Firing the Cannon

The Townsend Sphere L22

After the synths were recorded, it was finally time for Vreth to step up and deliver! I was really excited to hear what sort of sound he will produce out of his mouth this time. 

We had agreed for a couple of things with him: First of all- we wanted to have some variation on the vocals in general. So if a songs needs a bit more high-pitched approach, he goes a bit more screechy and in case the song is less furious, we may want to try out some lower things instead. As he has been lately teaching proper metal screaming, I was eager to hear how it has affected to his outbursts behind the mic. It's too easy to fall into the trap of being rather monotonous when doing an albumful of vocals, so every song was carefully thought beforehand what sort of "playground" and palette he will have within the boundaries of his vocal cords.

Secondly, no something called "overlapping", which means that you can't "cheat" by singing one line in one track and the next one in another in order to spare your lungs. Taking breaths between the sentences are a natural and initial part of the vocal performance and especially in a faster context they give a sense of urgency and flowing adrenaline. Just imagine how dull Reign in Blood would had sounded if Tom Araya had sung all the lyrics in five-second clips later edited together! Oh, and despite of despi....dips...spyt...Dispyt, no fucking crust screaming. :P

TUESDAY, 24.3.2020.

Studio day #13. Sonic Pump had seemingly travelled in time and brought us a microphone from the future. I'm fully aware of Slate's Virtual Mic System, but this Townsend's "Sphere L22" was completely fucking sci-fi to me. Not only it sports of a couple of different capsules inside and is capable of emulating different mic models and polar capsules even later in the mix (using the plugin) but it has in-built leds inside the grille. Holy LAN party, batman! The computer nerd in me was both excited but also a bit disappointed at the lack of different colors at the same time.

Crusti Crock in action!

After the initial setup, I left Vreth screaming his lungs out and left the studio in order to check out some earlier-recorded bass takes at home I had received from our engineer Juho. After hearing some of them, I was rather relieved that I happen to be both a so-called "audio professional" and a bass player myself. That being said, some of the parts were indeed rather tricky despite of me trying my best not to go full Rancid when arranging them. And in defense of Tundra, though, he must be the world's most violent-sounding bass player ever!

On wednesday, I went to my (now temporarily closed due to corona) office studio to pick up some instruments with my daughter and drove to Sonic Pump. Vreth had performed three songs thus far and jesus tapdancing christ they sounded great. The best vocal performance the guy's ever done with this band, period. We went through the takes, made some notes and I left him to continue his work because my daughter was really letting us know her increasing boredom, which was rather understandable, hah! Later Vreth messaged me that he had actually collapsed during the last scream of the one referedd as "Nightwish", which I thought was excellent. Suffering for the sake of art is undervalued these days when everything is about safe spaces and comfort zones!

THURSDAY, 26.3.2020.

Studio day #15. I received a message from Vreth in the morning that our first guest has to cancel his appearance for now due to the upcoming lockdown of southern Finland. In case he came here, he could not return back home. What a FUCKING TOTAL LETDOWN. I talked with the guy and we desperately tried to arrange a plan B, but at least for now we just need to put the idea on ice. Let's hope we could get something done a bit later when we're still mixing! Luckily there was a silver lining and another guest I had talked to confirmed his appearance right after that and we agreed he'd pop by the studio on friday to do his needs.

I went to the studio after work in order to go through Vreth's takes and to record a lot of guitar squeals, feedbacks and different noises for various places in the songs. As all the guitars were played with a DI signal (a.k.a no amp) and needed to be reamped later, many essential sounds produced by the interaction between the guitar mics and the amp couldn't be captured that way and needed to be recorded separately. While Vreth was spitting on the microphone in the bigger room, I was sitting in a closet in front of a freaking loud guitar amp, playing chords and punishing the guitar like it was 1977 and punk had just been invented. After a couple of hours I was finally ready, and left Vreth finalizing his duties. After all this incredibly bad luck and some rather unconvincing performances, it was a sheer relief to leave the studio for professional people doing professional work, knowing that I don't have to worry about anything later.

We agreed that Vreth will do the last song and some replacements on friday, and after that it's time for all that weird shit and whatnot. More on that later!