Minor vacation

Just checking in to mention that we won't be updating this page for a few weeks now. Stefan (the only member actually still in Gävle) is currently busy working in the studio, recording another band and doing mixing jobs for another. So check back in a week or so. Aiight!

Mikael's forgotten guitar parts

Hey, Mikael here. Just got back from the studio.
Just recorded some clean guitar parts on ROOM 101 and REMOTE VIEWS that we (ehmm, I) forgot to record. Also recorded the robotic/spasmic part in SPAWN. My good buddy Jesper was also in the studio, which helped alot. Being in the studio all alone can be damaging for your mental health. Just ask Stefan about it!

Not much else to tell you. Enjoy the weather!

Stefan's 3:rd Guitar Day

Wrapping up my rhythm guitar work today by recording DISSOLVING SOUL FRAGMENTS and yesterday's leftovers from ROOM 101. Nothing much to say, really--other than that I am officially done with all my rhythm guitar parts. Woohoo!

Stefan's 2:nd Guitar Day

Alright, so this was the second day of recording rhythm guitars. Started out with some old bastards such as CLONING ASSEMBLY, which eventually became a great pain in the ass. Not having played this old tune, probably since recording it the last time, caused some troubles along the way. Although the fact that this time, the song has gone through a remarkable increase in tempo, didn't seem to be the biggest problem. Memory issues aside, don't I look happy?

Having fun, are we?

This was actually the most crowded day in the studio: a whole of three persons made it to the facility; David, Mikael and myself (Stefan, that is). David helped recording the "psykstämmopartiet" in CLONING ASSEMBLY by acting as a human capo tasto. Notice the total evilness in the image below and be sure check out the video clip of this altogether noticable event.

The human capo tasto!

Watch a video clip of the human capo tasto

Also nailed THE BRAINSHAPED MIND without further complications. Moving on to ROOM 101.

Watch Stefan play the intro of ROOM 101, also notice Mikael's insane "OK, thumbs up!"-look.

David was also throwing some signs!

Hard at work

We also stumbled upon a very interesting phenomenon which was causing a great deal of question marks. Watch this video to find out! Later on, we found out that the thing causing this peculiar sound was me, actually picking ON the pick-up on the guitar. Strange indeed. This didn't occur with Mikael's guitar though.

Wrapping today's work up by recording a (seemingly) cool dive-bomb effect on ROOM 101. Watch a video of that!

Your perfectly normal tech-metal band...

..."We Are Satan's People"

Notice how much Mikael's (to the left) head grows from the previous image.

Stefan's 1:st Guitar Day

Since I finally finished my paper for the music psychology class I'm taking (which of course was waaay overdue), I was finally able to start recording my guitar parts. I arrived at the studio around 2 in the afternoon and immediately started to unpack my (tons of) gear. Starting with a fine old tube-amp: Music Man RD100. Unlike Mikael, I still use crappy budget-FX such as Behringer's V-amp2, but stick in there--when you hear the result on the album, you won't know the difference! ;)

My chain of FX etc. for this album finally looked like this: Ibanez RG620-7 (my 7-string guitar) --> TC Electronic integrated preamplifier --> Behringer V-amp2 --> Music Man RD100 --> 2 x Shure SM57 --> TL Augio 5001 Tube preamp --> Behringer MX8000 mixing console --> sound card --> DAW. That's it! How's that for ya, you technical mumbo-jumbo lovers?!

After having some problems with, what I thought was, too much low bass frequences in some stage of the FX-circuit, I finally realized that it was the actual guitar top (MusicMan) which was contributing to all the noise in the Marshall speaker box (erm, what the hell are those things called in English anyway?). I simply took the MusicMan off the Marshall speakers and voilà, no buzzing and humming while crunching on those big fat bassy chords!

Signal Flow

After having tuned my guitar and completed a soundcheck I started to record my first song for the day. Started out with TACTILE which seemed somewhat of a well-rehearsed song for my part. I somehow managed to get stuck on each and every part of the song (or so it seemed), trying to make every little thing perfect. While TACTILE took almost 2 hours to record, SPAWN only took half an hour. After that I recorded REMOTE VIEWS and when I was nearly through that song, Mikael showed up and inspected my work. Apparently I'd played one riff in SPAWN one half-step lower than Mikael, although that created an interesting harmony, we decided to record it the way it was written anyway.

Since I had to spend the most part of day alone in the studio today, I tended to freak out sometimes. At least while recording this video!

Three songs recorded today. A fine result if you ask me. More will follow in the days to come. See ya.

Mikael's guitar solo day

So, Mikael had put down all the rhythm and clean guitar parts - it was time to do some soloing!

