HARDTIMES.CA

[center] [/center] Greetings hard timers. Jason from Misery Index writing here, with a studio report on the recordings for our forthcoming record titled "Heirs to Thievery" coming in May, 2010 on Relapse Records. We are now four days into the project, but why not begin at the beginning?! [center][/center] [center][/center] Under an overcast sky in sub-freezing temperatures, we stumbled into Wrightway Studios in Baltimore, Maryland on Saturday, January 2nd. Clear headed yet apprehensive, we were aiming to just simply get the lay of the studio, and hopefully get the best drum sounds we could on the first day. However, the process moved quickly and our long time skin-basher Adam Jarvis, working with drum tech (and current Swarm of The Lotus drummer) Jon-John Michaud and our Engineer and co-producer Steve Wright in the massive "A" drum room, nailed all the right tones within a few hours. [center][/center] For those interested, Adam was using his DW primary kit along with some extra Maryland Drum Company Toms and his Meinl cymbals. Over the next 4 days until today, Adam proceeded to hammer out all eleven tracks for the record, which itself might only have ten, as at this point one of the songs could ultimately only be on the Japanese release...the Japanese always get the good shit!. [center][/center] We always dread the studio. It is an agonizing interplay of creativity and uncertainty. In our experience, you hear what you think sounds good, and it feels right, but the second guessing and "are we sure?" reverberations wash out objectivity, until you just sort of hope what you are doing makes sense. Not that the engineer (in this case Steve Wright) does not have his chops down, but are we as the songwriters creating a monster record, or a monster mess? We have done both (in our opinions only of course) in the past, and took every precaution this time to make it a creation we can be content with. [center][/center] So, with dread, we began recording last Saturday, and Adam “MVP” Jarvis is now completing all the drums today after 5 days of tracking (for a total of 11 tracks) we now move on to guitar sounds and rhythm  tracks….where as famed Megaforce Records head John Zazula once claimed: “Its all about the CRUNCH!”