Recording drums

We arrived at Sound Supreme a little before noon and started setting up the drumset and tuning the sounds. Now, at 10 pm, the recording is still on-going. Jake has so far eaten a chicken salad and drank a few cups of coffee, otherwise he’s been pounding away at his kit while the Janne Saksa or one of us has been recording. What an animal.

The studio is very nice. Good equipment, nice recording rooms and very cool accomodations, including a Back to the Future -flipper. Only a sauna and a lake are missing. We’ll have to mention that in our feedback

Jari and Edu have been working on these huge posters, which act as maps of the songs. Each different section is outlined with notes on special things that we have to remember while recording. Those will probably come in handy especially when we get to the guitars.

I still have to finish writing the lyrics for two songs so it’s going to be a long night

Anyway, here’s a clip of Jake giving hell, enjoy!

- Sami / Embreach

Tomorrow’s the day

After a weekend that’s quickly sneaked past us, we’re ready to head for the studio tomorrow. Finishing touches have been made to the tracks, but as always, there are still a couple of loose ends which we’ll have to sort out in the studio.

First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll stop by our practice quarters and pick up the amps, guitars and drums, and after that we’ll be heading towards Hämeenlinna, where the studio is located. The drums are first up for recording. On this album, we’re aiming for a more organic sound and are going to use 100% natural drum sounds [1] so setting up the drums will take a while, but hopefully we’ll have something on tape right after the first day.

Stay tuned for frequent updates!

Jari / Embreach

[1] That is, no triggers will be used and no sounds will be replaced with samples, which is very common in metal music, especially with bass drums.

The alphabet is coming together

Wow, what a crazy-ass week this turned out to be.

Our grand plans on finishing all the songs early and spending the last practice sessions playing the final versions together went down the drain. Stress took its toll on all of us, and we had a couple of very uninspired and unproductive days, and things seemed pretty bleak.

But every cloud has a silver lining: just today, we were able to finish the structures for both Gamma and Delta! They were both missing some stuff in the middle; most of the music had already been written, but never really arranged and played together by the whole band. So today, in our last practice session with the whole band, we made some crucial progress and in the end, things started to look pretty damn great!

Not only did we finish the songs (sure, there are small things still missing), but we managed to play all the songs together in a row for the first time – in the order that you’ll probably hear them on the record, nonetheless! Instead of concentrating on and writing stuff for a single song at a time, we were now actually hearing how the finished album will flow together; and it ain’t half-bad!

Final preparations keep us busy, but hopefully we can distance ourselves from the tracks a bit before the real pain challenge starts on Monday.

’til later,

Jari / Embreach

Ways, ways, ways

Another day, another practice session. Today, we pretty much finalized 2 of the songs (to avoid spoilers, let’s call ‘em Alpha and Beta) structure-wise. Now it’s just a matter of fine-tuning the guitar and bass lines, throwing in some mad drum licks and writing a couple of missing vocal hooks. Alpha is going to be an all-out, no-questions-asked opening track for the album while Beta is slightly slower and darker, possibly with a glimmer of hope thrown in for good measure.

Along with these two tracks, we practiced Gamma, which nearly wasn’t going to make the album, but after a couple of new ideas it’s now one of the best tracks we’ve ever come up with. It’s modern metal up front, but under the hood there’s a huge chorus full of despair (and not just pretty vocals) and a middle section that’s truly hypnotic.

Last but not least, we’re going to be polishing a true gem: Delta. We haven’t played this one in ages, so it’s going to take some practice to get it flowing again. A pretty epic track all in all, with great melodies to boot and an atmosphere hard to beat.

Tomorrow morning, I’m off to a luthier with 2 electric guitars, 1 acoustic and a bass in the trunk. By the end of this week, we’ll hopefully have all the songs in perfect working order, instruments fine-tuned to perfection and a relaxing and inspirational weekend ahead of us.

Unsurprisingly,
Jari / Embreach

One week to go

After a weekend of mostly chilling out but also writing some missing vocal parts, we’re ready for our final week of rehearsals. We started off today by concentrating on 2 of the tracks: this was actually the first time we practiced these near-final songs together with Sami. Up until now, it’s been mostly us four without a singer putting the songs through their paces. Our spirits soared! We had a blast and everything seemed to flow nicely, and the last-minute vocal additions etc sounded superb. Now for some sleep, as next week’s going to be very hectic.

For great justice,
Jari / Embreach

The middleground of turmoil and tranquility

Today was filled with less panic and more balance in the Embreach world. Completed the structure and finished a new demo version of one of the tracks, and made versions of all of the tracks with the demo drums removed and a metronome click added for our studio drummer, for practice use. Next up: heading up to the summer cabin tomorrow for a couple days of relaxation and recording — so scratch relaxation Next update on Sunday, probably!

Hyvää juhannusta,
Jari / Embreach

No sleep

We’ve been pulling long days to finish the new songs and general tiredness is setting in with the unease of knowing the approaching deadline. We’ve spent the last couple of nights at our home studio recording and fixing the song demos, and then trying to catch some sleep before going off to work in the morning. It’s exhausting, but hopefully the end result will be worth it. Who came up with 24 hour days anyway?