The following equipment was used for Mikael's lead tone: RG7420 (same guitar as before) going into a TC Electronic Line Driver + Booster/Distortion -> Clavia Micro Modular (together with a custom made Breath Controller made by Johan Haake) -> Yamaha DG1000 Preamp -> TC Electronic 1140 Parametric Equalizer -> TC Electronic G-Major -> Rocktron Velocity 500 Power Amp -> Marshall 1960 Cabinet.

After getting the ultimate solo sound, it was time to start recording. Mikael put down solos on the following songs: DISSOLVING SOUL FRAGMENTS, ROOM 101, THE BRAINSHAPED MIND, CLONING ASSEMBLY, TACTILE & REMOTE VIEWS. Some lead parts ("sling-shots") were recorded on SPAWN & ROOM 101.

Here's a clip of Mikael trying to nail his second solo in THE BRAINSHAPED MIND. Notice how David is bugging him about his ability to play properly.

Some pictures...

Trying out different settings in search of the perfect tone.

Right in the middle of recording the TACTILE solo.

If you looked out the window from our control room you'd see this: rain and more rain. Great for inspiration though!

Mikael's 3:rd guitar day + bass

I (Mikael) entered the studio around lunch-time and recorded all the clean guitar parts on the songs. Took a break and started working on getting a good bass sound. Our friend Erik Larsson was kind to let me borrow his Ibanez 6-string bass, which sounds very nice.

Mikael looks pretty happy playing that bass.

The setup for recording bass is fairly simple: The bass guitar signal goes to a V-amp Pro (clean channel), the signal then proceeds from the send out jack to another V-amp Pro (distorted channel). Both V-amps then goes from the XLR outputs to a TL Audio preamp.

After finding the tone, it was time to record. If my memory serves correctly, I recorded the bass tracks in the following order:
1 - REMOTE VIEWS
2 - SPAWN
3 - CLONING ASSEMBLY
4 - THE BRAINSHAPED MIND
5 - DISSOLVING SOUL FRAGMENTS
6 - TACTILE
7 - ROOM 101

Here's a clip of Mikael playing some parts of TACTILE. Notice the redneck-playing style.

With a few chips-breaks and a picking-up-the-drummer-break, recording the bass took approximately 4 hours. After that I started working on the guitar solo tone before ending the day's work session around 19:00.

Found this in today's newspaper. Thanks to whoever wrote that!

Check in tomorrow for a full update about the solo recordings! Until then, check out these pictures of Mikael and David - this is what will happen if you're practically living in the studio for 9 days straight. Remember that, kids!

Mikael's 2:nd guitar day

This would have to be the most efficent day of recording as Mikael in a matter of hours recorded the rhythm guitars on the following songs: CLONING ASSEMBLY, TACTILE, THE BRAINSHAPED MIND, DISSOLVING SOUL FRAGMENTS and ROOM 101. After Mikael had nailed all the rhythm parts, he and David did a "fast" (45 min) listen-through to make sure everything was okay. Here's a clip of Mikael doing some heavy metal guitar playing. Notice Mikael's dissatisfaction with his mistake at the end of the clip.

David shows us what it's like drumming in your sleep.

Mikael then started turning some knobs to get his clean sound perfected before doing some test recordings. When tracking down the clean part for THE BRAINSHAPED MIND, Mikael didn't have a golden dildo in his face - which made the job a whole lot easier. For those of you that are not familiar with this, check the weblog for our last demo recording - available on our website.

A very focused guitarist.

More to come!

Mikael's 1:st guitar day

Kind of relaxed and short day today. Met up with Mikael in the studio around 6.30 pm today and he immediately started to try out different rhythm guitar sounds. Put up two Shure SM57 pointing to Mikael's Marshall cabinet from different angles ---> through a TL Audio 5001 tube preamp ---> into our Behringer MX8000 mixing console ---> into our Soundtrack C-port DSP card --> Steinberg Nuendo 2. That's our current studio situation. Mikael's guitar setup sounded great without even equalizing anything, although we decided to add a low-pass filter and notch a few dBs around 5 kHz. Also, we dipped a few dBs around 100 hz. Interesting as hell, huh?

Mikael was eager to start recording and he almost immediately nailed two songs: SPAWN and REMOTE VIEWS. Impressive as that was, we decided to wrap it up for the day. More guitar reporting will follow tomorrow.

Here's Mikael setup: Ibanez RG7420 -> TC Electronic Integrated Preamplifier -> Yamaha DG1000 preamp -> Rocktron Velocity 500 power amp -> Marshall 1960B JCM900 cabinet

Check out a video clip of Mikael recording some guitar

The last day of drumming

This was the 5th and last day of recording the drums as David had only one song left to record: ROOM 101 (previously referred to as Holistic).

We kicked off the recording around 13:00 and finished circa 16:30. We did several re-takes of certain parts to get them as good as possible. The final result turned out to be really good and we're very satisfied with the result, not only with this song but with all of them.

Stefan playing along with David and Mikael keeping an eye on David's hits on the china.

David should be pretty comfortable sitting alone in a big room all by himself by now.

