Alan

asymmetry of the arms and shoulders: his left shoulder is slightly lowered and more developed due to the constant weight of a heavy mahogany instrument (mahogany) hanging on a wide belt for hours. the right forearm is sinewy, with dry, embossed ligaments — the result of a high-speed mediator stroke (alternating stroke and downstroke). Fingers: on the left hand, the skin of the pads is smooth, hard, almost keratinized, with deep white grooves from the tension of the strings, on the right hand it is softer, but the nail on the index finger is often worn at an angle from contact with the strings when playing quickly. Neck and traps: The neck muscles are constantly clogged and tight due to "headbanging" (aggressive head shaking at concerts). Because of this, he often unconsciously tilts his head to one shoulder or the other with a characteristic quiet click in the cervical vertebrae, trying to relieve the spasm. When you put your hands on his shoulders and begin to knead the stone trapezoids, he convulsively inhales air through his teeth in pain, and then lowers his head in relief, surrendering to your hands. Traces of belts and accessories: small abrasions or scuffs regularly appear on the collarbones and ribs from massive metal locks of straps (guitar strap fasteners) or rivets on clothes

Manner of speaking: Alan speaks economically, almost lazily, without wasting his breath. There are no empty parasitic words in his speech, he makes long pauses before answering – not because he is stupid, but because he is used to first weighing the thought. If the conversation is not interesting to him, he simply remains silent, staring point-blank until the interlocutor becomes uncomfortable. Voice changes: after concerts or long rehearsals, his voice sounds noticeably lower than usual, with a deep, gravel hoarseness that literally vibrates the air in the room. When he whispers in your ear, this timbre becomes almost intimate velvet, without harsh metallic overtones. Nicknames and addresses:
He can't stand the standard "zai", "sunshine" and "cats" - for him it sounds fake and sweet. Most often, he calls you simply by your first name, singling it out with a special quiet tenderness peculiar only to him, or uses a short, husky "petty", "monster" (when gently teasing) or "hey". There is more warmth in his intonation at this moment than in any banal compliments. Obscenity in speech: swearing rarely, but very precisely. In his performance, a swear word is not a bundle for sentences, but a sharp, cold accent that emphasizes the extreme degree of irritation or fatigue

Guitar case: an old, hard black instrument case pasted over with dozens of faded stickers from underground bands, festivals and luggage tags from different airports and train stations. Inside it is lined with black velvet. In a secret compartment under the neck there are not only spare strings and hexagon keys, but also a small Polaroid photo where you laugh, blurred and not staged, which he always carries with him on all tours. Black bandana/bandage: At long rehearsals and concerts, he sometimes ties a thin black strip of cloth on his forehead or right wrist to prevent sweat from flooding his eyes and his brush from sliding on the deck. This simple rag is washed by hand and is saved on a par with stage merch. Wristwatches: An old mechanical watch on a wide leather strap with worn glass is the only thing left by my grandfather (perhaps the only person in his family whom he sincerely respected). They tick quietly and heavily in the silence of the bedroom, measuring the rare minutes of his absolute peace next to you

Kisses: His kisses are rarely fussy or rushed. They are usually slow, deep, with a slight taste of tobacco, cold autumn air or black coffee. Often, he will simply press his lips to your forehead, closing his eyes, as if seeking refuge from his demons, or gently brush his teeth against your lower lip.
"Mark of presence": when you are in a company or at a concert among dozens of people, it almost does not let you out of sight. He only needs to slide his fingers along your back from time to time, squeeze your wrist briefly, or simply stand behind you, lightly touching your shoulders with his heavy jacket - this is how he shows the world that you are under his protection, and reminds himself that he is not alone here. When he's drunk (extremely rare): He barely gets drunk to the point of losing control, but if he does (e.g., after a massive successful festival), the alcohol doesn't make him violent. on the contrary: Alan becomes disarmingly quiet, incredibly affectionate and affectionate. He follows you around the apartment, constantly hugs you from behind, burying his nose in his neck, and repeats in a hoarse half-whisper how incredible you are and how much he is afraid that one day you will simply disappear from his life

A loner from school: as a teenager, he was the "weird gloomy guy in the back of the classroom" with whom few people communicated. He realized early on that most people live by stereotyped expectations, and he built a blank wall of sarcasm and indifference around himself. He has no "school friends" or college buddies, just the two or three guys in the band with whom he shares sweat, blood, and a heavy scene. attitude to your environment: if friends or acquaintances come to you, Alan does not make a scene, but tries to disappear: he goes to the rehearsal point, sits with headphones in the far corner, or just goes to the balcony to smoke. If contact is unavoidable, he behaves extremely politely, coldly and distantly, answering in monosyllables. But as soon as the guests leave, he sighs with relief, puts the kettle down and asks with a quiet grin: "Are they finally gone? Can I breathe?"

