Studio diary of mr. Sallanen
This shit is about the making of our debut album, which will most likely be called Annihilation, unless we decide to change the title.
(what, no photos?)
Friday 10 March 2006
Getting started
We and our old drummer Mattila met at this local bar at 12.30 pm and after eating pizza and drinking some beer we went to our rehearsal place feeling a bit weird. This would be our first studio session with the new line-up and none of us knew what would happen, and Riikonen had just informed us that he & his girlfriend had just broken up their relationship. So that meant some added pressure for the rest of us - we would have to keep him entertained during the recordings so that he'd be able to play all the shit he had to play instead of getting all boozed up and depressed.
Anyway, we packed our shit and headed towards the infamous D-Studio. We had driven less than a minute when Koskinen & Toivonen had to go back there to pick up the fucking drum stool that our drummer had forgotten there. Nice one, Toivonen! Anyway, the rest of us arrived to "our new home" after about 30 minutes and we just unloaded the gear (The guitar hero and the drummer arrived there a bit later) and then we met our old friend Jassi who with his friends/staff would be keeping us overworked and entertained for this weekend. Then followed the usual stuff - getting Toivonen's drum kit together & miking the kit and trying to find a good sound. In the meanwhile most of us went to the local shop to get some food and beer and cigarettes and whatfuckingever was needed for the sessions.
After a satisfying drum sound was found, Toivonen had a rather crappy start for his session. He had decided to start with our newest and not so well rehearsed songs and somehow he didn't just manage to get them right. Well, he continued with the rest of the stuff and suddenly his playing started to really get together. Don't know what the fuck really happened - was he afraid of being in the studio or something? Koskinen was the only other band member really working that night - he played guitar while Toivonen was sweating and swearing behind his drum kit. Me & Riikonen spent our time telling retarded jokes and getting drunk and watching TV. Too bad that there was only five TV channels available and all of them were full of shit. Oh well, we could spend our time creatively getting even more drunk. At midnight Toivonen had played all the 13 songs and at 2.30 am we decided to go to sleep.
Saturday 11 March 2006
Slave labor!
I woke up already at 6.30 am after a really rough night, I just couldn't really sleep that well on that godforsaken sofa. The rest of the guys woke up a while later and soon after that Jassi came back to the studio and the recording sessions continued. Toivonen re-recorded those two songs that he'd had trouble playing the previous night and now he sounded completely different as he played the fucking best he's ever played! Happy as a little pig lying in a pool of shit he finished his work and cheerily announced "OK, now is the time to get drunk". This meant that while Toivonen started to slowly sail the seas of booze I would be the next one to get to work. This turned out to be one of the hardest studio sessions for me ever. For the next five hours I was sweating and swearing just like Toivonen the night before. Most of the stuff went smoothly but there were some passages in certain songs that I had to relearn while recording them. That's NOT the way things should be done in a studio, but that's the way it just fucking was this time. Thank goodness Koskinen & Riikonen were there with me to help me through the songs. In the middle of recording the bass lines Jassi had to leave and this guy who wants to be known as Azhemin (yes, the guy from Thy Serpent and Soulgrind) came in to record yours truly. After I was done with my horrible job Riikonen started to record his rhythm guitars and I decided to go shopping. Beer & cigarettes once again...
Riikonen's session was quite uneventful & quick but that was nothing compared to Koskinen's rhythm guitar recordings - the guy is just simply amazingly tight and extremely fast with his playing and especially in the studio he just rules. We're not worthy! We're not worthy! ;) He even managed to find some time to come to me during one of the cigarette breaks and say: "Fuck, it's just so cool to play guitar!". Well, yes it is, if you actually can play the guitar, unlike me. I just suck, no matter what the instrument is. Anyway, all the rhythm guitar tracks got done during this day with the help of Mattila, who continued to record Koskinen after Azhemin had to leave. The sessions finished at midnight and were followed with more crap and politically uncorrect jokes and beer drinking. And obviously sleeping.
Sunday 12 March 2006
We're fucking tired and retarded?
At 9.30 am the sessions continued again with yet another engineer (whose name I don't really remember at the moment), this time with additional rhythm guitars and Riikonen's lead guitar tracks. All of us were already starting to get really tired and this resulted in the most retarded jokes of the weekend. They were not only crap but beyond crap and they got only worse during the day. Really. On the other hand, Riikonen's playing was not crap, even though he too was really tired. He got all of his shit finished in the late afternoon and then we decided to call it quits for the day. "Pack the bags, dismantle the gear and let's get the fuck out of here" was the only thing in our minds and that's exactly what we did, knowing well that we would soon return to the studio for editing and recording the rest of the stuff.
