Highlight Reel
2011 Nominee – Metal Band of the Year – 21st Annual LA Music Awards
This band may be the freshest new thing to come out of the ashes of NYC. True to form Vigilant Hotel delivers honesty and heart felt lyrics that can only be a result of roughing it in what’s barely left of any kind of scene. Metalcore, Rock, Heavy Metal call it what you wish I call it my life!
About me
Gender Male
Industry Arts
Occupation musician
Location NY, NY, United States
Introduction Vigilant Hotel has been the latest journey I have been on in my musical endeavors.
Interests all music that moves the mind body and soul.
Favorite Movies drugstore cowboy, the dark backward, clockwork orange, romper stomper..way too many!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Favorite Music Im a hardcore kid at heart with a passion for all music that moves me. Leeway, SOIA, Descendents, Vendetta Red, Janes Addiction, Quicksand, Deftones, Charlatans, Stone Roses, Kyuss, Cast Iron Hike…..and the list goes on and on.
Favorite Books Any biography or autobiography written by a band or person I highly admire.
Vigilant Hotel’s history is far more involved than some simple band formation out of mutual friends. Long before any members of Vigilant Hotel even played an instrument, they were classmates in a Bronx Catholic Elementary School; Our Blessed Lady. Nicholas, Steven, Scott and Sean all attended the first four grades together. In the third grade, after all making their First Holy Communion together, they decided to become Altar boys. Between the summer of the third and fourth grade, while learning the Altar boy practices, they were summoned to the basement by Father Thomas. It was then and there Vigilant Hotel was formed. The four boys were brutally beaten, drugged and molested by Father Thomas for the entire day. Sean remembers that basement vividly, “There was another boy, Frank Robestelli, being held captive in a cage. He was forced to drink wine from a Challis while being sodomized by Father Thomas.” Nicholas remembers, “The creepy hands of Father Thomas as he groped me. Those were the same hands that held and dealt the Holy Communion to parishioners.” Steven maintains that he still can’t get that Frankincense smell out of his nostrils. Scott was so brutally beaten by Father Thomas that day he developed a speech impediment that he never recovered from. None of the boys ever told an adult or talked about what happened that day and eventually, one by one, they either dropped out of school, turned to drugs and prostitution or ended up in the streets. Years went by and they didn’t see each other for over a decade. Individually they battled their demons, their guilt and their shame. They searched for meaning in life through music. Music led them back to each other in the summer of 2010. After myriad successes and failures by each one of them, they knew they had to deal with what happened. Music seemed the only logical outlet for the atrocities they survived. Heavy hitting and melodic, Vigilant Hotel is about to release their first album, “Crimes Against Life and Health.” They have been recently nominated for the best new metal act of 2011 by L.A. Music Awards. If you happen to see one of their eccentric lives shows, you just may see Nicholas doling out Communion in a cloak during Sean’s mellifluous bass solo. Salacious go-go dancers on stage, a masked gimp in a cage and the smell of Frankincense will all make sense. Just don’t go down to the basement with them.