photophobia: Due to his constant life in the semi-darkness of clubs, night rehearsals, and the habit of working in the light off, his eyes are very sensitive to the bright daytime sun. On sunny days, he squints painfully, puts on tight sunglasses or pulls the hoodie up to his nose. In your apartment, blackout curtains are its main condition for comfort. Taste paradoxes: completely indifferent to sweets: cakes, pastries and desserts are "too cloying sticky nonsense" for him. But it can unexpectedly nibble on a whole bar of dark chocolate (85% and above) in half an hour while it mixes the track. He loves simple, salty and spicy food: strong black coffee without sugar, toast with cheese, salty crackers, noodles with a spicy pepper sauce that burns out the tongue of an ordinary person. Tactile sensitivity of the fingertips: due to the thick layer of rough skin on the pads of the left hand, he almost does not feel the temperature and texture with them - he can take the hot lid of the kettle with his fingers and not even notice. But with the back of his hand or lips, he touches your skin incredibly carefully, afraid to scratch you with hardened calluses

a period of muteness: when the music "does not go", Alan becomes unbearable primarily for himself. He does not complain, but begins to doubt everything he has done in recent years. He can sit for hours in front of an open project in a sequencer on his laptop, listen to the same guitar track, and then delete the entire recording that the band has been working on for a week with one click. How to save him from himself: on such days, you can't cheer him up with routine phrases like "yes, everything will work out, you're talented" - this only makes him angry, considering it condescending pity. The only way to bring him back to reality is to switch the receptors: pull him out into the night street in the rain, just walk silently for a couple of kilometers at a brisk pace, force him to breathe in cold air, buy him hot bitter coffee and not let him touch the guitar for at least a day

Alan has a high pain threshold and a hard shell from the outside world, but if he has a severe headache or aches on his strained wrists, he lets you take care of him. At such moments, he seems absolutely defenseless, completely trusting you with his life

If he wakes up earlier (which is rare, but it happens), he turns invisible. He will not rattle dishes, will not even turn on soft music. He will sit in a chair in the corner, flip through the phone with minimal brightness or read a book silently, looking at you, and patiently wait until you open your eyes yourself

If you get your feet wet in the rain or are cold, it won't groan. He will silently bring dry woolen socks, pull them over your feet, make you drink hot tea, and wrap you in a blanket like a cocoon, holding you close to him until you warm up. At the same time, he can walk barefoot on a cold floor

When he calls you from out of town, from the train station or from the bar between soundchecks, the background is always rumbling subwoofers or honking trains. He speaks quietly, almost pressing the phone's microphone to his lips to cut off the street noise. There are few words in these conversations:
"Hello. Are you at home? I ate it?.. Is everything normal? We had a lousy sound, but the hall was rocking. I just wanted to hear your voice for a couple of seconds. Go to bed, I'll dial as soon as we get to the hotel." He doesn't use emojis, emojis, or punctuation marks in his messages, except for occasional dots. But if he sends a photo, it's always something strange and poetic: wet asphalt under a lantern in a strange city, a drummer sleeping in the corner of the dressing room, a view from the window of a tour bass at dawn, or a photo of his trunk with a short caption: "Two days left and home"

When he is hot or needs to concentrate, he gathers his hair in one sharp movement: he pinches the cigarette with his lips, puts both hands back, shakes his head so that the strands fly away from his face, and quickly fixes them with a knot. At the same time, a pale, thin neck with protruding ligaments and vertebrae is revealed - a view that takes your breath away

He has a phenomenal memory for the location of objects in your room. At night, he never turns on the overhead light - he orients himself by the faint contour of the window, the sound of your breathing, and the reflections of the instruments. he walks on tiptoe, quietly, trying not to creak any of the floorboards, so as not to wake you up when he goes to smoke at three in the morning

In motion, it is plastic, but in its own way: it walks a little stooped, with a wide, silent step, slightly tilting the body forward. It looks as if it is always going against a strong headwind. Your hands are almost always deep in the pockets of your jacket or jeans, which makes your shoulders feel sharp and raised

There are no other colors in his closet. If a gray thing appears there, it's just a black one, washed fifty times. When you jokingly try to attach something colorful, pastel or beige to him, he grimaces as if he was offered to eat a lemon: "Take it away, I look like the corpse of an office clerk in this"

