Wednesday 2.10. Studio Day 3:

A nice breakfast by Tommy once again, but when we started to power up the computer, it turned out that the hard-drive was fucked. Naturally we have back-ups but this ment that Tommy couldn't play any drums today as the we had to have one guy drive to Vaasa to fix the drive. Since I have my own computer, I resumed work on the keyboard tracks and Pasi did some drum-editing on another computer. Hopefully we can get back to tracking drums tomorrow. Anyways Tony & Elias are joining us tonight and I will go and pick them up in a few hours. As for now, it's back to the keyboard-noodeling.

cheers,

Henkka

What I ate today part 3a, Tommy made breakfast :-)

What I ate today part 3b....

Tuesday 1.10. Studio Day 2:

Sometimes things seems to go a little bit too easy. Well, nevetheless Tommy tracked the first song before 10 in the morning already. By Lunchtime he'd already tracked 4,5 songs.The 0,5 is because there's a ballad where we'll play the beginning with a different drumkit. Oh the fun of studiotricks ;-) Yesterday we managed to have some beers and wine in the evening....even convinced Pasi to stay over, nevertheless everyone was sleeping before 0100 so there was no problem waking up in the morning. Tommy made me breakfast (oh, yeah that's romatic ;-) ). While Tommy was tracking drums, and in between running downstairs to check out the results I managed to put in some time on the computer and my belowed excel files. Still have some "office"-work to do but I'll save that for after lunch or another day....we'll see.

After lunch, Tommy continued the drumming and later on when he was done, I put in some hours on the keyboard tracks when Pasi was editing the drums. Tonight was also the first sauna-evening in these sessions and I'm sure it won't be the last time we heat it up..you gotta stay clean people !!! Our good friend Vapola from Winterborn stopped by for coffe and joined us in the sauna as well. I finished the evening with playing some tracks that might or might not end up on the album ;-) 

cheers,

Henkka

Ps. The NHL season starts tonight....jiihaaa !!!

What I ate today part 2

Monday 30.9.2013 Studio Day 1:

Got driven to the train to catch up with Tommy just after 8 in the morning. To our surprise they don't serve beer until after nine. Maybe it was for the best ;-) After some 3+ hours we jumped off the train in Kokkola were Pasi picked us up. We had to make some short stops before we got to the studio. First things first; the music store to pick up some drum parts (don't ask me, I don't know) and then it was off to the grocery store and to get some wine. 

After a short drive we were already in the woods, were we had some lunch (check picture below) before we got to the studio. The day was spent emptying the van and setting up the drums and keys as well as putting the rest of the gear inside. At the moment Tommy and Pasi are going through the drums and I went upstairs to write this and listen to some Britney Spears.... read an interview with the guy who's done some of her mixes so I had to listen through some of  it and see how much I actually understood about what he explained, I did actually understand quite a bit, to my surprise.

Anyways, Elias and Tony will be here later this week. Tomorrow it's drum-mania. I took some pics as well ;-) These sessions are going to be awesome !! Yeah, I said it, AWESOME !!

cheers,

Henkka

The drums...or parts of the drums.

My keyboard corner, all setup and ready to go.

The M3 lost some of it's keys and is now a 61.

This is how my life will pretty much look like for the next 4-7 weeks

Let me introduce a new series: What I ate today, part one !

Friday 27.9.2013 Photo Session no.2:

Up in the morning and off we go. The guys picked me up just after 8 in the morning and we headed towards Oulu. Made a pitstop for beer and stuff on the way. Spent the drive playing some stupid finnish word game, annoying...but I'll probably get back to it next time Upon arrival we had some trouble finding a parking spot but eventually managed to park the van somewhere relatively close. The day was spent taking pics, this time it was surprisingly smooth and easy. Hope the stuff turns out good. We

found some props at the photostudio that we used as well. Here are some off-set pics, now it's time to enjoy the rest of the weekend and we will be back on Monday with Studio Day no. 1. A huge thanks to disturb.fi for helping us out with the clothes once again ;-)

Cheers,
Henkka

A drummer in the dark, hopefully the real pics will be a bit brighter ;-)

Tony goofing off...

