exes for eyesderek sherinianheavy metalsons of apolloex dream theater
19:00 Saturday, 20 August 2022
Canadian bashers Exes For Eyes have release a new single, "Built To Suffer", featuring a guest appearance by Sons Of Apollo / ex-Dream Theater keyboardist Derek Sherinian. The song is available for streaming and below.
BraveWords spoke exclusively with guitarist / founder Dave Sheldon about the collaboration.
Sheldon: "Long in short, I couldn't write a solo. Nothing I did sounded right, it sounded extremely out of place. It's hard to describe; not musically out of place, but tonally. All I could hear in my head was a synth / keyboard, and the song sat unfinished for a while. I'd revisit it from time to time, but I'd just be fumbling about the fretboard completely frustrated. I could hear the solo in my head, and it sounded like Sherinian, and I am not Sherinian (laughs). I shelved the track and basically forgot about it.
I follow him on IG, and tagged him on something. A day or two, I had a message in my inbox from Derek asking if I was working on any new music. By that time I completely forgot about the song and told him I wasn't. Fast forward six months, I was looking through hard drives for a friend's session and found the song, and remembered he had asked.
It took a while but I finally put two and two together and asked him if he'd rip a solo on the song now known as 'Built To Suffer', and I couldn't be happier with the result. It inspired me to write my own solo to round the track out. He made me step up my game, for sure."