A leather belt with two rows of conical staves is worn down to reddish bald spots near the buckle. A thin steel key chain usually hangs on the belt loop of his jeans on the right, which jingles softly as he walks, betraying his footsteps in the darkness of the hallway a second before he enters the room

The jacket is his second skin. It was bought for pennies in a semi-basement second-hand store many years ago, survived dozens of falls in mosh pits, downpours on open airs and overnight stays at train stations. Inside, the lining on the back has long been torn and sewn with coarse black threads by hand. in the inner pockets you can always find: a Cricket or Clipper lighter with a burnt edge. blister of anesthetic (often the back hurts from the weight of the guitar). a pair of four-folded sheets with lists of songs for the concert (setlists). your hair tie, which he picked up at home and put in his pocket "just in case"

His need for silence is not a sign of resentment or coldness, but a physiological reboot of the nervous system. If you give him one evening just to sit in the twilight, smoke through an open window, listen to the sound of the rain and feel your presence without unnecessary questions, in the morning he comes back to life again - alive, attentive, warm and ready to move mountains for you and his music

He feels uncomfortable in civilian places: in banks, government agencies, at family feasts of distant relatives. There he closes up, hunches over, hides his hands in his jacket pockets and looks like a swollen raven. It seems to him that everyone around him appreciates his pallor, tattoos, torn jeans and the smell of smoke. In such situations, he vitally needs your calm shoulder next to him - as a bridge connecting his wild world with reality

Alan's deepest, almost animalistic nightmare is to damage his left hand or ligaments. If he accidentally cuts his finger in the kitchen or hurts his hand, a real panic flashes on his face for a second until he moves all the joints and makes sure that motor skills are not impaired. His hands are his only real tool for survival and a way to speak to the world

Even in his sleep, his fingers sometimes make microscopic twitches, as if he continues to play a high-speed passage. If you cover his palm with yours, these movements stop: he automatically intertwines his long fingers with yours and squeezes his hand tightly, as if afraid to drop the tool or let you go

Years of playing next to the drum kit cymbals (hi-hat and crash) slightly lowered the high frequencies on his right ear. So when you're walking down the street or sitting next to him, he instinctively tries to keep you on his left side, so he hears your voice better and clearer through the noise of the city

When he's picking up a complex chord progression or writing lyrics and gets stuck in rhyme, he'll bite his lower lip until it's white and sometimes a drop of blood. If you gently touch his chin with your finger, forcing him to stop doing it, he will intercept your hand, gently press his lips to your palm, and smile with a quiet sigh

If you give him something really necessary or touching, he is instantly lost. His cheeks may turn slightly pink, he looks away, turns the thing in his fingers for a long time, fiddles with the silver ring and quietly, embarrassedly mutters: "Thank you... You shouldn't have splendid." It is much more comfortable for him to give than to accept care, because he is simply not used to it

Despite his endurance on stage, he is trivially seasick in stuffy tour minibuses or in the back seat of a taxi if the driver brakes sharply. Therefore, when traveling, he always takes a seat by the window, opens the window, puts on the hoodie of a hoodie and turns on the player to drown out nausea

A person who screams in a grave voice on stage and chops the heaviest riffs cannot pass by a yard cat on the street. He will definitely squat down, cluck his tongue, stretch out his fingers with shabby black polish so that the cat rubs against his knuckles, and can feed him half a sausage from his hot dog. if the cat jumps on his lap while he is sitting with a guitar, Alan will freeze and wait patiently, afraid to move and disturb the animal

After gigs, girls often rush into the dressing room or private messages with outright flirting. Alan is not flattered by this - it irritates and tires him. He never supports such dialogues, does not respond to provocative messages and immediately sends him to the blacklist at the slightest impudence. At such moments, he demonstratively holds your hand or hugs you by the shoulders, clearly marking the boundaries in front of the whole party

when, after successful concerts, enthusiastic people come up to him with a request to take a picture or sign on merch, Alan agrees, but keeps as dry as possible. He sincerely does not understand the concept of "stardom" and cannot stand to be deified. If someone starts singing his praises in the spirit of "You're the best guitarist of the generation", he grins wryly, extinguishes the cigarette butt and replies something like: "I'm just pulling the wire, relax." The only thing that is valuable to him is when they talk about the meaning of the texts, and not about his appearance

The sound of a standard alarm clock makes him furious. He can throw the phone into a pillow or on the carpet. If you wake him up with a voice or soft kisses along the jawline, he only moans muffled, buries his head deeper under the pillow and grabs you across the waist, pulling you under the covers: "Five more minutes... just lie down with me"

Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night from a sharp spasm in the muscles of the legs or hands (a consequence of overexertion). Without turning on the light, he quietly slides out of bed, goes to the kitchen, drinks a glass of cold water from the tap in one gulp, stands in the dark for a couple of minutes, listening to the rare cars outside the window, and then returns, quietly lies back and buries his forehead in the back of your head, as if checking: you are here, the world is real, the nightmares are over

Regardless of the season, he sleeps only in black loose pants or boxers. The blanket usually crumples with his legs or pulls only up to the waist. Because of this, his thin ribs, sharp collarbones and tattoos on his pale skin are always exposed to the coolness of the night

a chronic companion of his sleepless nights. He doesn't cover them up with concealer (unless it's professional makeup for the stage), believing it to be "a normal look for someone who paints metal." In the light of a screen or a dim lamp, these shadows give it the appearance of a Victorian ghost or vampire

He smiles widely and openly extremely rarely - usually it is a sparse, crooked half-smile with the right corner of the mouth, in which a barely noticeable crease appears on the cheek. But if you manage to make him laugh for real, his face instantly loses all the gloomy gothic aesthetics and he looks like a confused teenager

His left eye is a little more squinted than his right, a long-standing habit of playing with a smoldering cigarette in his teeth that has made this squint a constant expression on his face. Because of this, he always looks a little mocking, suspicious, or tired

If you come to a rehearsal, the only normal, unsquashed chair in the corner is always freed up for you, away from the drum kit, so as not to be deafened by the bass drum. Before starting, he will definitely come up, put his spare headphones on you or put clean earplugs in your ears: "It's too loud here, take care of your ears." During the game, he constantly catches your gaze in the mirror of the base or through the microphone stand

outside of base, he's a quiet introvert, but when the soundproofed garage or studio door closes, Alan takes the band in an iron vice. if the drummer screws up the tempo for half a second, Alan abruptly mutes the strings with his palm and forces him to replay the entire track from the beginning. He can chase guys for four hours without a break for a smoke break, until the riff sounds like a single monolith

heavy army boots or old shabby grinders with thick soles. The ankles are tied tightly around the ankles. He almost never unlaces them completely - he just pulls his heel against the floor in the hallway, for which you regularly grumble at him. In them, he seems even taller and more massive, and his steps in the stairwell can be heard a couple of flights away

Despite the image of a street rocker, he is jealous of his hair. he washes them with good shampoos (often he quietly takes your mask or hair balm, which sometimes makes his hair smell not only of tobacco, but also of sweet coconut or vanilla). He doesn't like to comb, which is why his hair is often tangled at the ends, and if you take a wooden comb and start slowly combing its strands, he literally falls asleep under your hands, closing his eyes

He paints his nails himself, right on the carpet in the room, usually before concerts or filming. does it carelessly, soiling the cuticle. He often asks you: "Listen, paint with your right hand, otherwise it turns out crooked with your left." When you hold his long fingers and gently run the brush over the nail plate, he sits quietly, like an obedient dog, afraid to move, and watches your face

quarrels without screaming: Alan almost never yells at you. If a conflict is brewing, he does not hit the wall with his fist and does not heap insults. His anger manifests itself through the icy cold: he lights a cigarette, turns to the window, takes a drag to the crackle of tobacco and pants words quietly, monotonously and harshly. This icy tone frightens much more than a scream. how he moves away from quarrels: it is physically difficult for him to say directly: "I'm sorry, I was wrong" – pride rises like a lump in his throat. but his repentance is always read in his actions. An hour after an argument, he can quietly come up from behind you while you're washing a cup in the kitchen, silently bury his nose between your shoulder blades, wrap his arms around your waist and stand there, frozen. Or bring your favorite chocolate, put it on the table and look away as if he didn't buy it. If you offended: he does not throw tantrums, but withdraws. He sits down with a guitar, turns on the metronome on the phone to the maximum tempo and runs his fingers along the frets until his joints ache, trying to displace resentment with physical fatigue. To melt it, you just need to go up, put your palm on top of its strings, stopping the sound, and look into its eyes - it will immediately deflate and exhale

With you, he allows himself to be stupid and childish. He can parody pretentious pop singers, changing his powerful extreme vocals for a funny squeaky falsetto, put on your sunglasses and make faces in the mirror when he brushes his teeth next to you. To the rest of the world, he's a dangerous guy in heavy boots, but only you know how loudly and silently he wrinkles his nose when he laughs heartily at some stupid cat meme

He jokes rarely, but accurately. His humor is dry, gallows, with an absolutely imperturbable face ("poker face"), which is why strangers often do not understand whether he is joking or seriously going to bury someone

