usurpress

Just a short studio diary with some pictures, nothing fancy. In fact, the session was pretty eventless since everything was running so smooth that there isn’t that much to tell about it.

Day I, Friday:
We arrived in the studio around 18:30 (6:30 pm), there was no problem finding our way there since we had chosen to record in Calle’s little studio which in fact is located in our rehearse place. He have done some recordings there before, including two pre-productions of Usurpress, but this was the first “real” recording. Not sure if we would be able to handle the recording ourselves, we had brought Påhl’s brother Erik Sundström to handle everything technical.
Me and Calle had already done a crude drum sound check when we recorded a demo of the songs the week before so the actual soundcheck took very little time. We did the drums to City of the Nomads and after that Calle was pretty tired, having worked all week and shit. We decided to take a break and instead Påhl recorded the guitar parts for the instrumental intro Eternity Denies History using a click track. It took a while so Calle was pretty drunk when he had to record the drums (well, percussion actually) for it but he did a great job anyway.
By now it was pretty late so we decided to call it a day, sat down and drank beer and talked instead. Me, Påhl and Erik left after an hour leaving Danne and Calle in the studio.

Danne suggesting a last minute change in one of the riffs.

Is Charged Studio in all it’s glory.

Calle preparing for the first drum take.

Soundcheck. Looks like d-beat.

Steffe explaining a keyboard part for an amused Erik.

Serious concentration is demanded.

Day II, Saturday:
I arrived in the studio at 10:00 in the morning to drop off some beer and shit before I headed to do some other stuff. When I got there, the door was open, the lights were out and Calle was asleep on the couch. Wierd. When I got back halv an hour later, Calle was awake but looking dead, Danne was drinking beer, looking torn and miserable and the Sundström Bros were eating sallads.
It turned out that Calle and Danne had ventured to a bar last night, met some old guy that was not interested in socializing with them but extremely interested in buying them strange and very expensive beers. They left at 3:00 in the morning very drunk.
I was starting to expect the worst, Calle looked in no shape to play anything what so ever but after I had bitched and yelled at him for a while he started to play anyway. Danne was not remotely interested in sitting next to his drum kit for the next couple of hours so instead me and him carried a sofa and a table outside and sat down there instead, it was really nice.
Much to my surprise, the drums that we heard in the background sounded quite good and after a while Calle came out with a beer in hand and told us he had nailed it. Good man!
The rest of the day we did guitar and bass without any problems at all. Me, Calle and Danne left around 21:00 (9:00 pm) leaving the brothers in the studio to polish the guitar sound a bit.

Yeah, still beats listening to drums though.

The people passing by must have wondered what the fuck was going on here.

Påhl recording guitar.

Danne recording bass.

Erik scratching head.

Day III, Sunday:
Another day, another surprise. It turned out that Påhl and Erik had stayed in the studio and written and recorded a goregrind song by themselves last night. Sounded pretty good actually. We built a temporary “booth” for the vocals and then started with the vocals right away and it went smoothly as fuck, Påhl did some backing vocals as well. Then we moved on to do a rough mix, concentrating on the most crucial parts like guitar harmonies and clean vocals. We left at around 16:00, Erik stayed to play and record a keyboard part for Eternity Denies History on his own. That was it.

Vocals.

Imagine what he would look like after 2 weeks in the studio.

Sombre and dignified lord. Self portrait.

More vocals.