When it comes to Cea Serin, the question I get asked the most is “what does the name mean.” I’ve answered this question many times: sometimes I’ve given a serious answer; sometimes I’ve made up an answer for my own amusement. But very few people know about the many names that were almost chosen before “Cea Serin” was decided upon. It was a name chosen, in a large degree, to be specifically geared and optimized for search engine hits, as well as its metaphorical details.
The band that would be Cea Serin started back in 1997. I was in a progressive metal band at the time called Ashen Dawn. This was a four-piece band and also included Cea Serin guitarist, Keith Warman.
Ashen Dawn had been around for a couple of years, having never played a gig. The band was on its last leg when I decided I wanted to do something heavier – much heavier.
Keith and I had bought a keyboard, a Roland D-20, for the studio we had helped build for Ashen Dawn’s practice and recordings. This keyboard was also a sequencer. This meant that the keyboard had a drum machine on it, allowing me the capability to write full songs and be able to play along with those songs with a drum and keyboard track. It was on this Roland D-20 that I wrote the first few songs for Cea Serin.
To make a long story short, Keith and I decided to record a demo of some of these songs I had been working on. But the project need a name. So I started kicking around several possible band names for this new band.
The first band name I came up with was “Animus.”
Animus had two meanings: the first meaning is that it represents animosity; the second meaning is that it represents the masculine personality within a dream sequence.
I thought this name was quite cool and was all gung-ho about it. But then I learned that there was already some reggae band with the same name. My friend calls me and tells me that there’s some band performing on the Jenny Jones show with the name. Ugh! Well, I don’t like having anything to do with some other person’s idea so I had to scrap that name and think of something else.
It was around this time that I got the Cradle of Filth coffin-cut box of “Dusk…and Her Embrace.” I was super into Cradle of Filth at the time and I was buying anything they put out. Even if that meant buying the same album twice for a couple of bonus tracks. It’s an annoying quality I’ve since abandoned: obsessively buying anything a band puts out. However, on this particular album there was a bonus track, a cover song called “Hell Awaits.”
Well, I just thought Hell Awaits would’ve been an excellent band name for this super heavy prog band I had in mind.
Keep in mind that back in 1997 there weren’t a lot of progressive metal bands infusing death metal into their sound. I was only aware of Gardenian and Opeth at the time that were doing this idea. I wanted this Hell Awaits band to be very fast and technical but have a greater emphasis on keyboards – something the other bands were lacking. Of course, years later I would veer away from the super-heavy idea quite a bit; now, leaning more towards progressive metal infused with new age music and death metal. If you were lucky enough to have gotten your hands on our very first demo you’ve heard the song “Dead By My Side.” This song was the first song ever written for Cea Serin. Yeah, if you heard that song you’ll know that we’ve come a long way.
Ultimately I thought this band name was too “death metal” and would turn some people off. I mean, I don’t want to have a CD on the shelf somewhere, have someone pick it up, have them say “oh, just another death metal band,” and then they put it back down on the shelf.
So that got me thinking. A band name is very telling of what they’re all about. When you hear a band name like Dream Theater you’re probably going to think that they’re a progressive metal band or a power metal band. Some band names just stink of a specific genre, you know. You hear band names like The Monolith Deathcult, Power of Omens, Dissection, Kamelot and you pretty much know what you’re getting yourself into. In some cases this could be a good thing; in some cases, however, I think it’s a bad thing. (By the way, I think The Monolith Deathcult is a fantastic band name!)
Well, I didn’t want this new band to be pigeonholed and I didn’t want to be tied down to a band name. Even Metallica says they regret their band name now because they feel confined to just doing metal. I mean, “metal” is right there in the name.
So other band names started popping up in my head (names so insignificant that I’ve forgotten them) and I found myself doing a search for these band names on the internet. I started looking up words in the dictionary to find cool sounding words; I started combining words together. All in a process to make something that was somewhat original and wasn’t already taken. I found that this whole process made me realize just how generic band names really are. I mean, a band name is supposed to not only represent the individual members of the band, but also the sound and lyrical content.
When you think of Dream Theater you probably don’t immediately think of the individual members; you probably think of songs and lyrical content. After all, a band’s legacy is a sum total of their musical output. This is what a band name should represent: a band name should represent the philosophy that the band is putting out to the world that is energized by their musical ideas and lyrical content. A band name should be a summation of what the band is all about.
After all, when someone refers to your presence aren’t they not only referring to your physical body but also what you bring to the table in the way of your thoughts, ideas, and your personality?
If someone says “Jay’s coming to the party tonight” and someone says “Hooray, I haven’t seen him in a long time,” aren’t they looking forward to talking with me and catching up? Look, we could catch up on the phone but me physically being there and bringing my thoughts and ideas is what’s really important. That’s what my name is referring to.
I wanted my new band name to be like a person’s name. And this person’s name was going to have its own thoughts, ideas, and personality. It was going to have a life of its own and would exist outside the English language or any other language. I didn’t want to just slap two cool sounding words together like so many power metal bands do, e.g., Emerald Oracle.
What the hell does that even mean? Emerald Oracle? It’s just style and no substance.
Well, this new band name was going to be all about substance.
So I wanted to dream up a band name that didn’t exist in any language. I wanted it to just be a sound. So the first thing that popped into my head was the sound of “see – sir – in.” I had no spelling for it; it was just a sound in my head. It was the first thing that came to me. So I figured out a cool way to spell it so that it looked nice on paper. And thus was born the band name “Cea Serin.”
And yes, that’s how you pronounce it: “see – sir – in”
Not “Caesar Inn”; not “See-uh Sair In”
Yes, you can now find those words somewhere in some language but it is not an English expression. Plus, when you put it into a search engine it will be the first thing that pops up. That’s the important thing to me. I didn’t want a band name that was so generic, something like “River,” that when you put it into a search engine you would have to add on “(band)” to find what you were looking for.
So there you have it, that’s the story about how I came up with the name Cea Serin and, in a round about way, what it means. And now you can stop asking me about it.
New album coming soon.
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That’d be neat.