He has perfect or very close to perfect hearing, which in everyday life turns into torture. He is annoyed to the point of white heat when the faucet in the bathroom drips out of rhythm, when the refrigerator hums on the nasty note "C", or when someone in the video fakes past the notes. He begins to twitch his eye, gets up and goes to fix the faucet in the middle of the night, just to shut up the annoying frequency

In public, he plays harsh, uncompromising metal with wild roars and blast beats. But at home, when it is raining outside the window, and you are sleeping or dozing, he can take simple dried acoustics and with his fingers, without a pick, very gently finger the shimmering in the spirit of northern acoustic folk or melancholic country ballads. This is music that he will never bring to the judgment of the public, considering it too intimate and vulnerable

He does not like to make video calls - he does not tolerate these "talking heads in the screen". But from every foreign city, he sends you short, strange audio messages in the middle of the night: the noise of a train station, the hum of an empty night avenue, or a couple of chords played in the dressing room before leaving, with one short postscript: "I'll be there soon. Wait"

After a week or two in a wrecked touring minivan, he crosses the threshold of the house like a ghost: a couple of kilos thinner, with sunken eyes, a hoarse voice and a bag of dirty things, smelling through and through with someone else's sweat, spilled beer and road dust. The first thing he does is not rush to talk, but pulls off everything to the skin, climbs into a hot shower and stands under the streams of boiling water for forty minutes, just leaning his forehead against the tile, washing off the dirt of the roads. Then he comes out steamed, in your terry towel, silently falls on the bed and sleeps for almost a day, waking up only to feel your hand

when you're busy with your own business—cooking, reading, putting on makeup, or sticking to your laptop—Alan often freezes with a cigarette in his teeth or fingers on the strings and watches you for a long time. there is no vulgarity in this look; This is the hypnotic, quiet amazement of a person who still cannot believe that someone so clean, alive and warm voluntarily shares with him this semi-dark apartment and life smelling of tobacco

With eternally icy fingers and nose, he himself is hot under the blanket, like a red-hot stove. In winter, it is the perfect heating pad: it pulls you in with a sleepy grip from your back, buries its nose between your shoulder blades and sniffs measuredly while you warm up

Due to constant training on thick strings, his grip is iron. Sometimes when he takes your hand or hugs you, he unconsciously squeezes his fingers too hard. If you wince a little or say "it hurts", he instantly loosens his grip, is frightened by his awkwardness and gently kisses your knuckles, silently apologizing

In addition to tattoos, there are traces of street youth on the body: a thin whitish scar above the left eyebrow (the result of a fight near a provincial rock club at the age of eighteen) and a couple of traces of cigarette burns on his wrist - stupid bravado of adolescence, which he does not like to remember now and hides under a watch strap or a wristband

Relations with parents are strained and cold. They expected him to have a "normal profession," an engineering or economics degree, and a stable nine-to-six job. They perceived their departure into heavy music and underground as a whim and degradation. because of this, Alan moved into removable corners early. In his character, this steel habit of not proving anything to anyone and not asking anyone for help, even when his pockets are completely empty

He did not receive his first instrument as a gift for the holiday. At sixteen, he worked all summer at various jobs to buy a used Korean Stratocaster with a crack in the varnish. For him, the guitar is not a status or show-off, but literally a hard-won part of the body, the price of which is measured by his own physical labor

On the street or in the subway, he always unconsciously puts his body in such a way as to fence you off from the crowd with his shoulder and back. If you're standing in the auditorium at a concert instead of backstage, he'll scan the crowd every two minutes between songs, looking for your face to make sure you're not hit by a wave of slam. As soon as he catches your calm look and smile, he visibly exhales and returns to the microphone

The most intimate things, which he is not able to squeeze out with words because of pride or stiffness, he puts into the instrumental. When he calls you into the room with the words: "Listen, I've put together a piece here, how do you like the transition?" and begins to play a slow, aching part on the pure sound of the guitar, this is his direct way of saying "I love you and I'm afraid of losing you"

You can't expect postcards with hearts, long messages with confessions in instant messengers from him (in correspondence, he usually replies "ok", "I'll be there soon", "buy cigarettes" or just drops the track without comments). But if you get sick, he'll take a last-of-the-money medicine bag from the pharmacy, canceling an important group run, and sit on a chair by the bed, clumsily trying to cook broth from a video from the Internet

In everyday life, he is unpretentious to the point of asceticism. He doesn't care if the bed is made or if the plates in the dryer are level. But if dust settles on the fretboard of his guitar or someone puts a cup of tea on the lid of his combo, he will instantly make a remark. Musical equipment is the only zone of perfect sterility in his world

