Guitars

Prologue:

I have to admit that this album we are making has been so close to me for a so goddamn long time, that putting my thoughts in words is not an easy task. If the following seems a bit pseudo-artistic crap, keep in mind that I have not thought of anything else since last fall.

The feeling at the moment is a very satisfying one, because now I can hear the stuff for real. I have heard it in some crappy demos and just in my head, but now I hear it without having to straighten it out in my head.

I hope that every person that listens to this album is eager to read also in “between the lines”, since the musical dimensions are meant to support the texts and have some dialogue with them too.
This album will make us all proud of it, that I can guarantee, but we hope that it will also give some of you something to think, and most importantly, something to feel.
Every song on this album is a part of something we want to say, and it is not only a collection of songs, but it’s not a theme album either. It’s somewhere in between…

Aren’t we all?

So, something about the guitars...

We started to get in the songs with Antti already at the Petrax Studios, we played with Tomppa and Samuli when they recorded and recorded also some demo guitars, just to hear the overall feeling.

After a nice week at the Petrax, we were 10 kilograms heavier, due to Tiina’s unbelievably delicious cookings, but also ready to lock ourselves inside the Villvox basement to shred, shriek, scream, shiver and stomp the hell out of our guitars.

My setup for playing was quite complex in comparison to the ones I used on “Beaten” and “Disco”.
I used two heads, Peavey 6505 through a Mesa Boogie –cabinet (thanks to Jaani from Entwine) to get some mass to the sound, and a good old Marshall 100W Jubilee with MXR Wylde Overdrive pedal through the good old 4x12 homemade cabinet I’ve used all these years.
So we split the signal from my guitar to these two setups, and an unbelievably full sound was built.

I used three different guitars through the album, trying to pick the right ones in every song.
My good old “Vato Loco”, the Tokai Love Rock -92 with the 90’s heavy metal pickup from DiMarzio was the main element, but I supported it with the Jackson RR with SeymourDuncan active 18-volt pickup and my newest baby, Fender Stevie Ray Vaughan Signature Stratocaster.
The Stratocaster with the Texas Special –pickups might be a bit unorthodox selection for playing heavy metal, but I must say that it gave the guitars some room to breathe. Also all the electric clean parts were played with this one.

Speaking of the clean parts, we used quite a lot of acoustic guitars on this album, also in parts you would not expect to hear them in. Keskusmusiikki, the best music shop in Lahti (or anywhere) was kind to lend us a 12-string acoustic and a nylon-string acoustic.
During the last day of guitar recordings, we gave the songs some beautiful tones with these softer instruments, hope you’ll like them.


And, the songs…

During the whole time we played the guitars, I had my “playing cap” on, and every time I got something in, I wrote it to the cap. For every solo I drew an “X” and every clean guitar I drew an “O”, for every acoustic guitar I drew a black dot inside the “O”.
For the intro, that has lived inside me for a really long time now, I drew a small note.
The song list on my cap seems to be the following (as in, in this order I played them in):

1. Base (surprise, surprise! This song was the first one, we built the guitar sound with this one)
2. Inherit The Void (this song will NOT be on the album, but we like it very much… ;) )

These first two names are official, the rest of them are not.

3. “SPT” (a quick song, somehow it reminds me of “Painbox”.)
4. “MastoAntti” (a really heavy song, that opened fully to me in the studio.)
5. “Left” (rocking, melodic but also grim, maybe “the song” on the album for me.)
6. “Skitso” (a weird, very blunt and dismaying song.)
7. “Right” (a fast, hardcore motherfucker punk song with something new from us.)
8. “Middle” (this one is for the ones who enjoyed “Learning To Die”.)
9. “Trioli” (a different song with some angry attitude, a real live song.)
10. “Uusin” (the newest song on the album, angry and fast, just the way you like it.)
11. “Speed Metal” (a song with a big “fuck you” to a lot of stuff. Really like this one.)

So, this is NOT the order the songs are on the album, we’ll save it for later.
When I look at the “playing cap”, there seems to be nine “X”’s and five “O”’s on it, with dots or without them.

All in all, the album is much more versatile in every aspect than our debut was, there are not too many songs in the same tempo, and also the keys in the songs change, it’s not only open C in every song. The intro I wanted to play in free tempo because of the character of this small emotion in simple notes.

I was surprised of the fact that how easily we got the guitars done, it seems that the time we spent on practicing before the studio was not in vain.
Now I’m headed back to the studio to listen to Jules doing his thing. And the studio beard just keeps on growing…

This is going to be great, be patient, my friends.

-Williami