Me goofing off...

Tried to take a pic that would show both me & Tony at the same time but as it turns out it wasn't as easy as one might thing. Used the Sentenced Platinum DVD thing as help...or tried to....

Thursday 26.9.2013 Leaving the rehersal place, ready for the studio !!

Ok, so today I took the bike to Tony's house again and then a friend of ours dropped by the SL, the rest of the day was spent packing the stuff to the rehersal place, driving there and emptying the van, and then going back to pack up the stuff we need for the studio sessions. A lot to do but not anything newsworthy for you guys. As for now we have all the songs more or less ready and we pretty much know how the album might turn out, it's gonna be a lot of fun to go to Studio57 and track everything. One more thing, the SL was actually and old church-congregation kinda thing that we kindly were allowed to use for one month. Since we'll anyways find some other rehersal place for the next album, see no harm in revealing that much. Here are the final pics from me regarding the not so SL anymore. The boys might tweet something still but as far as I'm concerned, I'm already gone. Tomorrow we'll be doing photos and I'll try to take some off-set pics to upload. Until then....

cheers,

Henkka

Some of the stuff for the studio....

Tony on the spot !

Tried to catch Pasi doing some rookie-work but he was too fast....

Some of the keys getting "home" to our warehouse/rehersal place.

Wednesday 25.9.2013 Rehersal Day 16 / Photo session no.1:

Today was probably our last day of band rehersals before the studio. We played through a 

couple of songs in the morning and then it was time to head out to take some photos outside. Kinda cold but I still remember the Reckoning Night photoshoot which was even colder and naturally every time someone talks about cold, Tony & Tommy remember to bring up the fact that it was -25 degrees celsius and windy when the promopics for Silence were taken. Well, be that as it may it was cold today too. Our first location was at the local mine, so thanks to Outokumpu for letting us take a bunch of pics there. The next one was another local attraction, the Taivalkoski dam. Since we didn't want it in the pics, I took some pics of it for y'all. We're gonna have another photosession in Oulu on Friday and

tomorrow is mostly reserved for packing our stuff and leaving the SL. Until then enjoy, these pics....and I'll get you some more pics from the photosession on Friday.

cheers,

Henkka

...and yeah this is old news but gotta love Alex Lifesons contribution to this thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKuO1FpCWRI

Enjoy the pics:

Taivalkoski pt1

Taivalkoski part 2

Kemijoki

Walking to the location....without me ;-(

Managed to ambush our photo-dude Vesku....got ya !!

Elias...good to go, with the SA cloves and all...

On the way to the mine...or at the mine...or...whatever...

Down, down, down we go.....

Another view of the mine....

...and last but not least  "the new guy" , don't worry this will probably

not be his stage outfit....maybe....

Tuesday 24.9.2013 Rehersal Day 15:

I went to the SL alone to work on the keyboard stuff, dropped off some clothes from disturb.fi to Tony's house before that. I'll post some pics later with our brand new clothes on... At the moment everybody seems pretty much ready to get into the studio, at least personally I just can't wait to get working on this album for real. Tomorrow we'll do a photo shoot as well has rehearse a bit, Thursday will be the time to pack our shit in the van, and on Friday we have a full day of photos in Oulu. Next Monday will be the first official day of recording, starting with...you guessed it....the drums. As far as the keyboards go, I've pretty much gone through most of the files from the demos already, there's some really cool stuff in there. On top of doing keyboard tracks, I still have some piano playing, hammond as well as the solos & unisonos to do before I'm done, so I have plenty of stuff to occupy myself with in the studio witch is nice. Previously I've done all the stuff at home besides the hammond playing but this time I wanted to do it differently to get a change of perspective as well as a new vibe on things.....we'll see if it works out for the better or not Now I have to find some more shirts to wear tomorrow ;-)

cheers,

Henkka