The true spirit of Metal becomes alive when a human being perseveres after being faced with physical or mental hardship. A true Metal warrior breaks all boundaries and rises to the occasion! Today, we salute Bassil Silver from POWERGLOVE!
Bassil recently broke his wrist after suffering a pretty serious accident on his bike. Instead of canceling his bands performances or bringing in a replacement, he learned how to play all of his bands Speed Metal songs with one hand. After the bands appearance at Tora-con in Rochester, NY, Bassil posted the following message. Read his message and then check the video out!
"Around a month ago, during a trip to California, I broke my wrist. Though I’ve been passing it off as due to chronic overzealous masturbation, the true cause was flipping over the handlebars on my bike and landing wrists-first on the concrete. Not even cool biking like downhilling or flying off jumps (which I surprisingly have not yet injured myself doing), but biking to meet my mom for her birthday dinner. Finding out a week later via X-ray and MRI that I had fractured my scaphoid was devastating. Not because I had to be in a cast for 6 weeks, or even because I couldn’t play drums, but because we had 3 festivals booked that according to the doctor, I now had to cancel.
"To me, the prospect of cancelling a show is terrible. I feel like in doing so, I’m letting down our fans, and letting down my band mates. By the time I arrived home, I had successfully brewed a stupid idea. One that I was for some odd reason determined to carry out. I would learn to play the drums with one hand.
"I realized this idea was stupid for 2 reasons. First, we play speed Metal.. a style that’s difficult enough to play with two hands. The amount of extra work one hand would have to do in order to provide a similar sonic impact would be daunting. Secondly, I had broken my right wrist. I not only had to learn it one-handed, but with my crappier left hand, which I would learn quickly lacked much of the endurance and dynamic control of my right. The first thing I did was call up Alexander, our manager, and after explaining to him what happened, told him not to cancel anything. So now I had no choice. I had to somehow learn our set with one hand.
"Every day since I came home in a cast, I have been practicing lefty one-handed drumming. At first my friends laughed at me, making Rick Allen (Def Leppard) jokes, and saying how hilarious it would be. But this if anything drove me harder, I had to prove that I could do it. It involved coming up with many alternate beats and fills, linear drumming techniques which fill in kickdrum hits between double strokes for fluidity, and intense left-hand endurance sessions to allow for my hand to take on twice the responsibility that it normally holds, without tensing up or giving out. Luckily, for a while I had been playing a good amount of our set lefty, just to build up strength and fluidity with my weaker limbs, and to help develop ambidexterity. Unfortunately, completely lacking the right hand proved to be a much more difficult endeavor. Nick, Chris, and Alex helped me through this process by showing a lot support and willingness to learn how to play along with a gimp drummer. This initially resulted in some hilarious sounding band practices, but in the end things started to come together surprisingly well.
"Last night, at Tora-Con in Rochester, NY was my first big test. I would play my first show ever with one hand. I must admit that this was initially very nerve-wracking. I knew the crowd would be understanding, and that we could play the set reasonably well, but I had this small itch in the back of my head, the slight fear of imminent disaster.
"In the end, the show turned out to be an incredible experience. And I can’t give credit to anyone more than all the fans who came and saw the show. You guys showed me support and so much enthusiasm, which gave me the drive to put every ounce of energy I had into playing our set. From the first cheers of the night, to all the kind words after the show, you all proved to me that all the time I had put in to making this happen was worth every second, without question.
"Thank you Tora-Con. You guys rule."
- Bassil Silver (Powerglove)
Related links:
Powerglove's Official Site
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