The collaboration between Joshua Adams and Carl Robota can be traced back to the year 2000. At that time, Josh and his longtime friend, bassist Dustin Woods were forming a new band along with drummer Tom Richardson. When Carl joined the band, the quartet formed as Inner Sanctum. The group entered the Tulsa, OK music scene in the spring of 2001 and met with moderate success, attracting a small following. As the band evolved, creative changes led to Todd Ryan assuming bass duties and Jaron Stewart on drums.
After a short hiatus, the group reemerged with a new sound and fresh material, re-christening itself Merkaba. The new group met with improved success and became a regular fixture of the Tulsa metal scene and eventually made forays into nearby Kansas, Missouri, and Texas. During this period, the group's first full-length album entitled "Seven" was released. By the spring of 2005, circumstances led to the group's unanimous decision to disband.
Joshua moved to Austin, TX, to immerse himself in the city's rich music scene (as well as to escape religious persecution), which led to his work with Austin-based band The Seventy Twos.
Carl moved to Orlando, FL, to attend Full Sail recording college and later to Los Angeles, CA, to pursue a career in audio engineering.
Jaron and Todd remained in Tulsa to pursue their own business endeavors.
After the breakup, Joshua and Carl remained in contact and continued to write music separately. As time passed, they eventually accumulated enough material to warrant the creation of a new record. From a rather large pool of songs, six were chosen for "The People's EP." Through Joshua's association with The Seventy Twos, its drummer Ryan Moody and guitarist Alan Mabe agreed to take over as the new rhythm section for Merkaba. After many months of recording and mixing, the new record was finally completed in the summer of 2009.
"Everything has an energy - within and without. I do. You do. All matter, living, dead, and inert exists this way. What each individual does with this energy, your life-force, is up to the individual. We hope that you will choose to change. You are capable of attaining elevated levels of consciousness and, as such, are equally capable of manipulating said energy to levels heretofore unmentioned.
Here is where we, Merkaba, have crafted "The Peoples' EP." Our intention is to unwind the perceptions that cloud our mundane, everyday realities allowing us, humankind, to grow, change, and enter into the next phase of our evolution.
This music is an experiment in energy manipulation - an experiment that was created to take you, the progressive listener, to the depths of the Human Experience. For the sake of reflection and that we might gain perspective, we are faced with these experiences: Fear and Anger; Reflection and Acceptance; Love and Rejection; Loss and Sorrow; Self-Defense and Precognition; and, ultimately, Transcendence through Purification.
Please allow this music, the sum of our experiences, to organize, educate, and motivate those who will hear our efforts to better the world for the good of all life. Be involved. Participate in grassroots movements. Say "NO" to violence and work to expose the demons behind the atrocities perpetuated by the ruling aristocracy against innocent life. Become. We thank you."
~Merkaba