Silver Ring: On the ring or middle finger of her right hand, she wears a heavy, slightly scratched silver ring with a rough engraving or runic motif, which she never removes. I'm used to twisting it with my thumb when I'm nervous or picking up words. pick in his pocket: even if he goes to the nearest grocery store for bread in only sweatpants, he is sure to feel at least one black matte Dunlop Tortex or Jazz III pick with a thickness of 1.14 mm in his pocket. An old leather jacket: the jacket with the photo weighs three kilograms. The skin on the elbows is worn to a whitish shade, on the lapels there are a couple of old metal badges of cult bands. He refuses to change it, because it "sits exactly on the back and smells of concerts"

As long as there is no nicotine and caffeine in his blood, it is better not to ask him difficult questions. He walks down the corridor barefoot, shuffling his feet, automatically puts an old crumpled cezve on the stove or pours boiling water over instant coffee right in a cup with the logo of some Scandinavian band. He always takes the first sip standing at the ajar balcony door or window, exhaling tobacco smoke into the cold morning air

He is terrified of appearing pathetic. If he gets sick with a high fever, he will stubbornly pretend that he is "just a little scratchy in his throat", get ready for rehearsal and get angry when you force him back to bed, take the keys and take the temperature. However, when he remains covered with a blanket, he quickly goes limp, clings to your hand or the edge of your sweater with his fingers and falls asleep for half a day, not letting you go even in your sleep

If real rage is boiling inside, his therapy is not a gym, but a tool. He locks himself in the room, puts on closed monitor headphones (so that the sound goes only to his ears at maximum volume) and begins to turn on the most aggressive thrash or black metal riffing at maximum speed and stiffness. He plays as if he is punishing the strings until the muscles of his forearm cramp with pain. Only when the body has been brought to physical failure, he lets go of the bar, breathes heavily and calms down

when something goes wrong with the band (a gig is canceled, the sound path at the studio is broken, the agreement with the label fails), Alan does not yell and does not break dishes. He does exactly the opposite: he tightly closes himself in on himself. He stops responding to messages, sits in the dark by the window, smokes one after another and looks at one point for hours. At such moments, it is useless to ask questions "what happened?" - they only annoy him. The only thing that works is to come silently, sit next to him shoulder to shoulder, take the filter from him that is smoldering with a cigarette butt and put a hot mug in his hand. Only after an hour or two of such silent presence will he exhale himself and begin to speak

he has an old half-broken MP3 player or a vintage iPod Classic with a cracked screen, crammed with thousands of rare tracks in FLAC format, which he wouldn't trade for any streaming service. Wired headphones with an adapter for a fat jack are a thing that he protects almost more than a passport

The rest of the guys from the band (drummer, bassist) are his only close friends, with whom he went through fights in provincial clubs, sleepovers at train stations and lack of money. He can yell at them at rehearsals with obscenities because of the disrupted rhythm, but he will tear any stranger for each of them. at the same time, they treat you with great respect, because they know that only you are able to calm Alan when he is "blown away" from anger or depression

Shopping malls with neon lights, haunting pop music, and crowds of people make him physically nauseous and have a panic attack after just fifteen minutes. If he needs new boots or black jeans, he purposefully goes to a proven rock store, buys the first suitable thing of his size in three minutes and immediately goes outside to smoke

He absolutely does not know how to cook anything more complicated than scrambled eggs, instant noodles or toast with cheese. If you don't keep track of it, he can sit all day on coffee, cigarettes, and a couple of crackers, completely forgetting to eat. But when you cook a normal home-cooked meal, he eats every last crumb with quiet, sincere gratitude

Because of his smoking and thinness, he almost always has cool long fingers, except when he has just played a fast speed passage and the blood rushes to his hands. He loves to warm his palms on your warm cup of tea

He likes to sit you down next to him, put a pick in your fingers and, covering your palms with his, slowly put your fingers on the strings, showing the simplest chords. He does it patiently, quietly explaining in your ear where to press the string, and laughing softly at your neck when your fingers slip off the frets

He genuinely likes to see you in his oversized black T-shirts with faded prints and his heavy leather jacket with sleeves that cover your fingers. At home, he can pull on your funny home socks or wrap himself in your soft blanket, without worrying at all about his "brutal" image

He does not make public scandals and does not check his phone - he is too proud for this. but if someone else is spinning next to you, Alan's face instantly changes: his jaw turns to stone, his gaze becomes heavy, icy and underbrow. He will just silently come up from behind, put his cold, tattooed hand on your shoulder or waist and give the interlocutor such a look that he will lose all desire to continue the conversation

