RawrEspada4 — Roleplayer Guild

Another wadded ball of paper bounced off the rim of a trashcan already overflowing with soda cans, Mountain Dew in particular, as well as a small mountain of paper wads that had already found their way to said trashcan. The person responsible for the overflowing trashcan leaned back in a wooden chair that was in severe mismatch to the desk where a new piece of paper lay, having not yet been victimized by the pen in the person's teeth. Giving a sigh the person dropped his chair back onto all fours and then let the pen fall to lay on the page. Matt, as the person preferred to be called, stood up and stretched his arms above his head to work an ache that had been building between his shoulders.

As he stretched he turned his gaze to the red digital display of the clock next to his bed which shared the room with the mismatched chair and desk. Seeing the clock display the time as 5:03 Matt decided to give up on finishing the song he had been working on since he had arrived back to his loft after work that morning, which had been sometime after noon and before one. With band practice quickly approaching Matt decided to grab a quick shower before heading to the studio space that he and the band rented for rehearsals.

Standing in the shower he washed quickly and as did he found himself once more humming the insistent tune that had been haunting his dreams for weeks. The same tune he had previously been trying to capture on the page. Silently he gave thanks to the upcoming practice hoping that it would distract him from the melody. After toweling, again checking the clock which now read 5:17 he pulled on a pair of jeans, slipped on a pair of canvas shoes and slid on a shirt bearing the visage of a skull with a crown and a lyrical line "Crowned by our lies, we live our lives hidden in disguise", an heirloom from his days in the False Kings.

After getting dressed Matt moved fluidly through the flat grabbing his jacket of the back of a chair, his phone from the charger and his keys and wallet from the table by the door. He only paused to lock the door behind himself. Walking the few stairs from his door to the sidewalk, where his moped was locked up, he pulled his phone and checked the time as he unlocked the moped and got on. 5:23 the phone read, more than enough time to make the 20 minute trip across town even supposing traffic and red lights he could easily be at the studio before 6. Pulling out from his flat and throttling the moped he cursed under his breath as he once as again realized he was humming the dream melody.

Name: Matthew Pollaro
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Gender: Male
Age: 23
Height: 5’7
Weight: 149
Instrument(s):
Guitar, Keyboard, and Vocals
Other Talents: Matt is an amazing cook and has worked numerous jobs as a cook (normally just short order but none the less). Beyond that he is intelligent and better than most at games of strategy. He is a fast learner.
Occupation: Currently a barista at a small coffee shop a couple blocks from a hole in the wall concert venue.

Appearance:

Picture [+]

Matt can often be found wearing one of his numerous band shirts (most of which are local and over half of which are from his previous bands) and a pair of worn jeans. He has a number of jackets but his favorites are a writer’s coat and a leather jacket. While completely different he loves them both. Matt also has a partial sleeve on his upper left arm that has all of his bands’ names and a logo to go with them as well as other metal/hardcore imagery. NOTE: Matt keeps himself clean shaven unlike in the pic.

Bio [+]

Bio: Matt was born in the small town of York, Pennsylvania. His mother had been a flute soloist and his father had been a first chair trumpet both playing for the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra, this is in fact how they had met, but they had both retired from the performing arts to raise their family (Matt has a younger sister Alexis, 3 years younger than him). Matt's father Lance had started teaching at Central York High and Elizabeth, Matt's mother became a stay at home parent, although she often helped with the band. So as it was when their son had shown an interest in music at a young age (6), they started him on piano lessons. His little sister Alexis also showed a similar interest when she was about (5), whether this was because she admired her brother her because she was genuinely interested was hard to tell but eventually it became clear that she had a passion for the piano as even once her brother quit taking lessons (which happened when he was in the middle of 8th grade) she continued. For Matt the piano had been a way to dive into music at an early age but at the end of the 8th grade he turned his focus to learning a new instrument, the guitar. This came from his developing interest in post-hardcore and metal music and from the fact that his parents let him go into the city (Philadelphia) on Friday and Saturday nights with his friends (Vic and James- the elder brother of a Lucy Estuert-, both of whom were a year older than him). In the city with his friends they often hit up smaller venues and watched the local bands play. Watching these bands play ignited a fire deep inside him. Vic and Matt began jamming together, James drifted further away from them as he became more interested in the drug use side of music rather than the music itself. They would continue to play music together (not as a band or anything but rather just friends in a garage) up until the time Vic left for college, Vic was headed to Bellevue in Washington state. This left Matt pretty much on his own as he tried to figure out he was going to do with is life. His parents wanted him to go to college and he wanted to appease them as much as possible as they had made his lifestyle (concerts, music, band merch, etc) possible. Finally deciding that he wanted to see the west coast he applied and was accepted to Vanderbilt University in San Francisco (age 18).