Next up in the recording process will be getting a good rhythm guitar sound, which we will be doing on sunday. After that we'll start recording the guitars. More on that in the days to come!

Even more drumming

So, today we recorded drums on CLONING ASSEMBLY and THE BRAINSHAPED MIND, both songs from the previous demo. The tempo on CA was boosted quite a bit to make it more agressive and hopefully not so boring to listen to.

David quickly went from "lazy-mode" into "ninja-mode"!

We started of with CA around 13 o'clock and David nailed almost a third of the song in the first take. The whole song was completed in about 1½ hour, of which the ending stole a considerable amount of time.

Anyhow, the song TBM we thought would be easy to record but turned out to be a real pain in the ass. If you look closely at this picture you can see a mentally and physically broken drummer. 4 hours later David could finally relax after Mike had given his blessing that everything was A-Okay.

Stefan, also refered to as "the chief", showed up around 18-19 and expressed his dissatisfaction with Dave's performance on "zappa-partiet" in CLONING ASSEMBLY (Dave's theory on this is that the tempo is too fast for Stefan to perform his solo, so he's trying to buy some time to practice). He also gave David a reprimand on the opening part of REMOTE VIEWS. This will be redone tomorrow along with the last song ROOM 101!

Please write some comments and/or leave a message in the guestbook to let us know you're tuning in!

Drumming - day 3

We entered the studio on the third day of recording the drums not knowing what song David would record. After a short discussion it was decided that the classic song REMOTE VIEWS was the one we're going to focus on this day.

After a short warm-up and some jamming, David was ready to go!
It turned out that one of the first parts of this song was going to be the "mind ghost" of today's recording, but as David's determination of playing it perfectly grew - he fixed it in a matter of takes. Clip of David practicing some of the parts before recording

When David finished the whole track, he requested to hear a part of it that contains "fat drums", as he expressed it. Here is the clip! Notice how Mikael gets carried away and filled with joy by David's performance.

We decided to take the evening off after that, so David would get some rest before his legs fall off. So, that's it for today! Check in tomorrow for other freshly squeezed news.

Also, don't forget to check out the newly added clips from day 2!

Pictures from day 3:

Classic picture of your true drummer hero!

Mikael holding the "ball of energy".

"That china sure sounds delicious, I better hit it a few more times."

Drumming - day 2

Mikael and David arrived at the studio around 13-isch, eager to record some kick-ass drumming! After all, David got off to a great start yesterday, the first song was completed in one coherent take! Probably first time ever in TF-recording history.

We kicked off the recording with SPAWN, a fast and intense track that contains some pretty difficult drum parts. In the end of this clip, you'll hear one of them.

Well, long story short: you can only go so far without junk food. David's pre-pizza attitude after 4 hours of drumming without completing a single song: "fuck this shit! I suck!! I'll never play drums again!!!" However, Davids post-pizza attitude: "Wohoo! I'll nail this song in no-time!!" facial expression

Said and done: after practicing some alternative ways of playing the riff that was posing problems, he finished the song a couple of takes later. movie clip of david bragging

Here is a clip of David tracking the last parts of SPAWN. Notice the calm and concentrated look on his face.

We then continued recording one of the other new songs; DISSOLVING SOUL FRAGMENTS. Things went much smoother with that one, and David nailed that with no difficulties. Clip of David playing some parts from DSF

Anyway, it's a good thing we have lots of breaks in our songs, because it gives many opportunities to punch in new takes. Otherwise we would actually have to learn how to go from one riff to another. Scary thought!

Here's Mikael's thoughts on the evolution of computer science: movie clip (in swedish)

Sound check and drumming day

Alright, so today was the first day of actual recording. Started out by borrowing some microphones from a mutual studio owner-friend. Arrived at the Clockwork Studio around 1.00 pm and after a brief (what we in Sweden call) "mellis" (consisting of bananas, one sad-looking cheese sandwich and some yoghurt), Stefan was ready to put mics on the drums and perform a sound check. After a while of sound checking we did a reference listening on Meshuggah's Nothing. Not to say we're going to copy their sound (also, AS IF there's any chance at all we could do that, considering their studio budget, and ours...) but to use merely as a point of reference for the continuing drum checking.

Eventually, we all found a drum sound we think can be printed on CD and made a part of metal history. (yeah).

Check out a video clip of David abusing his drums: LINK

"must....try...to...not....hit.... microphones... ggaarghh!"

Everything up 'n' running

Anyway, after a few hours of trying--David nailed the first song of the album: TACTILE. One of my favorites among the new ones.

See ya tomorrow.

Mikael accompanying David's drumming

Screwing before the storm

This was the first day of the recordings, dedicated solely to getting a decent sound out of my drums. With new heads for all drums and the drum tuning bible you can't go wrong...

Who says you need more than a bass drum to have fun? movie clip