One of the problems with making short communications (Facebook, Twitter, etc) is forgetting what I’ve actually said. In looking back over what I’ve said for the past few months, I realize that for all the referencing of the projects I’ve done I haven’t really said much about them. So, with that in mind, here’s where all the projects stand.
* Shai Azul
Infernal Divine – our second compilation – is 95% tracked. We thought we were done a few weeks ago, but then we got the clever idea of trying out our new female alto (call her hitch) on one of the songs. That gets done tonight. We have a guest guitarist emailing us a few guitar solos as well. We started mixing last week; that’s an interesting time. It’s when you take everything you’ve been working on so carefully and diligently over the course of months and throw half of it out. Not that it was bad, mind you. Just too much stuff going on. Album photography was completed earlier this year. Beginning work on the art/packaging. Still not sure if we’re going to press any CDs or whether this will all be digital. Early 2012 looks like the release date. Work on the 3rd album is already in progress, with about 6-7 song ideas being bandied about. With our present lineup being pretty stable, I’d sure like to be talking about pressing CD number three this time next year. Awfully ambitious, that. But it could happen.
* Redshift Heretic
Vic and I have combed through about 14 different scratch tracks and have landed on about 7-9 of them to start producing. I still want to have a few more songs in the 85-120 bpm range, but we have plenty to work with as is. Once Infernal Divine is mixed, this project is going front burner. If you don’t hear from me between December and February 2012, I’ll be easy to find. Just look in the home studio for the guy with headphones on. People still keep asking us what the difference between Shai Azul and Redshift might be; after all, the music has a lot of crossover (techno/industrial/metal/pop/rock). In short – the lyrics in Shai Azul have emotional weight and significance. In Redshift, the lyrics are less about content and more about ‘does this sound cool?’. It also lets us try out things like spoken word, wildly effected vocals, narration, and other ideas that don’t necessarily fall into the typical realm of sung melody/harmony. For that matter, some Redshift songs are straight instrumental.
* Starspawn
Oily’s solo project continues to evolve and write. So far we have 3 songs solid in addition to intros and outros; we’d like to have 5 actual songs on the first outing. Oily is working on the overarching story and arrangements. I, on the other hand, am working my extreme metal chops, which is something I am really enjoying. I didn’t get a chance to play in any metal bands until I was older, so this is like unwrapping musical Christmas presents every day. First half of 2012 looks good for this EP.
(Quick crash course in extreme metal. Thrash=Metallica prior to the Black Album; fast, riff-heavy, intense. Death=similar to thrash, good luck understanding the lyrics. Black=see Death, add overtly Satanic imagery, tremolo picking, and simpler production. Doom=see Thrash, slow it down by 300%. Starspawn has elements of all these.)
Time to head back into the studio; I just got a new keyboard module that has me rethinking the synth tones for ALL the projects…
-anoN