In San Francisco well majoring in music performance he took lessons with Professor Wyclif who had become one of his favorite professors in his short time there. One day while he was waiting for the Professor he met his son Soren and the two introduced themselves and had a mildly stimulating conversation about the post hardcore and metal scene in the local area. After a year of attending school he decided that college just wasn’t for him. Not wanting to return home (to a family that viewed him as a disappointment) he found himself working odd jobs in LA to pay for a small apartment with some other guys. These guys would become the first of a series of bands that Matt would be involved in. This band was Aeon to Oblivion (length 8 months). Sadly this band, like many others in the future ended on a highly negative note. Milo, the front man and vocalist of the band wanted to boot Matt off guitar and out of the band to make room for his sister Petra. Matt wasn't at all okay with the idea of being booted out for a lesser guitarist. The end of Matt with AtO happened the night before Petra's plane was to touchdown at LAX. Matt was at Milo's pleading his case when the pleading turned into an argument. Such an argument that it ended with beer bottles flying through the air, a table being flipped and the cops being called by the neighbors. No charges were brought forward though it should go without saying that Matt and Milo's friendship dissolved that night. Soon after the fight and his exit from AtO he found out that the band Nephilim’s Curse (length 4 months) was on the look-out for a keyboardist. Putting his knowledge of piano to good use he soon found himself jamming Electronic Hardcore every Friday or Saturday night. When their original bassist/backup vocalist quit the band looked to Matt to fill the role of backing screams. Surprising both the band and himself he managed it with not the slightest of problems. Up until that point he had never done more than sing/scream in the shower or along with the stereo. When Curse found a new bassist, Kyle, Matt and he did not get along. Although the rest of the band meshed well with the bassist. One night the band was sitting in Luke’s (their lead vocalist) basement and the band informed Matt that they no longer had the need for keyboards as they had decided to backtrack all of the parts. Matt could see Kyle’s grin as the band broke the news to him. Standing up to leave, he hesitated and decided on a different course. Grabbing Kyle’s bass he smashed it into the bassist (as Kyle stood to grab it from him) and then threw it against the concrete floor before marching up the stairs and out of the house. He had only just made it back to his place when he was arrested on charges of aggravated assault. He spent the next few nights in jail before Curse was able talk Kyle into dropping the charges. For a month or so after that he just went to shows and jammed in private. It was one night when he was subbing in on guitar for the band Defy the Heavens (a total of 3 weeks of shows as a sub) that the band Tomorrow Never Comes (a little over 6 months) reached out to him to fill their need of backing vocals and guitar. After about 4 months in the lead singer quit without warning after getting into an argument with Matt over a girl that they were both dating. With only a week before their next show they didn’t have time to find a new lead singer so Matt stepped in to learn the parts. This was his first time singing clean vocals for an audience, though he had the band backing him for screams. So that week Tomorrow Never Comes took the stage by storm and what was a now a 3 piece band left the audience screaming for more. As the band continued to look for a new singer Matt stepped up to volunteer for the role full time. Although the drummer and cofounder of TNC, Jace, denied the idea believing that Matt was superior guitarist to vocalist. Deciding that if TNC wouldn’t let him sing then it was time to move on to another band that would. Joining up with a the smallest band he had played with yet, False Kings (3 months) he filled the role of rhythm guitarist well doing co-vocals. The band was six piece and honestly there was a huge disagreement among the band on what direction to take the music, the keys/programmer wanted a more EHM feel, well the lead guitarist and bassist wanted to do something with more of a classic thrash feel. The drummer had a strong preference for deathcore well the lead vocalist seemed to write more towards a pop-punk feel. Matt at the time was just looking for a strong post hard core style band. It was no surprise then that the band didn’t last long although it was the after-show parties that really made False Kings stick out to any fans they may have had and to Matt himself. It was at one of these parties that Matt met Parker, and the seed for the future band Harbingers was born. Parker at the time wanted Matt’s voice but Matt was already committed to trying to make False Kings work, even though less than three months later the band would implode. Both Parker and Matt kept meeting at shows and after show parties but one or the other was always already working on something with another band. Though these meetings of coincidence would eventually led to them forming a band together.

