Thoughts about the studio sessions...

It was friday and time to record leads and solos. I was a little nervous in the morning - I had slept on my left hand and it felt very numb and weak. Luckily a little bit of massage helped and I felt I was gaining strength again.

About the gear... I wanted to use my Engl Thunder head for the leads. I just love that sound! Not much adjustment was needed to find the correct sound. After a few minutes we were ready to rock! Depending of the solo I used my Ibanez RG470 (with Dimarzio pickups) or LTD M-200FM (with EMG HZ pickups). I have locked the bridge of LTD so it was good with solos including double bends or something like that. I tortured my Ibanez in solos that had some tremolo bar dives and special tapping parts (Dimarzio ToneZone works quite well with tapping in neck position).

The first song to record was "Tales from the Midst of the Battle"... lots of work here... practically three songs with lots of leads. The first song in studio is always a little bit tricky because you are nervous, or perhaps too excited. And you are not yet warmed up. Therefore the performance is not the best you can do. Luckily these three are not so difficult to play and I managed quite well. There were some rhythm tracks I had to play too. More than a week later I played some missing acoustic leads.

"Fields of War" contains a guitar solo over clean background, but clean guitars were not yet recorded! I was forced to play with click and drums (I asked to mute the bass because it disturbed my performance, haha!). This solo is very emotional and I tell you, it is not very easy to get "in the mood" without the backgrounds. But I did my best and the result is ok.

Next song was "On a Day of Discouragement". The solo is tapping with string skipping all the way! I thought I could play that but the studio really brings you down ;) You can hear even a little mistake! We had to make several re-takes and a little bit of tweaking in order to get a satisfying result. But I still love to play that solo!

"3:16" - not exactly a solo but a harmonic lead. I made this lead only a few days before the studio. We all were quite amazed how well it works in the final mix!

"Defending the Faith" - Pretty simple stuff here. A couple of re-takes were needed but we cleared this one quite fast.

"Song of the Saved" - Yeah! Thrash metal! There's an interesting story behind this solo. In January, when we were recording demo versions of the songs, I had not a solo ready. Not even an idea. But we deciced to give it a shot and improvise something with the tremolo bar. Only one take was needed - it was "the perfect solo" for this song :) Before the official studio sessions I just polished things a tiny little bit, just to know what I'm doing every time.

Next song on the list: "Hail to the King". I really, really enjoy playing this song. It's the feel in it. I stole some licks from an early version of Miika's solo... sorry for that! ;) But otherwise I would say this solo sounds very, very much like me. This kind of stuff feels very natural to play.

"Matter of Life and Death" - Miika asked me to play something over the chorus and showed some licks as an example. I'm not sure if mine is similar to those at all but this is what I came up with. Tapping using an open E-string. I realised my left hand index finger is not very good in doing pull-offs and hammer-ons, therefore I decided to use my middle finger for the maximum performance. In the main solo I used some wah in the "intro", then some standard economy picking (or "sweeps" on two strings) plus some rhythmic stuff in the end.

"Holy War, Holy Violence" - This was one of the first songs Miika made over a year ago. At first I didn't "understand" it but in the end it became one of my favourites. The first lead is the original idea Miika sent me. In the middle of the song the tempo drops to half. That part is actually made by me, many years ago... Miika liked it so much he wanted to use it in this song. In this part the first lead used to be completely different. However, this one is much better :) The next part is identical to the original version, except now it was played with distortion. Here I had a similar problem to "Fields of War" - no clean backgrounds! Luckily this one is easier to play without rhythm tracks. The main solo is one of the best solos I have ever made but I'm not sure if I'm completely satisfied for my performance in the studio. The others say it's ok so I guess it's ok - or perhaps they just got bored for the multiple re-takes ;)

"Lost Indeed" - Some easy leads in the chorus and a monster solo! ;) This solo may sound quite much like Michael Romeo (who is my favourite guitarist). Fast tapping with string skipping... Quite a challenge to play but taken my (low ;)) skill level into account I think I nailed it pretty good.

"Care for the Wounded" - OK, no solo in this one but some leads instead. These are easy to play but the main challenge was the composing process... I had spent a while experimenting with different kinds of harmonic leads until I found a satisfying result.

"A Thorn Through Your Flesh" - Oh no! This is the one I've feared! ;) It's not an easy one to play due to high speed tempo and some tricky licks. Playing this solo doesn't feel very comfortable because it's technically slightly above my skill limits but I did my best. A major part of the solo is just some "basic" shredding but the last few bars have some nasty jumps between the strings. Some parts had to be played separately to achieve the strength this solo needed.

Conclusion: The overall result is absolutely positive. There are some minor things I could have done better but most of the solos sound ok even to my ears ;) Theoretically, the studio session was relatively easy because I had done so much preparation (as we all had). Only some minor polishing had to be made, so all I had to do was to play the solos well enough :) But it's good thing with Deuteronomium - none of us is a guitar, bass or drum hero. We don't even want that. Now everyhting sounds like it really has been played. The result is natural, not sterile. And that's the way we like it! :)

-Kalle