Zombies are great girl/boyfriend material as they don't want you for your body, they only want you for your brain.

The studio mixing room has been moved! Had loads of problems with the old mix studio, lots of bass reflex problems and other annoying noise leakage. But now problems solved!

Mixed a promo version a while ago, and have got lots of feedback from industry people and close friends! Looks good!

Even though I'm smelling my own farts here, I just love the new stuff! Have listened to the album already like 3 times a day and don't get tired of it. Usually you get tired of it when you're working on the same songs for a long time, but I've been working on this one for one and a half year already with sound planning etc. paperwork, and listen to recordings and early mix demos since spring, but still no. I like this record very much, it's also very personally important to me. Working on it worked as a mental crutch for me as this year has been seriously shitty for me (arson, no flat, Ari left the band, divorce, etc etc). Of course there's been good stuff too, like getting Jesse into the band, Copenhagen Live 2010, but nothing has worked as good as a mental crutch than this album. To be able to compress and blend in your own feelings and spew them out like that is unique and effective way of therapy.

The whole album concept worked as a sort of device to turn the page in my own life. Pondering on the concept and writing lyrics forced me to re-evaluate my priorities and values in life. Don't know how well that translates to others, but for me it was definitely a cathartic experience writing and producing this record.



I actually have nothing more new or exciting things to say, just thought I'd update it for the heck of it and something. Well. Poppycock. Going to England again after a month. Coming home a few weeks before Christmas. Yep. That will be fun. That's all. Thank you and good night!

/Jonas

The Subtle Art of Sound Manipulation in Controlled Enviroments According to Philosophies of Chuck Norris

Now all the bass is layed down! Got a pretty solid and nice sound from Jesses rig!

Very nice stuff, there's truly a groove going on! Excellent playing! A+ to Jesse!!

Jesse used his five string Sadowsky bass, fingerpicking -> Aguilar DI -> blend in a Ibanez Phat Head -> Aguilar amp head -> Aguilar cab. Four tracks, clean DI (for lows), dirty direct out from the head, Shure SM57 on the cabs tweeter and a Shure PG52 on the speaker. Pretty simple and straightfoward setup and very What-You-Get-Is-WHat-You-Hear approach as usual, i.e. no amp sims or any trickery.

We also used a fretless bass on two songs. One was completely with a fretless, the other one was a small fretless-bass solo overdub. Otherwise it was all about the Sadowsky. Very good bass, the DI signal is straight out of the box perfect. Can imagine you could easily record with just the bass, no amp and it'd be perfect without any eq or trickery! Awesome preamp in the bass!

Now it's just to record the backing vocals, some additional keyboards & guitars, organize and tidy up the orchestral arrangements and then it's just the mix! Got a little bit started on it when I did a 2 song promo demo off two songs.

The tracklist is also 99% ready as is the album title! Spent some time in York, England, where my gf lives. As I was strolling around town, listening to "Fair To Midland", the title popped up in my head. Voilá! Eureka! Carpe diem! Perkele!

I won't tell you what it is yet! :P

Some song names to chew on (of songs we've played live so far); "Thin White Lines", "The One Behind The Mirror", "Promise Me", "Drag Me Down To Hell", "Walls Are Whispering", "Nothing To Regret", "We'll Be There" and more...

Sorry to tease you guys and girls but more info when it's 100% :P

/Jonas

Lemmy Kilmister is God of Rock N Roll and Whatnot or How To Defy The Laws of Tradition In Conjunction with Gravity's Constant Pulling Teeth Scheme

Thought I'd update the blog a tinsy winsy bit since I've been really really busy lately and haven't had the chance to do so for a while.

The lead vocals are recorded. Great stuff. Was a really really tough month (June/August). Recorded the vocals in Porvoo. My day went something like this;

7:30 am - Wake up, drive my kid to kindergarten
8:20 am - Home again, back to sleep
9:00 am - fall asleep
11:00 am - alarmclock wakes you up, snooze
11:30 am - coffee, breakfast
12:00 am - read email, check facebook etc.
1 to 2 pm - go trough last nights lyrics
3 pm - go pick up Janica
4 pm - in Porvoo, pick up food
5 to 6 pm - start recording
8 to 10 pm - best results, "gold time" as we get into the whole production
11 pm - stop recording
12 pm - home again, eat something
1 to 3 am - write new lyrics for songs that's about to be recorded
4 am - try to sleep
repeat

Pretty much 1,5 month of that, every day. Some day's we didn't get much done, some days we got loads done. At the end I started to see daylight hallucinations because of the insomnia that schedule caused to me, but we got those goddamn vocals done!

That's the way I like to work too, it doesn't matter if some days are bad. Working on your own schedule, we can truly concentrate on getting the right emotion and articulation on tape and not just be a slave to the clock.

The lyrics we're done on such short notice because most of the vocal melodies were still under construction when we originally started the recordings. But let's not go into that finger-pointing game :P. The only reason it was possible for me to write the lyrics like that, was because I've worked on the lyrical concept since December 2009 and knew exactly what every song was going to be about. Some even had real song titles before a line of lyrics were written. Just had to gather the words and put the stories into sentences.

The last weeks my Pro Tools 002 started to brake down, constant power harness failure and overheating issues. Shuts itself down randomly. Then we'd have to wait for 15-30 minutes and try to start it up again. Those problems ate up a lot of our schedule too.

And it was hot like hell. Probably the hottest summer, and no AC (because of the noise), small cottage, closed headphones etc. So it was pretty tough :)

From the vocal side, the only thing missing is the harmonies and background vocals in general.

/Jonas