Sonic Syndicate Studio-Tagebuch - English Original

[Sonic Syndicate]

Monday, 17th of March - Day 1


Finally, time for camp Sonic to enter the studio, and once again we gonna infest the Black Longe studio (Avesta / Sweden) to start generate the very third album. The mighty Jonas Kjällgren will handle the levers this time around as well.




John and Robin actually initiated early last Sunday to set up the drums and everything. But I had a 25th birthday to handle so I waited a day to drive up. Bad decision! Seeing a huge blizzard sneaking over Sweden during the Sunday night and covering half of Sweden in a blanket of snow. So my brilliant plan to drive to Avesta early Monday morning was shattered to pieces.

Later that afternoon however I managed to collected enough courage to try the roads. And I made it to Avesta with extreme caution and a two hour delay. This resulted in that the studio session that day was coming to an end when I arrived but everything went just fine! The sound had been set for the drums and John even nailed two songs during the afternoon. Good job!




Roger


Tuesday, 18th of March - Day 2

After countless hours of Guitar Hero III consuming the evening before, we managed to get up at 10:00am today. High time to get to the studio again to proceed with the drum work.




John woke up this morning with a nasty cold and he was a bit worried it would actually affect his drum play. After some warm-up with tons of throat lozenges, a banana and some chocolate, he was ready to go however! We began that day with a song that got the project name "Finnish", which is actually the oldest song I wrote for the new album. This tune reminds me a bit of ”Psychic Suicide” from ONLY INHUMAN, with a lot of melodies and jaw breaking riffs he he.

This song went smooth, swift and unpainfull. So today’s session preceded with another song which got the project name "Break Benjamin’s Leg". A song which is exactly what the name reveals (?) - a heavy tune with a lot of acoustic elements. This song was composed during January, when I had my vacation in Thailand, and is the first song in the history of Sonic which I didn´t have anything to do with. This song may very well be one of the single candidates!




We also managed to nail the drums for the redneck bang project name "Export", which I wrote during the Eastpak tour last fall. This song evidently has a riff which reminds of Steppenwolves old classic "Born to be wild". My comment about that is that Steppenwolf obviously have same good taste in riffs like us.

The rest of this evening was wasted in a long Guitar Hero shredding session. As well as trying to install a light bulb in the apartment we live in during this album recording. A project that failed miserably due to two reasons: We didn´t have any tools for this huge event and the roof seemed like it could collapse any second! And we really wanted to avoid having the over-neighbors in our living room during the whole studio session...




Roger

[Sonic Syndicate]

Wednesday, 19th of March - Day 3
Studio day number three started off a bit unlucky with John destroying his snare drum. However, Jonas being a very prepared man had some dusty snares to lend poor John. So after a lot of custom adjustments, we got the new one to sound almost exactly as the old one.

The song we were recording at the time being is John’s favorite with fast ass guitars and blasting drums. A bitchslap which definitely goes away from the rest of the new material in a good way.

After this "critical" event, it was time for some lunch. Black Lounge Studio is actually in the same building as the restaurant called “Berits kitchen” so we don´t have to move our lazy asses long to actually get something to eat.

After lunch it was high time to snail mail all the photage we filmed in the studio home to Richard in Falkenberg so he can start edit the first episode of "Sonic TV - The Studio Report" which will be available on MySpace very soon. Hold your ass tight for this shit! In addition to this, we nailed another two songs so now we have drums for 8 songs out of 14. Yeah!

Roger

[Sonic Syndicate]

Thursday, 20th of March - Day 4

First project of the day was to gas up the car. But since Avesta´s complete lack of Statoil gas stations, this project was a bit tricky. We had to drive all the way to Hedemora which is 30 km off from Avesta to do this. So some delay on the today’s schedule obviously occurred.




Next song up however was a sucker with the project name "Hoden" which we wrote during the Amon Amarth US tour. This song actually got some Amon Amarth influence over it. We want the feel of a horde of unshaved vikings invading your home to overwhelm you!




From a Viking song to a completely different time epoch, namely a knight influenced song. Goes under the project name "Hammerfall Disco" - seeing it got very Heavy Metal influenced riffs and cheerful keyboard carpets. This song we actually begun to rehearse last fall but it was kind of lame back then so we pushed it aside until now when we all realized "Hell this is pretty fucking cool, lets record it anyway" and it actually come to be one of my favorites on the new album.




