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

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

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

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