biography.

Alexander Grant Kinsella was the second oldest boy of the six Kinsella children, born only minutes after his twin brother, Garron. Born in Louisa, Virginia, the family was fairly well to do, but in spite of this he had an incredibly difficult childhood. Always in the shadow of his minutes older brother, Alexander felt overlooked and overwhelmed at trying to live up to twin's potential. While his brother was outgoing and charming, Alex was quiet and reclusive, even as a small child. The only time he was every very vocal was around his parents, and though his mother always tried to nuture him, his father gave him very little attention. As a result he spent a good deal of time trying to get his father to notice him. Attention was spread even farther with the birth of the next youngest brothers, a second set of twins that were a handful for their mother right from the beginning. Unable to accept the presence of new babies in his life, Alex started acting out because even if discipline was the only attention he got, it was still attention. The short period of acting out was squashed quickly by aggressive punishments doled out by his father and by the time he was of age to go to school, Alexander was a sullen and miserable child. Where Garron excelled in all of his subjects, Alex seemed to only show any interest in reading and language. In the rest of his subjects he scraped by, not for lack of intelligence but for lack of a challenge and any interest at all. The only other thing that Alex showed any aptitude in whatsoever was music. As a last ditch effort at getting through to him, his mother enrolled him into piano and guitar lessons. It was her way of reaching out to him and for a while it worked.

The older he grew, the more Alex drew in upon himself and he started writing stories. His own world to escape into when things were hard at home or when he felt like he was alone. The stories alleviated the pressure of being what he felt was inferior to his brother and the mounting security issues he felt as his two youngest brothers came into the family. As a child he filled notebooks with secrets and thoughts and characters that he considered to be more of a family than his own parents. Experience and education allowed his stories to evolve slowly from one dimensional fairy tales to well written and well plotted short stories and novellas and eventually, as Alex started into his teenage years, they were becoming well crafted and interesting narratives and compositions. Puberty and undiagnosed manic dipression had a dramatic effect on the complexity of his writing. It was in high school that he ventured out away from his typical narrative format into writing lyrics and poetry. Anything, really, as long as he was able to put words on paper and able to dissolve some of the growing stress and depression.

Alex’s growing interest in writing music, coupled with his natural musical talent, it seemed like an easy decision to form a band. Some of the few friends he had at school came together to sing about their difficult and angsty teenaged lives. Unable to cope with his home life, and unable to understand why he felt the way he did, Alex started making demos with the rest of the band to send to record companies in hopes of being picked up for an album. It was just a pipe dream to be picked up by a major record label and he was convinced that being signed and swept away from his home in Lousia would make everything better. In 2000, shortly after he graduated high school and hundreds of rejected demos later, Alex got a call from a label rep and was asked to record a few more tracks and send a more polished demo in. Just a few short months later his band, From Hell It Came, was signed to Triple Crown Records and by the end of the year they had released their first studio album.

Touring was a rush at first. The constant motion of being in the bus and traveling from city to city seemed to be the cure all for the problems in his life. It swept him away from home and his family and those issues seemed far behind him in Louisa. But his problems eventually caught up to him and the only way he knew how to cope was to drink and do drugs and all the things that came with being a rockstar. After touring for a solid year, the band slowed down and set up residence in New York to write a second album. His time in New York was lived in a haze of writing, sex and drugs that produced the bands sophomore work, Deja Entendu. In 2003 the second album was released and another tour kicked off, and Alex was beginning to realize what a very serious problem he had. The band slowly started to gain acclaim, and Alex slowly sank lower into his depression. With no support, and no one to talk to about his concerns, he turned back to narrative writing. Between his shows and parties, he would coop himself up in his bunk and write for hours, scrawling stories in small notebooks he kept tucked in his pockets at all times. He rarely slept and rarely took care of himself, but writing as always seemed to be an outlet that kept his depression in check.

After another year and a half of touring, Alex had written enough short stories to publish a compilation, though he had an incredibly difficult time getting picked up given the darker nature of his stories. Having always been a fan of horror, he incorporated his nightmares and all of the dark feelings into his work and as a result he was turned down by a number of publishers before finally having 20th Century Ghosts picked up by HarperCollins. Although there was very little hope given to the collection, he quickly gained notoriety over it. Winning a Bram Stoker award for a best fiction collection, Alex’s writing career gained more success than the initial success of his band. This encouraged Alex to continue writing narratives and while he worked on writing the third album for From Hell It Came, he also started his first venture into novel writing.

The next two years saw the release of the band’s most successful and most personal album, The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, and the release of Alex’s first full length novel, Heart-Shaped Box. The record was their first major label release as they had gotten signed by Interscope and also went on to make the list of NME’s 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade. Alex’s book found itself published in hardcover and it made the New York Time’s bestseller’s list at number 8. His sudden push into the spotlight only served to deepen Alex’s depression as he found himself being scrutinized by the media. For as many people who loved him and his work, there were just as many with negative things to say and he felt himself washed over by bad press and scathing reviews. He further turned to drinking and drugs as a method to cope. It was also around this time that Alex entered into a very emotionally harrowing relationship with a fellow musician. While their relationship was needy and co-dependent, Alex was unable and unwilling to truly commit to her and in the end it resulted in a devastating break up that left him more confused and hurt than he had ever been in his entire life.

Needing something new to pull him out of his funk, Alex started a second band and began recording a new album. For Emma, Forever Ago was a drastic turn from his previous work and quickly garnered him more acclaim and drew more unwanted attention to the reclusive rockstar, who at this point in his life wanted to bury his head in the sand to be forgotten. Though Alex was unable to stop working for fear that if he stopped moving for just a moment he would be swallowed up by the terrible feelings that were always nipping at his coattails. It was around this time when, at the suggest of a very close friend, Alex sought professional help. With medication and therapy his life started balancing itself out.

Daisy came in 2009, a full-length album with From Hell it Came, followed a year later by his second novel, Horns. Both were angry, but cathartic works written in the period of time he tried to heal from his failed relationship. The release of the album and publication of the novel both represented a period of growth and moving on, but unfortunately for Alex he moved in the wrong direction. The next relationship he got himself involved in turned out to have the same disastrous turn out as the first, though this came with not one but two broken hearts, and months of struggling to hold onto the unraveling friendships with both of his partners. Feeling desperate and alone, Alex stopped taking his medication and slipped back into a dark period in his life that he only recently has been able to pull himself out of.

Back on his medication, with his life barely straightened out, Alex has recently released the self-titled sophomore album for Old Dark House, which has put him temporarily back in the musical spotlight.