Now that the drums have been recorded, next step is to engineer and mix the drums, at least initially, so that Harri can start working on the guitars asap. On every album before this, we recorded basses before guitars, but now we’re doing things differently. Also, meanwhile Harri records guitars, Pulkkinen records keyboards simultaneously. We’ll keep you updated 🙂 Who knows, maybe Harri will write his first ever studio blog some day?

I apologize for my tardiness, I have been extraordinarily tired.

Regardless, the drums are finished, day 4 occurred on Monday 22.1. and day 5 on Wednesday 24.1. That Tuesday in between I felt quite sick, there was a flu going around, and I think it was doing it’s best to infest my body, but little did it know it was trying to fuck with a superhuman immunity system, what’s up?!

I knew I was going to be fine the next day, so I nailed the last of them with ease on the 24th. There were only 6 left after day 3 and I was done with almost all of the hard ones by then already.

The entire process took an easy 24h of work from the moment I touched the kit for the first time with these songs to that last stroke stricken. Four 6 hour sessions, 3 songs per session, my 16″ china and both of my crashes are completely done (they barely survived my last tour in China, and I use 2B sticks) but I am very happy with my work. I hope you guys enjoy it!

Now it’s off to a little bit of editing, bouncing the tracks and letting mr. Pulkkinen and the others take over.

PS. I videoed almost all of one of the songs on the last day. I think there might be some more video following later. Stay tuned, you magnificent bitches.

Good evening.
Today was productive, despite continuing sleep deprivation. I arrived to Deerhouse at noon, and had scheduled another six hours. In that time I managed 4 songs, which is about 22 minutes of material, and a nice quick whey protein/coffee/yoga break. Including the two from yesterday, I’m roughly half way through the album now.

Today’s highlight I think was clearly a song called “Dark Cold Day”. I got to use some of my signature double ride tricks (which I stole from Gene Hoglan and Richard Christy when I was a teenager) and some long Neil Peart-style tom fills.
Here’s a little video clip of said events.

19th of January 2018 – First day of actual recording
Location: Deerhouse Studio, Tampere, Finland

Myself and mr. Pulkkinen set up everything yesterday; I changed all the tom heads for fresh ones, added a 6th tom to the set, which I’ve wanted to do for a while, tuned everything, miked everything and so on.

We ran into a couple technical issues with getting all the recording gear communicating which each other, and had to wait for a couple more mics to arrive, courtesy of sir Henri Virsell (Manzana guitarist, all-around sound guy, master of boogie), so no time for recording yet.

Today I arrived at almost exactly 4 p.m., mr. Pulkkinen also briefly swung by. We checked everything again, everything was still working, and after he left, I tweaked a couple small tuning things and got to work.

I decided to start with “Mindcaptives”, which is an almost 12 minutes long prog epic. I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night, so I figured I’d fuck myself even more. “Ei anneta siimaa.”
If I’m recording myself, I usually don’t really rehearse the material beforehand. I only listen to it, maybe find the most difficult parts and figure those out a little bit. I enjoy coming in kinda fresh, recording almost part by part and being creative while recording, I’ve found this way works well for me.
Mindcaptives took about 4 hours of work (including a quick food break in the middle) and a lot of energy, but I think I came up with some pretty cool stuff. I took a little bit of video of some quirky shit in the middle.

The second song I attacked was titled “Vengeance”. A slightly more hectic one. I replenished myself with a whey protein shake.
I decided to try a Mangini-esque hummingbird hi-hat action on the intro, and I’m personally really liking it.
Mostly smooth sailing, until the fast middle part, where I actually got to do some blast beats. I love me some blast beats.
I got through this one in a little over an hour.

More tomorrow!

So, the two Mattis started the sessions yesterday, by settings up the drums and mics and the recording equipment. Following unusual items were needed: hacksaw and vile… And the usual “why the sound is not coming from mic a to track b”-issue was faced, this time it was Pulkkinen’s interface and rather the lack of reading the manual (yes, I forgot to turn the device off and on again after configuring it)… Nevertheless, we’re advancing again!

The recording of our 4th album, stay tuned for more info