Full Name: Ricardo Juan Silva de Colombo. He tried Ric Silva for a while, but everyone spelled it Rick, so eventually he did.
Age: 29
Birthday: 9 September 1980
Appearance: Rick has the classic bassist build, one might say. One might also say he has the classic bouncer build, but he's a little short for that at a merely average 5'11. As alluded to, though, he is fairly heavyset, but in equal measures fat and muscle. His black hair stays kept business-short. He's able to pass as swarthily White in some contexts, at least until he opens his mouth.
Role: Erik7622's second-secondary, Bassist in Psychosis
Musical Style: Having worked with Izzie for a while now, Rick has refined his bass style to fit Psychosis. He tends to stay in rhythmic line with the guitars and drums, but frequently plays a contrapuntal line instead of merely following the riff. The lack of frets on his bass allows for frequent glissandi, and he also likes using double-stops to accentuate certain parts. For the slam grooves and some short solos, he'll also punch on his fuzz. His main influences on bass are Steve DiGiorgio, Joe Lester, Steve Harris, and Jeroen Paul Thesseling.
Instruments: Rick's main bass is a
MusicMan Stingray, which he has owned since just after joining Psychosis. They've been through a lot together, and he loves the thing. He plays it into a Peavey T-Max and an SVT fridge, with a Boss tuner and Way Huge Swollen Pickle fuzz. He also still owns his first bass, a Greco Precision.
Personality: A self-proclaimed "functional slacker," Ricardo generally seems to coast through life, relying on a little bit of luck and serendipity to stay out of trouble. This isn't entirely a false impression of him, but he's more savvy than he lets on. He's not a Machiavellian mastermind by any means, but he's definitely good at reading people and situations, though not as good as he sometimes thinks he is. Naturally, that last part has a tendency to get him into trouble, but usually he can coast out of that too. Usually. Underneath that, though, he's also a little restless and unsure of what, exactly, he wants. He speaks both English and Spanish fluently, though not eloquently, and has as much of an accent as you'd expect.
Biography: Picture, if you will, a young boy of about ten. His father sits him down. "
Escuchalo," he says. Listen to this. He puts a record on the player, hits play. The boy strains to read the writing on the sleeve nearby. It's English, of course, but the art strikes him first: a skeletal spook-man, grimacing at him, bloody hammer held back as if to strike again. Then the music starts. It's different from the radio, harsher, with a martial beat and heavy guitars in symphonic harmony. It's cool, but then he hears the bass on its own, a unique sound like a hundred wheels rolling over him. The boy smiles as the singing starts, English of course. "
Me gusta," he says. I like it. I don't understand it, but I like it.
That was the start of Ricardo Silva's love of bass and heavy metal. He already loved music, but that had been mostly his mother's favorite Latin bands and the music on the radio. After that, he started on a path towards the darker, the more extreme, going from Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne to Slayer with aplomb. He played in a few garage bands during this time, mostly school friends, before joining his first "pro" band, the Spanish-language death metal band Fin de Días. He held down a few jobs in this time, but music became his priority from Fin de Días onwards.
It wasn't smooth, of course. Fin de Días only lasted a couple years, and Rick bounced through a few bands before settling in with a tech-death outfit named Psychosis. He found bandleader Izzie Martinez terrifying, but took it as a challenge to improve his playing. He started learning bits and pieces of jazz theory and counterpoint, then grew them into his own style within the band. He's now the longest-tenured member of the band not named Izzie Martinez, a distinction he calls "Sobreviviente de la mierda más loca."