost in the quest to complete my own plot, to work through my life’s rising action, conflict, climax, and resolution, only to be wedged, stuck hopelessly in the introduction.

As a man of faith, living through the stories of Christianity, I know that the solution to this problem lies in my connection with the biblical meta-narrative: the fastening of my story to the story of God and his people, the story of Christianity, or as I believe, all of humanity. “Creation, fall, redemption, [and] consummation” (Opitz, Melleby) should be the crucial events that define my life, my sin the conflict, Jesus’ death the climax, and resurrection the resolution. I need to choose to live, not for conflict has this western world has conditioned me to, but to separate me self, turning my back on the worldly, and in turn bringing my attention, and giving my life to a plot line that is so much more incredible than any concoction of predicament, solution, and resolve the world could put together. I need to remind my self of this every day.

Album Art

2008-12-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

EP update: I've got the art finished, and all tracks ready for vocals. It's coming soon friends.

EP

2008-12-01T17:27:00.001-08:00

Here's a sample from the EP I am currently working on.
I'm aiming to have it finished by Christmas.

This one's called "Space"

listen right here

forget it

2008-12-01T17:23:00.001-08:00

Soiled, foul and Falling through
The space between my ears and my heart
Separate words, separate syllables
and splitting bones are together the joint forces
That sing me beautifully to sleep

With two tired arms, and kneeling bloody knuckles
This place begins to smells of gin, cooked peas, and vomit.
Breathing hurts throats and seeing burns eyes
But I want to soak it in, I want it, I want it

I lie to my self, more than any one else
So don’t take my words they’re as thin as they felt
The first time I stepped down the road with no end
I’m not getting anywhere here, and I don’t know if I’ll find it.

Because this man against self, conflict has fed many books
It has filled many plots, shelves, authors, and hearts.
Heads and hands, hardly hearing the rain
Too busy sleeping in salvation they claim

But the funny thing is, none of this matters
The weaker things are, the quicker they shatter.
All that you know, and all that you are,
Just Open your eyes, and open your heart.

But really, forget it.

The beginning’s a good place to start

The grass is dead, and the trees are naked. Caronport could use some snow.

2008-12-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

The Last Means Show Ever

2008-12-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

“This band is yours, this stage is yours, this mic is yours, this show is ours. Let’s do this.”

I can still hear Matt Goud’s words reverberating in my heard as I stood in the mass of sweaty scene kids, all gathered together to say farewell, and see Regina’s one and only, Means, play they’re “last show ever”. Already sore, tired, and dumbstruck by the crushing forces of The Holly Springs Disaster, ripping us apart in preparation for the physically and emotionally exhausting experience that lay ahead of us.

With sound checks finished, the lights dimmed, a pit already forming, and an Andy Shauf recording serenading us all, the band filed out, and positioned them selves at their instruments. With a brief introduction Matt Good opened with the first song of their last record. Bringing a beginning to the end, beginning to take the last and final step.

Paradox hung thick in the air.

The rest of the show was a blur; a frenzy of entangled bodies frantically climbing the stage, only to dive back in to the depths of the fans, and friends below, the pit raging, and pulsing with every breakdown as fists flew, and feet pounded, as each member of the band exerted every last ounce of energy, emotion, and stigma, sharing their mics and stage, knowing that this was their last chance to do so under the uniting Means banner. Sweaty, and exhausted, by the end of the show I knew that it was all of this, and it was beautiful.

Who will fill these shoes? Such a God centered pillar of the scene in Regina, spreading influence across Canada, many bands willingly admitting that if it weren’t for theses guys, they them selves would be no where, many fans begging for a chance so explain how Means changed their lives.

Who will be the next to take the front?
Who will rise to this position of leadership?
What now?

These were the thoughts that ran through my head as I witnessed Mike Froh of Holly Springs, usually seen barking warnings to fathers, telling them to grab they’re daughters, because his boys are back in town, singing along, on stage, to the Means’ biblically centered lyrics we’ve all come to know and love.

These were the questions I asked my self as I watched piles of kids twist together as the stage was perpetually mobbed, the mound of fans growing higher than the band it self, Dylan even at one point being engulfed, and pulled into the crowd, only to be lifted up pushed back to his position at the mic.

These were my concerns as the show finished, encore complete, a chant of respect and admiration rising from the building, while a seemingly nonstop applause appreciated the band on stage standing together, looking close to tears.

November 28 brought a painful and frustrating, but still fulfilling and completing night. It will not be soon that I forget it.