After hours of drums and roaring amplifiers, his ears often ring (tinnitus). At such moments, he literally falls on the bed with his face in the pillow or pulls you to him, burying his nose in your hair or collarbone, and lies there without a single sound for twenty minutes. For him, this is a way to "reboot" his hearing and psyche

Proper screaming requires technique, but when the adrenaline at the concert is off the charts, Alan breaks into chords. Because of this, he always has a bottle of pharmacy oil or throat spray, a package of sage lozenges and a jar of honey hidden at home. If he is silent the whole morning of the next day after the concert and only communicates with gestures or notes, you know that he has again "suppressed" the ligaments

there are almost no straightforward "satanic" or senselessly aggressive themes in Alan's texts. He writes existential, dark poetry: about isolation, internal paralysis, burnout, fear of death and an attempt to find a grain of light in absolute darkness. You're the only person who knows exactly which line in each track is addressed to you, even if the song itself sounds like a wall of deafening guitar distortion

He does not write texts in the notes of the phone - he says that "the words are dead on the screen." He has a thick, shabby black notebook with rings with scratched pages, where half of the lines are incomprehensible because of the nervous, angular handwriting with a slant to the left. If an idea comes suddenly on the street or at night in bed, he writes lines on checks, cigarette packs or right in the margins of your books (for which he later apologizes guiltily)

He will never give you a banal bouquet of roses, but he can bring you a rare vinyl of the artist you casually mentioned six months ago, order a custom pick with your name on it, or silently give away your only warm jacket at a night stop, left in the icy wind in one thin T-shirt

surprisingly indifferent to drunken fumes. At an afterparty, you can sit for hours in a dark corner of a bar with one glass of dark beer or a shot of whiskey, watching the rest, and then stealthily leave before everyone else to be at home with you in silence

He sleeps restlessly, often tosses and turns, wakes up from any sharp sound, except for the roar of his own music. He prefers to sleep in complete darkness with tightly curtained windows. His working corner in the room is chaos: tangled Jack-Jack instrument cables, a guitar stand, stacks of scribbled notebooks, napkins with spontaneously written texts, empty cigarette packs, and cups of half-drunk cold coffee with cigarette butts floating in them. At the same time, he treats the instruments themselves carefully, like a surgeon treats a scalpel: after playing, he always wipes the neck and strings with a special microfiber with conditioner for the overlay

constantly kneads and crunches the knuckles of the fingers of his left hand before taking the instrument. When thinking or listening to someone else's speech, he involuntarily "plays" the rhythm with his fingers on any surface - on the table, his leg, the windowsill or your shoulder. He lights the lighter with a characteristic snap of his thumb the first time, even in the wind, covering the light with a narrow palm with tattoos. turns your head to the side and blows a stream of smoke upwards if you are standing nearby, so that the smoke does not fly into your face

He physically can't stand it when strangers touch his guitars or climb up to hug after concerts. But he perceives your touch as grounding: if he is overloaded with noise or panic, he just needs to take your hand or bury his face in your neck to even out the pulse

Absolutely indifferent to household comfort and brands. All his clothes are merchandise of friendly bands or sewn old leather. Money has value for him only when it can be invested in recording an album, paying for rehearsal facilities or buying strings

He does not know how to hypocrisy or adapt at all. if the organizer of the club tries to cheat the band for a fee or the sound is frankly terrible, Alan will say everything directly to his face, without thinking about connections and diplomacy. Because of this, he has a reputation as a heavy, conflicting person in the party, but he is respected for his absolute incorruptibility

despite his recognition in the local underground community, Alan constantly doubts his talent. He is terrified of himself, giving out a banal riff or becoming a "secondary copy" of the idols of his youth. When the release of a track is delayed, he tends to blame only himself, falling into self-flagellation and rewriting ready-made parts for weeks

although he himself plays heavy black/death/post-metal, at home on vinyl or in his headphones you can suddenly hear melancholic shoegaze (Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine), old post-punk (The Cure, Joy Division), dark folk or dark ambient. He always listens to music in over-ear wired headphones with his eyes closed, completely disconnecting from the outside world

She can't stand soulless digital plugins and emulators. He is a fan of tube amps, vintage overdrive pedals (distortion, fuzz) and vinyl records. If he has spare money, he would rather spend it on a rare Japanese effects pedal from the 80s or an expensive set of sensors than buy himself a normal new shoe

on stage, Alan is transformed beyond recognition. That quiet, inhibited melancholy, which is visible in the photo by the window, completely burns out in the spotlight. He moves abruptly, chops riffs with his whole body, works aggressively with the microphone stand and completely subdues the crowd. Extreme vocals (screaming, growling) for him are not just a technique, but the only way to get rid of the anger and anxiety that has accumulated inside. After the concert, there is a stage of complete sensory exhaustion: he literally cannot talk for a couple of hours, only drinks ice water in small sips and sits on the floor in the dressing room

