July 31
After a 666 km drive from Stockholm, we´re finally here at Mission Hall Studio in desolate Sebbarp in the south of Sweden.
Not much going on today except for some barbequeing, changing strings, drumheads and setting up our gear.
August 1
Most of the day has been spent setting up a ridicilous amount of microphones for the drums, soundchecking the drums, bass
and guitar seperately and we´re also trying a few different mic´ing tricks for the guitar to get a good blend of a few different
sounds. We´ve also used a 12" bass speaker as a microphone for the bassdrum to pick up plenty of that nice sub-bass.
The first test-take was done before we decieded to call it a day. We´re really happy with how good it sounds at this early stage.
Now it´s time to watch a movie before going to sleep. Oh, yeah, we had some great barbeque today as well.
August 2
The day started off on a bad note... When we were getting ready to do our very first serious take, the bassamp was dead with a blown
fuse and we had no spare fuses around. After a short trip to a somewhat near by village, fuses were bought and we were ready to go.
The basic tracking went waaaay better than we expected and we actually managed to track the 2 songs that will serve as the majority of
the new album, on the first day! The first track clocks in at almost 20 minutes and the second track at around 16 minutes.
August 3
Today we´ve been listening extremely carefully to the basic tracks and been correcting small mistakes on the bass and guitar tracks. Johan has
also dubbed his guitar on a few places where some extra chunkiness felt needed. We also went to stock up a new food suply in the nearest village.
By the way, we haven´t really introduced the man behind the knobs, Mathias Oldén of LOGH. There you go. Oh, yeah, we had yet another barbeque dinner today.
August 4
The day started off with Johan making the final touches to the guitar tracks by adding some really overdriven, distorted guitarbits played thru a small
comboamp. The amp was put on the toilet with the microphone put inside the toiletbowl for some added effect. Looks stupid but sounds great. Trust me.
Then Anders started recording some vocals here and there on the first song. The vocals are being recorded in the scary attic.
Anders is also working on a new Switchblade website design right now that will be posted as soon as it´s done.
August 5
Today Anders recorded some more vocals up in the attic so he´s more or less done with vocals now. Johan recorded some piano parts for the first song
and I must say that it sounds great. We also recorded an improvised piece that will probably be used to tie the both songs together. Very nice and calm.
The day was rounded off with some late night recordings of another improvised, quiet drone piece.
August 6
The day started off kind of slow with some more improvised recordings with guitar, bass and piano. We finally got more or less what we wanted with the
calm, improvised stuff. Then we just relaxed for a while and had some more barbeque before Mattias from Logh dropped by to grace us with his vocals and
guitar on the second song, which is a totally redone version of the A-side from the "Tour" 7". We sent Mattias straigt the attic to record his vocals.
The late night recordingsession/slight party didn´t end until 04:05 AM and Mattias constributed with some great stuff.
August 7
It took us a while to get started today because of the pretty late night/early morning yesterday. Mattias put the final touches to his vocal tracks and
Anders did some vocals for the second song as well. We deceided to quit pretty early today to be able to start mixing tomorrow with "fresh ears".
August 8
Today we´ve been mixing the first song all day long. I think we´re all kind of tired of hearing the same song over and over...
The first song has now been mixed and we´re psyched about the result.
August 9
Today we´ll be mixing the second song and a the two shorter, more ambient tracks that will be to tie the both songs together nicely.
If it all go as planned, we´ll be heading back home tomorrow morning. All that needs to be done is some guest vocals on the first song
and a proper mastering. We´re really looking forward to getting the guest vocals done...
August 10
Today we said all the good bye´s and everybody headed of in different directions in Sweden.
Our work here at Mission Hall is now complete and very succesful. No pictures today though.
September 21
Today we finally managed to find the time to get the final guestvocals laid down. "E" of WATAIN graced us with some fantastic vokills
on the first song on the album. Everything went extremly smooth and the vokills sound fantastic. To get E "in the mood" we lit up some
black candles.The guestvocals are now mixed and we have a date at the mastering studio, Masters of Audio here in Stockholm on the 24th of October.
October 24
Me (Tim) and Johan headed over to Henrik Jonnson at Masters Of Audio today to put the finishing touches on our new album.
As usual, Henrik is a super nice guy and extremly easy to work with. The album has now been mastered and it turned out way
beyond what we were hoping for so we´re really happy about it. The album clocks in at 43:20 minutes and concists of 2 tracks
and an interlude that tie the tracks together. The album will be released on Trust No One here in Europe on the 24th of January
2006. We´ve started to plan a releaseshow/party around that same date with some special features that we have not tried before.
Stay tuned...