Sunday 17 November 2013

New Album
General Information and November Progress Report

Almost immediately after the release of Telos back in June 2011, we began working on a new album. In truth, we had already started work on the next album prior to the release of Telos and during the recording and mixing of Telos, we were generally feeling that, due to the fact that Telos is made up of material stretching as far back as 2003, the release of Telos was a process of getting the backlog of material we'd built up released. As such, we were very keen to work on new material and truly express where we were musically.

To summarize the above, we knew that Telos was not a true reflection of our potential even at the time of release. That may sound negative but to put it in a more positive way, we knew that we had a LOT of untapped potential and we were eager to release it. In a sense, Telos was an exercise in catharsis and it freed us up to dig deeper in every respect and see how far we could push without spending another 3 years with no material available to potential fans. I distinctly remember recording the drums for Telos whilst continuously thinking about our latest material that would not make it onto Telos.

Since June 2011, we have been working harder than ever with the aim of releasing an album that we feel truly represents where we are as a band. It's been a strange experience promoting Telos, remastering Telos, gigging Telos and generally using it to build a fan base whilst being fully aware that it is not truly representative of the music that we've been writing. Long story short, our new material is in a different league altogether and despite it being less than 3 years since the release of Telos, due to a lot of hard work, we've been able to really dig deep into every aspect of each new track and not settle for anything that is less than as good as we can possibly do.

Not least of the differences between Telos and the new, as yet unreleased album, is the general sound of the songs. Our recording chain for each instrument (vocals included) is as good as it gets. This in itself has been a difficult goal to achieve and cost us a small fortune over the past 3 years. We've also been learning as much as possible with regard to mixing and mastering and, due to the experimentation we've done, partly during the remastering of Telos this year, we'll have a fully pro sound which is actually groundbreaking in many areas. As an example, each song on Telos had a maximum of 20 channels of audio (audio tracks); the new album songs have around 100. This gives us the ability to blend the tracks and add dynamics to the mixes by layering different sounds at different times etc.

We've also delved a lot deeper than ever in terms of our song writing and have gone through long phases of daily jam sessions lasting 4-5 hours which result in 1 riff or idea (if we were lucky) that would actually make it to the album. In terms of song structuring, we've also taken a completely different approach, trying every possible combination of parts and very gradually boiling them down to finished tracks.

Currently, around 95% of the album is written with about 20% of the existing material still needing to be structured into songs. The album has a name and the artwork is very close to being complete. 

As we're so close to the album being ready for release, we can clearly see what the album will be like in it's entirety. Put simply, it's the album we always knew we could make. It is clearly representative of where we are as a band and we feel that we'll always be happy with it no matter how much time passes. It's heavier, it's lighter, there is more variation and complexity but the songs also feel more natural in their progression and structure. In a word, it's just BETTER.. In 2 words, it's MUCH BETTER..

As we're making sure that every aspect of the album is as well developed as possible, we've set ourselves a goal of achieving a release date of May 1st 2014. The album launch will be accompanied by a series of new videos which will go up on Youtube on the launch date and will feature us playing 3 of the tracks live in our studio.

Long story short, we're throwing everything into this next album. We're pushing the boundaries as far as we can and are hell bent on releasing an album that will stand the test of time for our fans as well as ourselves. We believe that we're close to achieving that goal and cannot wait for anyone and everyone that has been following us as a band in any way over the years to hear it.

2 comments:

  1. I look forward to hearing it!

    Will you work on making music videos as well?

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  2. Hi Haroon, yes. I did not mention this but we will also be making a professional music video which will follow a couple of months after the album is released.

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