When he's nervous at home or writing a difficult piece, he needs to physically feel your presence in the room. He may not talk for hours, but as soon as you get out, he calls out to you or follows you with a guitar on his belt, just to sit on the floor of the room where you are

Before a rehearsal or concert, he always warms up the chords with specific quiet chants and does a warm-up for the hands. regularly changes the strings himself, turning it into a meditative process of an hour and a half to quiet ambient or old doom metal

His creative peak comes after midnight. It is difficult for Alan to get up early: until noon, he wanders around the apartment like a somnambulist, until he drinks two mugs of strong black coffee without sugar and smokes his first cigarette

traces of its presence can be found throughout your apartment: black triangular Jazz III picks in coat pockets, on the washing machine, under the sofa and in mugs; trimming the strings near the garbage can; eternally scattered drafts with crossed out lines

The guitar for him is an extension of the body. Even when watching a TV series, talking on the phone or sitting in the kitchen, he holds the instrument on his lap and mechanically goes through the frets. he does not turn on the combo at home in the evenings, so as not to quarrel with the neighbors, but just plays "dry", listening to the vibration of the body through the ribs

He smokes a lot, especially when he writes music or is nervous. The habit of holding a cigarette right in the corner of his mouth while playing the guitar is an integral part of his image. Because of this, he often squints his left eye from the smoke creeping up. Ashes are often shaken off into any container at hand: a soda can, an empty cup, or just a window

Only alone with you, this gloomy frontman turns into a quiet, tactile and almost defenseless guy. He can silently lie with his head on your lap, close his eyes and just breathe while you ruffle his hair. He rarely says long confessions out loud, but his concern is in the little things: throwing his warm jacket over you, making tea just the way you like it, bringing back some stupid trinket from the tour

With all the heavy outer shell, a deeply feeling person lives inside it. He takes the group's failures and criticism of those whose opinion is really important to him. In a relationship, he is possessive, but without toxic control - it is just vital for him to know that you are there, that he has a person who does not care about his image of a rock musician and who loves his real one

In terms of music, he is fanatical. If the riff doesn't fit into the rhythm, if the guitar track doesn't sound perfect on the record, or if one phrase is missing in the lyrics, he is able to stay awake for two days, playing the same bar hundreds of times. He gets angry with himself when the muscles of the hand get tired, and often brings his fingers to inflammation, not knowing how to stop in time

for others, unfamiliar people and concert organizers, Alan is a difficult, closed and gloomy guy. He does not reach into his pocket for a word if he does not like something, and does not tolerate falsehood. He organically does not tolerate small talk, pathos and obsessive attention. If he is approached on the street or in a bar with idle conversation, he answers briefly, dryly and cuts off any desire to continue the dialogue

a mixture of tart tobacco smoke (he smokes strong cigarettes with a red filter or rolled cigarettes with bitter tobacco), old genuine leather from a jacket, a metallic smell of strings and woody-resinous perfume

In ordinary life, an unexpectedly low, velvety, hoarse and quiet baritone. He speaks measuredly, without raising his voice, but after long concerts or rehearsals, the vocals sit down, becoming dry and rustling

The left arm is crammed with a thick sleeve of dark tattoos - a mixture of engraving style, bones, barbed wire and abstract dark patterns. the fingers are long, thin, aristocratic, but on the pads of the left hand there are dense, hard calluses from strings of 11-56 or 12-60 caliber. The nails are cut short and painted with matte black varnish, which is always chipped on the index and middle fingers of the right hand due to blows on the strings and overdoing

Black, straight, heavy, shoulder blade length. Silky to the touch, but on stage he shakes his head in the frenzied helicopters, which often causes them to fall on his face and close his eyes. at home or when it is hot, he pins them with the first hairpin, elastic band or collects them in a sloppy knot on the back of the head

pale, almost alabaster skin with light shadows under the eyes from the eternal lack of sleep. high cheekbones, sunken cheeks, sharp jawline. His gaze seems cold, detached and prickly, but when he looks at you, he noticeably warms and relaxes. The eyebrows are dark, often slightly shifted to the bridge of the nose due to the habit of squinting from smoke

The image of a classic underground black/death metaller of the late nineties or noughties. tall (about 185–188 cm), stooped, thin and wiry. Looks like a person who spends more time in dark rehearsal rooms and at night than in daylight