Dimmu Saurus (Bulgarian: Димозавъръ or Димозавъръ; from Latin: Dimmu Saurus) is a musical project dedicated to blues, metal, rock and classical music, and other fun genres. It was founded in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, and currently consists of one member – myself, the Black Dimosaur (my portrait is hanging on top of the page).
I created this project, because I wanted to write music that does not follow any rules, nor that it is mutilated by restrictions or constraints. The way all music should be.
The beginning
Back in 1998, when I was in primary school, I recorded my first album on a tape. I named it “The Power of Wind”. The equipment in my recording studio was, as follows:
- A Hitachi boombox from the 80s
- A plastic egg full of shots which I was using as a maracas
- The book Vladko in India in hardcover edition. I banged on it with two glue tubes.
And after adding my vocals, there was no doubt in success. I have recorded the eight songs quickly and finished the album.
Rok Boys
A few weeks later – in November 26, same year, a friend of mine, my brother and me of course, we founded a rock band by the name Rok Boys. I was the drummer and also provided backing vocals, although I am the leading one on three songs. On the same day and the one after, we recorded 16 songs. During the recording session we decided to replace Vladko in India with a large hard pillow and later – with a shoe box. This way my drums sounded extremely solid and unique in a way never achieved by any other band.
Next week or more precisely on December 6, my father took back his old guitar from a friend, who borrowed it a long time ago. In consequence my brother and I started playing all day and all night long. Although, considering we are still band members, we decided that I should stick with drums and obviously – he was going to be the guitarist.
After the winter holidays the band obtained new instruments – a little drum and a synthesizer, which naturally led us to the recording of six new songs, and thus – our first album was born. We called it “1 самостоятелен”, meaning “1 Independent”. After that, the band went on a hiatus.
Music Master
Despite the short life of the band, my brother and I decided not to give up making music, so we created one of our own and named it Music Master. While the Rok Boys were taking a breath after the furious start, on December 20, 1998 we recorded our first song, “Bad Boys”. I kept playing the drums and he remained the guitarist. Only this time he was the leading singer. We finished our first album in the end of March 1999 and we named it simply “Music Master 1”. It included 16 songs.
In August we started recording our second album entitled “MM2 – The Spider”. On 22nd we already had 9 songs and on 2nd September we recorded the last two. Even though we intended the album to consist of 12 songs, we managed to create only 11. Next year we recorded a third album, including 10 songs, using our new personal computer. Unfortunately, it was destroyed because the computer failed.
The following years the band grew less and less active. In 2001 we recorded a single titled “Tora”, followed by improved versions of “Put Me Down” and “The Space Rock”, which we consider two of our best songs from “Music Master 1”. Band’s last single, titled “Dig It Up”, came out in 2003.
Birth of Dimmu Saurus
Let’s get back in time to the year 2000. It was June 12, and I was browsing a CD that came with a computer magazine. It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon a music notation program named Melody Assistant. I immediately started exploring it and wrote my first piece of music the very same day. I named it “Kefos”, which approximately translates as “Joy”. As time passed, I continued discovering more and more features of the program which naturally translated into more and more complex compositions. Of course, the decreasing disharmony lead to the fact that other people finally realized that the sounds coming out of my computer were music. Despite of this, I decided not to publish these primordial ideas on the Internet. They belong in the archive.
In the year 2001, I decided to make a song that is listenable, and potentially enjoyable by the others. By this time I was also very much influenced by the idea of tracker music, so I began experimenting. I used a song originally performed by Billy Idol to create the instruments and rhythms. Later, in June 2002, “I feel worse” was born.
The following two years I fell into a creative crisis and music almost became a thing of the past. At this time, I also stopped playing the guitar.
Renaissance
Then the story jumps to the summer of 2004, when I went back to writing music again. The first tune from this period is “Мойто” (“Mine”, or ”My Thing”) and was born without much effort. One evening I wanted to hear how a guitar riff, that I invented back in 1999 would sound, if drums and bass guitar were playing along. On the next day, Deus ex Machina started spinning at full speed and through my hands, which served only as an instrument, the music emerged. While I was working, I thought to myself, “I want to make a great tune out of this one”. And so I did!