After False Kings blew apart Matt took a break from the music scene, only going to the occasional show and didn’t really look for any bands (3 months). In this down time Matt met a girl named Tori who would proceed to become his girlfriend off and on for the next year and half or so. She it seemed had a great vocal talent so the two of them started a joint venture and ended up plugging in the original bassiest from Nephilim’s Curse and the drummer from False Kings they formed a lighter posthard/deathcore band. The band was Evening Tide (9 months) and together the band succeeded in making themselves well known in the local area partially for their unique sound, partially because of their talent and partially because the lead singer was a babe. They even went as far as to record an EP together (The Barren Glory EP). When Matt and Tori initially broke up the band fell apart as the dual vocalist were the center of the band. Less than a month after the explosion of Evening Tide Matt found himself in a new band by the name of One With Nothing (3 months) playing guitar and singing some cleans. The band was nothing special to be honest, they blended Emo style lyrics with the guitar and drum tone of post-hardcore and often found themselves being compared to a weaker, slightly heavier 30 Seconds to Mars. The comparison alone upset Matt. It was after one of the shows that he ended up hooking back up with Tori. She convinced him that night to leave OWN and join her new project Forever Unbound (5, nearly 6 months), a band that she had put together herself that planned on fusing power metal with the vocal styling and influences of post-hard core. With an astounding 3 guitarist (counting Matt), 3 vocalist (also counting Matt), two bassist, drummer and keyboardist the octet took Hollywood by storm. The band soon found themselves basically fast tracked for fame as they were signed to Nuclear Blast Records. It was after being with the band for almost 6 months that drama exploded and Tori and Matt’s relationship ended permanently(?). This was because it was at this point that Matt found out not only was she sleeping with their band mate, 3rd vocalist and bassist Draven, he also found out that she was sleeping with the manager from their label. It was when he found this out that he executed his revenge in a fashion only suiting one destined to become the rider of strife. He volunteered to take their latest demos to their manager after they had finished some new recordings one night. On the way to the label Matt made a stop by his place, cleared the actual files and left a message detailing the affair between Tori and the manager. Rather than leaving it for the manager he put it in the higher ups mail box. It was then that he quit without informing anyone. Naught but a few weeks later he heard that not only had Forever Unbound been dropped but the band had fallen into inner turmoil and been left in ruin. Over the next few months Matt never found another solid band instead he found himself occasionally subbing for any number of bands on any of the keyboards, vocals, backing vocals or guitar parts they had need for. During this down time Parker came back into Matt’s life and told of the band Harbingers that he was hoping to push forward with. With no band to call his own Harbingers not only seemed the best option it was really the only option. Now days Matt lives in a 3 room loft (bathroom, bedroom, kitchen/living/dining room) works at a local coffee shop, The Grind, and spends his free time writing lyrics and checking out local shows.
(7 bands over a period of 3 years and half years).

Personality: Matt is driven, he has an intense urge to see a band he is a part of become a mainstay of the post hardcore community. With no option of returning home he will do nearly anything it takes to make a band work, though he does want to make it through honest work. Matt is slightly arrogant but not overly so. The arrogance does come through in his day to day life but is more from insecurity than from true hubris. He fears that because of the last 8 bands and over 3 years of his life he will never accomplish anything that matters in life. He is quick to trust but when scorned even quicker to retaliate, often times with more than what could be deemed equal measures.

Connection: Justice, took lessons with Justice’s father. Laura, was friends with her character's brother, also attended same highschool and are from same town. Timmy, PARTY

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