Peace,
Jari / Embreach

On songwriting

In exactly two weeks, we’ll probably be busy setting up the drums at the studio. During this remaining (oh-so-short) time we’re still looking at choosing and finishing the songs that’ll end up on our next release. Our time at the studio is limited (as always), so we’ve been hard at work thinking about which songs will best portray the direction this band is going. Out of about 7-8 song ideas, we’ve been narrowing the list down little by little: in some cases, the verdict has been clear (e.g. a song totally missing a chorus) and in others the discussion has been active, if not heated, within the band It all comes down to matters of taste, eventually. Luckily, our vision of our sound as a band is pretty coherent and everybody’s digging the new songs a lot!

As for the songs that will make the cut: there are 3 songs that you will definitely hear on the album, the “top three”, so to speak. The tracks have a common atmosphere to them, in our opinion, yet they are very distinct pieces. Let’s just say that they cover more spectrum (from mellow to brutally heavy) than any of the tracks on our previous releases!

Now, for the remaining songs, or the “bubbling under” -section: one particular song that we’ve written a long while ago was always on the verge of becoming a prime candidate for the album, but it seemed like there was always something missing. The riffs were excellent, and we even had a nice sounding chorus for the song that came out of a jam session at our practice place. Particularly the opening riff had that face-melting quality about it (that’s a positive quality, folks ), but somehow the song didn’t really lift off the way we thought it would. Now, just last week, we managed to turn the tide for this song by coming up with a kick-ass rhythm thingie for the intro that complements the main riff nicely: now the song kicks off like a beast!

Also, we kind of grew weary of the original chorus: although kind of catchy, it seemed too “happy” for this particular song. We tried out a few vocal things but it just didn’t click. Again, during last week, we came up with a new chorus idea that’s pretty damn cool, and seems to fit the song better. Due to some time signature changes it also changes the feel of the whole song while still maintaining a natural flow. Goes to show that nothing’s really settled until you have things on tape at the studio!

Everything’s been hectic for the last two weeks, but now things really start to get busy. The beloved summer drinking holiday of all Finns is coming up this friday and the whole band’s retreating to a summer cabin to draw in the final inspirations for the album, and hopefully finalize much of the songs. For next week, we’ve ordered professional set-ups for all our instruments, so everything should go smooth once we hit the studio.

Stay tuned,
Jari / Embreach

And so it begins

Phew, has it been two years already?

In January 2006, we headed for the studio to record our second promo release, Her Grace. Time has snuck past us in stealth mode and now, two and a half years later, we’re finally ready to produce our third release (or “observation” in Opeth-slang.)

This long break has had nothing to do with a lack of ideas, enthusiasm or any such matter – on the contrary, the Embreach family has been running strong and we’ve written a bunch of great new material and had a lot of fun together even though you haven’t heard of us in a while. It’s just that Jake leaving the band due to practical reasons that proved overwhelming for both the band and him left us with a very big gap to fill, and we haven’t been able to find a worthy replacement yet. There have been candidates, and we’ve played with some of them; others for an hour to notice they’re definitely not what we’re looking for, and others even for a couple of weeks to notice that there’s still something missing.

Now, still missing a drummer, we’re gearing up for a new release. For the last year, we’ve been writing and recording song demos at our makeshift home studio, and the material’s definitely better than ever before by leaps and bounds. The whole band has been more involved in the songwriting process and most importantly, we’ve put more and more work into the arrangements of the songs, definitely the hardest part in making a certain song “just work.”

Even though Jake’s officially not in the band anymore, we’re still good friends with him and he’s been helping us out with the songs: actually, for the past week we’ve been intensively training the new songs live with him and the material has been taking its final form as we near the studio sessions. Luckily, the work we’ve put into the demos has proven well-spent, and the songs really work in a band situation as well. The material sounds great: its heavier yet more diverse than before. Some of the stuff has us practicing extra hours to get the riffs tight, some has us perfecting our overall sound for the more atmospheric sections.

I don’t want to go into too much detail at this point, but we’re hoping to put out a slightly bigger release this time, instead of just a 3-song promo, as was the case with both End of the Line and Her Grace. How much material ends up and recorded – and how much of the recorded stuff makes the cut – is still a slowly resolving mystery for us as well

Our time in the studio starts in mere two weeks, at the beginning of July, so we’re looking at two hectic summer weeks for polishing all the small details: the schedule’s tight, but our motivation’s high and the mounting pressure is just good for productivity Next up for us: finishing the instrumentation of the songs (nearly there), putting together the remaining vocals (some parts are missing) and lyrics (most of them are work-in-progress), having our stringed instruments set up by a professional technician, finalizing the overall arrangements, creating the basic click tracks for the studio — and the most important of all, practicing our heads off!

Exciting times indeed. Stay tuned!

- Jari / Embreach