I've been promising to make a page devoted to my background for a long time now. As this site, LARVAMIND and myself continue to grow, so will this page. I hope this section will dispell any myths or misconceptions there may be about me or my band(s) and create a greater enlightenment on what we are all about. First off, I know there's been a lot of confusion considering my "name". My true birth name is Justin Hicks. Many articles, interviews, and the like have published "juz10 h9" but never my real name. Why? To wit, it all started as a post-Moniker internet joke. After abandoning my 6 strings for technology I decided that I also wanted to leave my old life behind. What better way to reinvent yourself than to take on a new name as well. "juz10" was easy and I actually used to pen that name on art projects in grade school. The "h9" is a bit more tricky. My last name, Hicks, was at one time shortened in letters and such to just "Hix". Since IX is Roman numeric for 9 I just put two and two together. Thus, Justin Hicks was left behind and juz10 h9 was born. As mentioned before, I began my first band as the lead/rhythm guitar player for a progressive metal project known in Berrien Springs [Michigan] as MONIKER. Believe it or not, there is actually a Moniker website (which I coded a few years ago on a WebTV) and Tripod never decided to take down. Talk about primitive design! MONIKER (not to be confused with a new group from Georgia by the same name), was fully realized in 1994 after years of trial and error with various "musicians" and other band names. In the early 90s there were a lot of things that held me back but the most of which was the coping with the constant distractions in my head. Images plagued my brain and I soon lost all reality and lived in this subversive fantasy world of what I perceived music should sound like and not what it actually was. These ideas interfered with my social life and my well being at school. I crashed hard after my then-girlfriend, Renay Edwards, was taken away from me and came very close to losing everything. 7 months that ate at my brain for years. That "everything" soon became my inspriration and Renay fuled some of the most esoteric songs I would ever have the courage to write. Somehow I survived. And through her I gained insight as to how insane I really was. Before MONIKER we were, FLESHRUST. A band that wrote few riffs and spent most of its time listening to death metal and hating jocks. One of those jocks eventually became our rhythm guitar player/vocalist and led us on to some more abitious material that was otherwise lost in my head or the confines of my bedroom walls. MONIKER's last show was in the summer of '94. Then, for two frustrating years, we cycled through even more musicians until we were left we the last of 63 drummers and a dozen bass players. It felt right sharing a stage with Bob 33 who, in an earlier incarnation known as ACID REIGN, played the same lukemia benefit show that eventually became our last. When Jon Williams put the last nail in the coffin and decided to leave Moniker behind, I felt compelled to throw everything away. There was a short lived stint as keyboard player in a Christian black metal band known as SHADOWCHORD and an endless number of acoustic songs I wrote [and rarely demo'd] on an old 12 string. But after I smashed that guitar [my first!] into a warped reflection of myself on a large living room mirror during a fight with my then-girlfriend, Jenny, I was ready to leave all music behind. I took a hard look at myself and wanted out of this tired scene. My other roommate at the time, Rob "Slay" Slabaugh went on to release a SHADOWCHORD demo and soon joinded a glam/shock rock band called BITCH MONKEY that I was forced to endure along with him. I soon realized I was done fighting with my girlfriend and needed to get back to music again. After watching old MONIKER videos and listening to countless BITCH MONKEY practice sessions I knew it was being in a band I missed the most. 1998 was the worst yet. LARVAMIND was still a year away and I spent the remaining days that droned on hating everyone around me. In August I was introduced to a CD from former MONIKER bass player, Philip Lee [my own cousin] and drummer Scott Strzyzykowski in band called MARIONETTE. Aside from the sting that the laziest, most trouble making people I had ever jammed with had a professional sounding recording before I did, it also featured several shot down ideas and some old riffs I had written with no credit to yours truely. The memory of MONIKER was all I had and now, years later, it was being bastardized. Even a personal song about Renay had been reduced to some bullshit Jack The Ripper cliches! While I was already involved in the techno stylings of the XIL project and creating the dozens of parts needed for R-SONG [not a band, but one long song that was to stretch over dozens of CDs and go on for days], I new I needed to jam with real musicians again. A bried stint with Jon proved he was no more into music than he ever was and that I was going to have to look elsewhere. By December I was completely fed up and ready for something new. I remember venting to Slay on a trip to my parent's house that things were in need of a change and that something good was about to unfold. Moments later we hit a deer. As we returned to the scene in an effort to get the carcass off the road, the animal opened its eyes and got to its feet. More scared than anything it looked back at us on last time before running off into the fields under cover of night. I took this as that sign I was looking for. A few weeks later, on an otherwise shitty night (which I would have braved to Steak-N-Shake or some other 24 hour eatery), I was snowed in and got a phone call from the last MONIKER drummer, Bob. He was oustead from his old band he had once left MONIKER for and was looking to start something new. What most people don't understand is that by the time LARVAMIND had a full line up, most of the songs completed in that first year were already written. It is also important to note LARVAMIND is not a continuation of MONIKER. The two couldn't be farther apart in my mind. As of 2000, LARVAMIND is a stronger band with newer, fresher material thanks to finally finding the best musicians I could ever have dreamed to have been writing with. From LARVAMIND came a desire for progressive ideas as well as more matured themes swirled in fantastic displays of spiritual noise and effects. As technology grew I also began work on metal tinged electronica that began as SIX AFRAID OF SEVEN and later molded into the PROTOGAIA project. There's no definate release date for any of the other songs or bands I have worked with as LARVAMIND is my full time baby. Stay tuned, and in gaps of Lm's hiatus some things may appear online. Still so much more to come... juz10