State of the (dis)Union, Sept. 2011

We’re rolling into October very soon. This is the time of the year when VJ becomes more prolific it seems. We’re pretty far into the tracking & overdubbing process for “Unholy Mountain”. We spent some time last week making mixes of where all the songs stand at this point in time. Overall, the tunes are coming together into a cohesive album.

We made the difficult decision to leave one of the tracks off of the album that had been a candidate for the last year. The song is an instrumental jam, recorded sometime in 2008. While going through other sessions, we came across this musical segment and immediately knew that it needed to see some kind of release. As we’ve been going through and working on all the tracks, shaping them for the record, this jam track has become the elephant in the room. The more we placed it in sequence with the rest of the album, the more we realized it just doesn’t fit. It will be released someday soon, most likely as a download or some type of bonus track.

So, that decision brought us down to 7 tracks for the album. We then decided to write an acoustic reprise to one of the other songs to become the traditional eighth. It’s a good trade, because both versions will showcase the best pieces of the original song, and will tie nicely into the instrumental passages we’re putting between a few of the tracks.

Work continues this week until we begin sessions for the new Destructor album, “Decibel Casualties”.

Tentative tracklist for “Unholy Mountain” (not final order):

1. Unholy Mountain
2. Seven Years
3. Godspeed
4. Chaos Disciples
5. I Am Infidel
6. Black Horizon
7. The Gospel of Judas
8. Seven Years Reprise
9. Feed the Flames (Live 2009)
10. Abu Ghraib (Live 2009)
11. The Gospel of Judas (Live 2009)
12. I Am Infidel (Live 2009)
13. El Brujo (Live 2009)

Recording has resumed – April 2011

We started tracking my guitars for “Unholy Mountain”.

It’s a toss-up as to whether we keep any of my original tracks captured when we jammed everything live with Jared. I’m sure they will end up poking through here and there to add texture and heft, but I doubt they will be featured. The feel of those OG tracks is there, if not accuracy. Our brother was in the room with us when they were recorded, and I can still feel him when I listen back.

These guitar tracks are being recorded differently from “Crowe Valley Blues”, with two amps each being double mic’d and tracked simultaneously. That’s 4 tracks. We may not even double the parts – it’s already thick and meaty, but who’s to say we won’t go all Smashing Pumpkins and layer in 100 guitar tracks. This tone is equal parts modern and vintage – I didn’t have the Orange head last time around, and it’s adding some pleasant grit in contrast with the Mesa’s low end sludgery. It’s pretty tasty, I must confess.

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