After “Mine”, I became very productive. In the next two years I wrote eight more tunes, that sounded better and better.
In 2006, I began experimenting with different techniques, both in terms of recording and music composition. At the end of the summer, I decided to turn a poem written a year ago, into a black metal song and then, the outstanding blockbuster “С.М.Р.А.Д.” (S.T.I.N.K.) was born. This was my first real song in which I actually sing. It was also the first time I used a real guitar instead of computer generated sound. I played my good old acoustic Cremona Rose for the recording. Of course, I still had to use the computer to add distortion and effects, to make it sound “trve” and evil. I wanted the entire song to be similar to the early Black Metal music from the 1990s. As you can imagine, the vocal part, or shall I say, the screaming part, was also “trve”.
Up, up and away!
Although metal music has many different subgenres and it had inspired me a lot, I wanted to explore different music styles. And so I did.
Thought Stew
It was the year 2007, when I dived into blues music and especially Delta blues from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. I took my inspiration from the very first blues performers in Ameirca, the ones who were building railroads and picking cotton by hand during the day, and playing the blues by the fire, in the evening. The Blues and also the Rock’n’Roll, which is very similar to from musical perspective, helped me write three of the songs in “Thought Stew” album.
Meanwhile, I grew fond of classical music and as a result, I did my first steps in this genre, too.
It was the summer of 2007 when I went back to a very old guitar riff. I don’t even remember when I invented it anymore. It must have been 1998 or so. This riff became the beginning “Nightfall”. Initially, it was going to be a separate tune, but during the following two summers, in 2008 and 2009, the tale grew and grew, and together with “To Mirkwood” and “By the Lake”, it turned into the classical suite “Battle for the Hill”.
And one weekend in-between the blues and the classical, I wrote a techno track.
Of course, I did not abandon metal music. I spent almost the entire 2010 working on the epic seven-minute piece “The King of Robots”. In that tune I play an electric guitar for the first time. In fact, there are three of them.
The other metal experiment from these years is “I Had a Dream”, from 2012. The song came to be all of a sudden, even to my surprise. It was a winter night and I was at home, when I came up with the music, and on the next day I wrote the lyrics, as well. After completing it, I decided to connect its story to “Dead Man’s Dance” (2008) and to expand it in three more songs that were just ideas at that time. This way I layed out the foundations of the conceptual (and yet unfinished) album “The Road That Everyone...”.
The Road That Everyone...
Actually, the last song from “The Road That Everyone...”, “Bandit’s Song”, is not entirely from this period. I had written the first part back in 2006, but the lyrics were completely different. Just before creating “I Had a Dream”, I had had already started reworking and expanding it, to make it what it is today.
And we have now gotten to the period that starts from the summer of 2011 and ends in May 2013. This is when I gathered all my musical and literature inspiration and wrote two of my most complex and megalomaniac pieces, namely “Bandit’s Song” and “Hunting Time Has Come Again”. Both of them have a little of country-blues, Uriah Heep, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, classical, but mostly Ferenc Liszt and Rossini.
I was writing the story while I was listening to the rain softly falling on the roof of my attic; while I was walking through the mysterious, but terrifying worlds of Stephen King and my good friend, Tisho; while I was attending Voland’s marvellous shows; while in they grey winter mornings I was walking to work (after all, going to work is a horror); while I was sitting on Danube’s bank on a hot August afternoon.
All this I compiled into almost eighteen minutes of music. Yet, there is one more chapter until it is done.
Adagio rallentando
The newest period spans from 2014 until nowadays. It has no name yet, but similar to “Thought Stew”, I have written songs in distinct variety of genres, namely, rock, thrash metal and country blues. Nevertheless, they are not as long, complex and grand as the ones from before.
A new step that I made is making of music videos. The most spectacular one is for “Meat in the Prison Cell” (2015), which also happened to be one of my coolest songs.
And after that… well, I am still writing the next musical chapter...