Part 3.3, That tingling sensation

So, after all that off-music nonsense, getting rid of recording deal the half of the band, keeping a low profile for almost two years, who would have guessed that the 3rd album of Ultimatium would ever be on works? I don’t think many. But when the first tracks from Auerkallio came to my computer, I was very excited. Without any rehearsals, without anything more instructions than a drum machine demo tapes, Matti Auerkallio’s style of playing absolutely stunned me. Not only had he played everything I wanted to those songs but way more, making the drums sound so inventive and clever. Especially what he did with the mid-part of Never Tell blew my mind. Luckily he even video recorded the takes so it was more fun to actually see him doing the tracks. That really gave me the hopes up for the album, but little did I know what would come out of the fingers of our next contestant….

We all knew how good bass player Juha Haipus is, we had seen the videos etc. so I was excepting some hard-core bass playing + we had one rehearsal weekend with Juha when trying out one drummer, so I did get some idea what he was doing with the songs. Just like with Matti Auerkallio, I gave free hands for Juha to do the bass lines he wanted and this was quite new tactic for me to utilize. When he then played first song on actual recording, with a single take, I just could do anything more than to smile and widely. Of course we had to do the take again, because the master-bass-wizard was not happy about it, but for me it was like having a solo-guitarist on bass. He had brought something to songs that I could have ever imagined being part of bass track on power metal song. During two days and total of around eight hours, he had shown me a brand new way of putting the bass to Ultimatium songs and I couldn’t but smile 🙂

So, with the base of the album done so brilliantly, it gave a big boost for the rest of us to go for the extra mile to record best Ultimatium album yet. Matti had some new equipments and lot’s of new virtual instruments to give the keys the massive sound for songs that needs heavy strings and also the solo sound had gone thru major overhaul compared to previous album. Harri recorded his parts in his premises / rehearsal place and he really took his time to hone the guitar sound to perfection. Vocals were recorded at Tomi’s place, in a relaxed environment in a bit over a week + one extra weekend was used afterwards to make every line sound great. Matti Aurkallio also did some background vocals to add some nice finishing touch to the songs.

During this two years of recording, Matti was constantly mixing / mastering the album to keep the sounds good from start to beginning and after the guitar solos were done, Matti and Harri spend a weekend mixing the album to sound like Ultimatium’s album. So, after couple feedback rounds, album was finished at the beginning of 2015.

Previous: Part 3.2, Revocalization      Next: Part 3.4, Finding the right label