We also nailed the drums for Roland and Robins "High School" song they wrote just days before we entered the studio. I actually don´t really know how it goes so it will be really exciting to hear it when it is complete!

Roger

[Sonic Syndicate]

Friday 21 Mars – Day 5

I´m a bit confused, what actuallyhappened to Jesus during Easter? Did he die? Did he resurrect, or did he eat eggs? To be fair, I don’t have a fucking clue and honestly, I don’t care either. But it’s always nice to have some days off the weekend.

Our producer and studio technician Jonas are later going north to spend some time with his family, so we started early this day to finish the last three songs. As for me, I’m going back home to my hometown Falkenberg, but John and Robin will go up north as well to get some skiing action in a winter city called Romme.




To get in the right Easter mode, Jonas brought some kilos of candy for us. This fact had a great impact on John, cause either he was loaded with crack or a bit too exited over the skiing event, cause he nailed the songs fucking fast. Just before lunch, everything was done and I could safely get in my car to drive the long road home to the west coast. Next Tuesday it´s time to start with the guitars.

Happy Easter, fuckers!


Tuesday 25 Mars – Day 6

Back in black in the heaviest studio of Avesta to start shred some guitars. Easter is over, the witches have been burnt down to cinder, all candy is on sale and Robin has consumed 10 litres of Easter soda in less than three days. As for myself, I spent the weekend on a luxury hotel in Malmö, south of Sweden, to spend some time with my girlfriend. On the Easter day, we even had the time checking out IKEA where I found myself a new couch, a wardrobe and some other random shit.

Enough talk about Easter shit and couches. Today we begin tracking guitar shred for the album. First song out is a pretty simple, mid temp song and sounds very “hitty” in my ears. This is the melody that will get Lordi to cry monster blood for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest and get us rollin’ on MTV dancefloor chart (don’t take me to seriously hehe). We nailed the guitars for this track pretty swift and now it´s only some butter dripping vocals, cool bass and 36 channels of bombastic keyboards to do this song complete.




Today, John and his drums left the studio to go home and instead our manager Mike came up from Stockholm to help us out with the studio documentation and to make sure we don´t just spend all time being drunk. His first comment about the apartment we live in was: “This is the place you come to when you want to die hehe."

[Sonic Syndicate]

Wednesday 26th Mars - Day 7

Woke up early as fuck and realized someone was walking around in our apartment. Couldn’t be Robin, as he never goes out of bed before 10 o’clock. Then I realize it’s Mike sneaking around with the video camera, documenting us in some pervert kind of Big Brother way. He was probably up all night just filming to get the "perfect" shoot. You know, the one when we drool on the pillows, combined with the morning boner.

Today we kept tearing on our poor guitars and it already sounds amazing! This is going to be so fucking fat, it will poor butter out from your speakers. We nailed two songs today and both came out much better than I thought they would (always nice when it turns out like this). On the other hand it sucks like hell when you think you have a smash hit and it turns out like utter crap. You know, when it’s so bad that even the label put it only for the Japanese release or something, hehe.





After we finished in the studio, Mike decided to take the train back to Stockholm again. The countryside combined with the north of Sweden accent wasn’t his cup of tea, I suppose. Or he just realized that the new album sucks that much that he had to go home to terminate his contract as Sonic Syndicate manager, haha.


Thursday 27th Mars - Day 8

When me and Robin were on our way from our apartment to the studio, Jonas rang us down and invited us on to little tea party before we start to work today. So we drove home to him and damn, he really shaped up this apartment well since last time we were there (one and a half year ago). Almost hospital clean and dust nowhere to be seen. Then it came to the surface that Jonas girlfriend moved in and that, my friends, explained a lot of things, hehe. After a cup of coffee, some cookies and of course some touching on Jonas guitar collection, we found ourselves on the way to the studio.




Today, it was two heavyweight songs that had to be nailed. The "fast" song which is the fastest one we ever recorded also includes the second solo in the history of Sonic Syndicate. Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai beware! The second song on today’s schedule I actually just wrote days before we entered the studio. Hence the project name for that sucker is "Panic" hehe. The riffs for that one haven’t really grown to be familiar to my fingers yet, but I’m sure everything will turn out just fine. Everything went smooth and we were almost finished with one of the songs before lunch. The lunch we spent on restaurant "Dalahästen" with Jonas companion Kenneth of Scar Symmetry. After lunch we spent six hours on project "fast" and then finally nailed that fucker as well.