Tuesday 14 March 2006
Editing day #1
Toivonen spent seven hours editing about half of his drum tracks. Nothing special about that. Just usual shit with this modern computerized recording thing. Bring back the good old fashioned reel-to-reel machines and scrap this modern digital shit!
Friday 17 March 2006
Scream!
It's Friday and it's about 4 pm and the SD retards (plus mr. Mattila) are back in the hellhole known as the D-studio! Oh what a joy. Or not. Well, Riikonen did not appear until later in the evening. Drunk. But hey, that's rock and roll or some crap like that. Anyway, this was Tuberculosis' day to get to work. In the good old SD tradition things have been bound to go a bit wrong and of course it happened again. Our lead singer had a nasty flu and "problems in the body temperature department" too. I mean fever, in case you didn't quite get what I meant. That is a major problem if you're supposed to sing. So bring on the booze & some magical stuff from the medicine cabinet and after a while our own mr T is quite OK. What an amazing guy. Really. He started screaming his lungs out and it took only under five hours for him to do all the lead vocal tracks - including all the overdubs and double/triple tracking some of the screaming. A job well done. The rest of us spent our time well getting drunk. And then it was the time to do all the backing vocals and of course all my little screaming bits and pieces. In the end I decided that Tuberculosis had done such great work that I only did my crap attempt at lead vocals in the chorus of Reign Of Tyranny. It went quite well, thank you. But the backing vocals sessions were good fun if you ignore the fact that the entire Choir of Wankers was getting more and more drunk all the time (apart from mr Mattila of course) and we also had to leave the vocal booth several times because of our totally toxic and disgusting farting in there. Ha ha! This time the Choir of Wankers consisted of the following individuals: Riikonen, Koskinen, Mattila & Sallanen. But for the most of the songs it's just me & Koskinen double/triple/quadruple/whatever tracked and sounding seriously insane. After all the vocals were done it was time to relax and get more drunk. Oh yes. I suppose it was fun but how the fuck should I know. We were watching some Death DVD (hail Chuck!) and I just passed out with a can of lager in my hand. I woke up some hours later and it was all dark and shit like that. So the rest of the evening will probably remain a mystery to me forever...
Saturday 18 March 2006
The final recording day
It was a very early wake up for me. It was like 4 am (!) and Tuberculosis was making weird noises in the studio kitchen. He was complaining that the rest of the guys snored so loud that he couldn't sleep. Well, I wasn't feeling very sleepy either anymore (remember, I had passed out several hours earlier) so me & "mr T" spent some quality time drinking coffee and watching Venom and Voivod DVD's. At around 8 am the studio owner appeared and we started working again. First we did some entirely fucked up intro shit for the album and then Koskinen appeared from his bed looking not so fresh but still he just started playing his lead guitar stuff. The guy was fucking amazing, but that's what he just always is with his guitar. Of course there was some of his traditional "fuck this & fuck that & fuck everything" kind of stuff he just happens to say when he's recording. By 2 pm he had done all his tracks plus some extra whammy bar/feedback noise shit for Annihilation and The Angel of Cancer and Plague. That was it then - everything was recorded. But instead of celebrating that with more of that fabulous brown wonder beverage known as BEER we decided to pack our shit and go home. Koskinen stayed at the studio to do editing on all the tracks we had recorded and Toivonen appeared there later in the evening. It's not known if they got drunk or something but they probably did!
Sunday 19 March 2006
Editing day #2
The entire day was dedicated to editing the rest of the drum tracks. That's all. Only mixing and mastering to do after this!
Tuesday 21 March 2006
First rough mix ready
We received a CD with 9 songs roughly mixed to check out and analyze. It sounded quite good, but there was still lots of work to be done.
Friday 24 March 2006
The end!
Spirit Disease members had not been working every day at the D-Studio, but Jassi had. Every single day. With all the editing and crap that's usual with the digital recording system he'd had his hands full. Seriously. Anyway, at 8 am when we (me, Tuberculosis & Riikonen) arrived to do the final adjustments to the mix, he had already done his magic with our album and it sounded absofuckinglutely great to us. Much better than the early rough mix, but we still wanted to change a few things. Anyway, it took us only 6 hours to finish the job for good. Just some minor changes with vocals and some of the additional guitars. Also the complete track listing was decided and all that usual crap. Now we had a good album in our hands - not too polished but not too messy sounding either, just the way we originally wanted this thing to be. OK, so it was goodbye D-Studio & the guys. A job well done. No, a job excellently done. We will return some day!