Studio diary – mixing the album

DAY 12 Friday, May 6, 2011

The last mixing day, three more songs to go, all of which are Miika’s compositions. Last night we got the last files for these songs. They were some narrative parts, done by Mark Broomhead, the bass player of Seventh Angel. This way we got a real, native british accent to the narrations instead of our own finnish “rally english” accent. There’s also an interesting aspect in this since the album lyrics are based on a book written by an english priest four centuries ago, and also Mark happens to be, not only english, but also a priest!

The first song we mixed today was album’s opening track, an aggressive death/thrash piece called Soul Sickness. Next one was a mid-tempo death metal song titled Sun and Moon. There’s a real “flight of the bumblebee” guitar solo by Kalle in it, followed by Miika’s only guitar solo on the album. The ending of Miika’s solo has got some AC/DC -feeling.

Last one to mix is also the last track on the album. The Bells Are Ringing is a pretty fast death/thrash song with tight riffing. There was also the trickiest part to mix – Mark’s narration in this song was quite challenging to get in balance with the music. Some parts of it come with music, when some parts come w/o music, and all of it should be heard well, sounding as natural as possible. In the end Arttu got it sounding very good, so we’re happy! The Wizard of Watercastle made great work, once again!

Now we’ve finished mixings of the album, so next step will be mastering it. We haven’t decided the place yet, and most likely we’ll ask for test mastering for a couple of songs from a few places before making the final decision.

DAY 11 Thursday, May 5, 2011

Third mixing day was started with Kalle’s song, How Deep Must We Dig? This thrashy piece sounds really energic and it also has a nice, freaky guitar solo in it. Next one in line was Manu’s song called Seven Critical Days (or Manu-waari, as the other guys call it. That means “grandpa Manu”, and besides his age, it also refers to Manowar because the verse riff kinda reminds their stuff…) Besides the Manowar-riff, the style of that song is actually black metal.

Mixing the album is pretty easy job for the band members – it’s mainly sitting on a couch, smiling and nodding: yes yes, sounds good! Arttu is a guy who really knows what he’s doing, and since we’ve been working with him for so long, he also knows what we want, so there’s not much to change in his work.

Third song today was a track called Solitude, composed by Miika. In that one – according to Arttu – there’s a swamp frog doing backing vocals… After that we mixed the ultimate proge piece of the album, Manu’s composition called Surgite, Mortui. So we got 4 songs finished today, leaving three more for tomorrow.

DAY 10 Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mixing crew of today includes me (Miika), Jontte (our roadie), two cats and of course Arttu the man himself. The day started with listening two yesterday mixed ones and they really made me smile. This will be the nastiest Deuteronomium album so far, and that was one of our main goals to achieve with this record. We decided to make few changes for the song Alive, Immortal and after we spinned it few times Jontte uttered; this one is obvious radio hit! Well, I am not sure about that but the song really kicks some butt!

BEING HUMAN is pretty simple thrash song with 4-5 short guitar solos and Arttu said that this one has more leads than other ones together. Kalle has made some amazing licks. Manu’s backing vocals are playing pretty big part of this song and we spent some time to make those well heard.
Very good start for the day and BEING HUMAN will propably become one of basic live songs in the future.

DIVINE COUNCEL supposed to be the “ballad” of the album and actually it is the only one with some clean guitar parts. After all the song turned out be pretty agressive but still melodic mid-tempo death’n roller. At first we tried to add some melodies to chorus but it did not work out…

GRAVEBED is very heavy old school song with 6/8 time signature. This is definitely the hardcore punk song of the album. In the middle of the song we decided to mix 3-4 whispering sentences overlapping to create some nightmarish feeling. Actually the album will include pretty much whispering stuff.

The day has been great and I am really looking forward to hear what Manu and Arttu will do with the rest of the songs.

DAY 9 Tuesday, May 3, 2011

It’s time to start the mixings of the album. Most of the time Manu will be in the studio with Arttu, who actually does all the work while Manu just sits on a couch and takes it easy, ha ha! Naturally, we started with drums, and a few hours was spent adjusting the drum sounds. After lunch Arttu adjusted the bass sound, and finally the guitar sounds. At this point he said that this seems to become the most raw sounding Deuteronomium -album so far, which was nice to hear, since that’s just what we’ve been looking for with this album! For wxample, there’s no trigged or sampled sounds used in drums, it’s all natural, acoustic – the real stuff! Also, we didn’t want to make the album sound too modern, overproduced and edited pro tools -metal, but wanted it to sound natural, so there might be some living in the playing. Everything doesn’t have to be exactly in the click, but it’s more important to have a good, groovy feeling in the playing.

Now that we had the basic sounds made, we started working with the songs, making the final adjustments for the sounds and the overall balance.

By 5 p.m. we’ve got the first song mixed. It’s Miika’s song called Alive, Immortal, and it’s got some punk-monk choir in the end of the song. The feeling after the song is kinda devout. Actually this would be a perfect ending for side A of an LP, and it actually is planned to be 6th out of 12 songs on the album, so… Well, one can always dream at least.

The second song we started working with was Manu’s composition called Arcanum Serpens. We got that one finished before it was time to call it a day.

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