Very best - Roger

[Sonic Syndicate]

Friday 28 March – Day 9

Besides the nasty cold I’ve been walk around with the last couple of days, I’m now also blessed with brutal cough attacks. My voice sounds like an un-tuned guitar solo and it feels like it’s just a matter of time before my lounges leave my body.

The guitar tracking today was like a walk in the park. Project name: “Punk song” which is an old wreck which I wrote last spring but Robin produced it up a bit. Among other things, removed all my “shugg shugg” riffs and replaced them with more punkish guitars (therefor the project name). The result came out quite well!

Next song today was our “tribute” to Amon Amarth project name “Hoden” (Oden after Amon Amarth and the H after Eddie Meduzas “Hodet” there by the name “Hoden”, make sense yeah?).

In the studio we also filmed a video presentation to the German Metal magazine “Metal Hammer”.


Saturday 29 March – Day 10

Another weekend upon us and Jonas wanted some time off, so we decided to work only half days in the studio. Felt pretty nice seeing I was still a mess from the cold. And it didn’t make it worse that we recorded one of Robins songs today, so I was idling on the studio sofa and removed stuff from my belly bottom and rolled my thumbs. After the song was done, we all went downtown to get us a slice of Pizza.

Well, back in the apartment I spent most of the time in the bed. But I woke up when Robin tried a new game on the Xbox 360. He really doesn’t have anything left to do in Guitar Hero 3 so I guess he wanted a new competition. This game however (forgot the name) was utter shit. I think the coolest thing about it was actually the cover of the case. Rest of the evening I spent in front of TV watching shit and a bag of chips and dip.

[Sonic Syndicate]

Sunday 30 March – Day 11

Everything is going really smooth and if we work hard and nail all the guitars and bass guitar before the weekend, we can start of with the vocals already next week. Yeah! Of course we don’t want to rush anything, but what can we do when everything comes together so smooth and easy, hehe.

After two weeks of recording, you tend to collect a lot of junk into the studio. So the studio actually looks more like Avestas new junkyard, decorated with endless empty Coke cans, half filled Coffee cups, old guitar strings and cookie crumbs mixed with snuff all over the floor. So today we did a big cleaning operation before we started with the recording. Today we nailed “Raggarlåten” which we somewhat started with yesterday. And it came out really well! Feels like this song sounds a bit more like the first Sonic Syndicate record whit a bit more dark vibes but still melodic. Second song today was “Hellgate”, a fast fucker which I honestly didn’t have much expectation on but damn, it came out really nice.

In the evening, Robin performed his own Guitar Hero pose but managed to throw the guitar into the wall and fall over the breakfast table while he nailed “In Flames – Take This Life” on expert. Don’t miss this on next week studio video, haha!


Monday 31 March – Day 12

Fuck me sideways, I was extremely tired today. Guess I’m still jetlagged from the summer time change last night. So, the first thing I did when we came to the studio was to slack some on the sofa, meanwhile Robin nailed the rhythm guitar to a song.

For lunch we had stewed macaronis and sausage at Birgits kitchen and after that we decided to go to the local bowling hall to toss some of them bowling balls. Actually, it was a year ago I went bowling and I remember I managed to lose the whole set back then and also drop the ball on my foot. So hopefully it’s going to go a bit better this time, because it can’t really go worse. Robin was leading until round eight but I managed to win with only one point! Haha - who’s your daddy? Of course, I had full control of the situation during the whole game. I just needed to spice it up with some excitement, you know. Jonas managed to lose, or rank in, on the third place as he said himself, hehe.

Back in the studio, and it was my turn to put some lead guitars. It came out really well so now it’s only two songs left to nail on the guitars.

We save them for tomorrow.

[jimmight]

and it was my turn to put some lead guitars. It came out really well so now it’s only two songs left to nail on the guitars.

[alexemil5]

Well, It is nice feeling to read this post and curious to know about your guitars. Put here lead guitars. I want to know about them then I'll buy.