Grey Skies Fallen | METALSITES.net

Biography

The band was formed in early 1996 by Rick Habeeb, Joe D’Angelo, and Chris Montalbano. I’d been jamming with Joe for a few years by this time. After we split with our drummer, he hooked up with Chris through an ad in the paper. A few months went by, and we started jamming with Chris and the drummer. After some songs were written, we decided to go into the studio and record a demo.

This was the first time any of us had recorded in a studio, and it showed. Going under the band name Eve of Mourning, we released “A Dark Serenade” on cassette. Copies went out to metal zines and websites, and the general take on the demo was that it was an average, run-of-the-mill mid 90’s doom metal demo tape. We even had violins, which were played by a person who was obviously tone deaf. Every once in a while, I’ll throw on a copy of this demo and sit there in utter amazement, thinking to myself: “That was us?” Chris and I shared vocal duties during the beginning stages of the band.

A few months after “A Dark Serenade” was unleashed upon the unsuspecting metal masses, I got an email from a guy in Chicago who had a band called, strangely enough, Eve of Mourning. He threatened legal action against us if we did not change our name at once. Considering none of us were attached to the band name, and the fact that we were in fear of the legal team this man would assemble, we changed the name within a week. I came up with the name Grey Skies Fallen on a snowy February day in 1997.

The drummer was removed from the band yet again, this time in a legendary rehearsal studio fight, which to this day is preserved on audio tape. I remember him coming to practice in my car that night, yet I am unaware how he got home.

We pressed on. It was during this time that we began to assemble the songs that would make up our first album, “The Fate of Angels.” Four songs had been written by March or April of ’97, and again we wanted to record them for a demo. Again, we headed into the welcoming confines of Dare Studios, although this time, drummerless.

Again, vocal duties were split between Chris and I. He took the songs “Drawn to the Earth,” and “Walk this Bloody Path.” I handled “This Burden I Bear,” and “Shadowburn.” I also played keyboards on this demo. Bear in mind please, I’m not a keyboard player. We realized though, that keyboards were a missing element in the band. More on that in a moment.

Chris called me up one night and said he was unhappy with the way his vocals came out. He said he no longer wanted to sing. By default, I became the lead singer. Just as I was no keyboardist, I was no singer either. I was playing guitar for 9 years by then, and I looked at myself as a guitarist first, singer second. We had to go back into the studio to re-cut the vocals for the two songs Chris sung on. That went fine, and we were ready to take over the metal world!

So here we were with a new demo tape. The robotic, emotionless drum machine stood out like a sore thumb. We figured the point got across though. We never pressed this demo and released it properly; we basically made copies at home on our tape decks. This was before the days of CD writers, and making a demo on CD at that time was still a very expensive option that we were unable to afford.

I’d estimate that 500 or so of these tapes were handed out at various local metal shows during the spring and summer of ’97. One of those shows was when My Dying Bride came to New York. To this day, I still get people telling me that they got one of those tapes at that show. I tell them they’re sitting on a goldmine, and that they could make a fortune selling that bad boy on eBay.

Again, we sent the demo tape out to a bunchy of zines and websites. This time though, the reaction was better. Even with the horrible drum machine, people liked what we were doing. Now we needed to take care of the things we were missing: i.e. keyboards and drums.

Craig Rossi was a friend of mine from high school. We were bad children, causing much mischief and mayhem. “He’d fit perfectly!,” I thought. Craig was playing keyboards in a female-fronted space rock band called Trance. I said, “Hey Craig, how would you like to quit that band and join our band?” He said “Trance who?” Ok, that may not be how it exactly happened, but nonetheless, he was now the fourth, and almost final part of GSF.

We started playing some gigs at this time. It’s comical to look at pictures from that era where there are four people standing on a stage with no drummer. The band actually had a lot in common with our crowds, in that there were usually four people standing there as well. I remember one show we played at The Pyramid in NYC in which we played for the soundman and the bartender. Good times indeed!

So we figured we’d better get a drummer right away.

I met Aaron Williams while we were working at a bar a couple of years before that. We used to talk about music a lot. He was playing drums for years, and I would tell him about how I wanted to get a band going. We lost touch soon thereafter. One day during the summer of ’97 the band decided to check out a free rock show near where we lived. Aaron was there, and we got to talking. He was looking for a band, and we were looking for a drummer. Perfect fit.

Aaron joined the band, and we started writing. We had a nice rehearsal space that cost us nothing to use, and which provided 24-hour access. Needless to say, we took advantage of this, and a lot was accomplished. By the time New Years came around, we had an album written. All we had to do was come up with the cash and record it.

Source: website

Line-Up:
- Rick Habeeb
- Joe D'Angelo
- Craig Rossi
- Sal Gregory
- Jimmy White