I got this earlier tonight. It is awesome. Another live rehearsal room recording, same setup, with overdubbed guitars. And a synth on this, no idea what. Not even going to guess. There's been compression and EQ applied to the drums on this. Considering we don't rehearse to a click (yet), if there's an edit on here it would be at the midpoint of the song before it gets super thrashy. Kind of a similar intro feel on this with the toms, melodic bass and strummed chords. This is a concept record, and I suspect this is the end save for the acoustic reprise of the beginning.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/05%20The%20Watcher.mp3

Very creative musicianship going on here.
Sounds like it would be a lot of fun to see live.

Keep it coming, Eric.

This is going to sound weird, but there is something of an Atheist vibe going on with this track..
It might be the bat-shit crazy drums, creative bass playing and the general shred style of your guitarist.
Sounds great though.

Do you guys have a vocalist?

We're working on the live bit. We're actually sounding tight enough to play this stuff out now, if only we could figure out the lyrics/vocals situation. I'm disappointed a bit in that I don't have good versions of the rest to post, especially the songs with crazy speed picking thrash riffing and slap bass.

Credit where it's due to our guitarist/keyboardist/songwriter. He ran into our drummer- his former drummer who had moved out of state- at Buffalo Drum Outlet and found out, well, he'd moved back, as they were both there buying heads. He called me up, as we've collaborated on and off over the years on a bunch of things, and that was that. The drummer's other gigs, incidentally, are playing punk rawk and olschool shitkicker country music. (And is a good classical guitarist and pianist.) Said guitarist plays '90s grunge covers on the side and makes nifty electronica. You know what noises I make. Not a typical metal band. At the very least, I suppose he scored a solid rhythm section.

I could totally get the Atheist thing here. This one makes us think "Opeth" and we had referred to it as "The Opeth Song" for a while.

All three of us sing, but we're kinda sketchy on completed lyrics and melodies (or lack thereof yelling) for most of our stuff yet. Taking a couple month hiatus did not help. We're figuring probably to keep it a power trio and assign vocal parts as necessary.

I like this posted noisery. I'd like to hear some vocals on this as well, but this is quite nifty.

I'll assume Jim has lyrics for this as it has a name. This would be Water, of our four-part Elements whatnot. Unless we decided to change that. I want to start getting vocals going on this stuff, because it's written and structured and not just a collection of random riffs we're jamming on.

And glad you liked it.

Pretty cool stuff dood. Kick drum sounds sweet with all them mics onnit. The toms are a little 'close-mic'-y (i think it is a compression/attack thing, i find them distractingly attacky/flat almost like there are a bunch of stick/rim/miss/clicks or something). But that is definitely a individual mixing tastes choice thing, and also once the thing gets rolling they sound better. They just really stick out on the intro bit, to me.

Funny to hear chuggier metal from you though. You really are from Buffalo, huh?



What did you record this with, ye olde standard focusrite/mac, or someone else's rig?

I think it's something in the water here.

This is all done at the guitarist's place. He has two MOTU inyourfaces racked up for 24 channels into Nuendo on a homebrew quad-core box. Four channels pulled out of an old AMEK console which sound pretty bitchin' for the main kick, snare and OH mics, and god knows what else is patched in to where because his living room looks like a gear store.

I get what you're saying about the toms, because they sound like... sampled metal toms, only they're not. Which is weird, but it's all in the compression and placement. (Someone has to make those samples. after all, so that sound does exist.) I'm especially fond of the kick drum (the trigger thing was my idea, the ribbon mic was not... I throw one up on bass cab though, gotta live dangerously) which I think acquits itself well genre-wise sans sample. That's an inherently unrealistic sound anyhow- real kick drums don't sound like that- so you have to BS your way there somehow. We're just reactionary, I suppose, and wanted to say it's live and real, so we manufactured it and have a drummer who hits consistently enough to pull it off.

Ah, that makes sense, if you said it was your rig, my next question would have been regarding the wizardry required to bring that many mics in. Which, technically, your interface should be able to do, no? Via lightpipe or daisychain? Dunno if yer mac would like it tho. I know my laptop would probably complain.

I could pull it off, probably. We did it for the Garda stuff, and for our guitarist's solo stuff, 10 inputs on drums without daisy-chaining. The laptop didn't argue, but I made the mistake of using a "green" power-saving drive, which is a Poor Choice for drum sessions. Without chaining stuff together, we'd have to sum stuff down to individual tracks for kick, etc.

I suppose this is tight enough where I could go console/tape, but I'd need to have a console again (and something better than an old Mackie), which I am not purchasing until I'm permanently settled. (Unless I find a stupid deal like the Soundcraft Ghost 32 for $600 on Ebay with 30 minutes left when I was at work and I don't remember my Ebay password off the top of my head. )

Yarr, i am currently of the mind that i might try locate and acquire a broken 10+ input interface(firewire, usb2, i don't care at the moment) via the 'used' section at MF or something. They sell a lot of their returns as 'used' and fairly often i see non-functioning stuff up for less than half new cost. Kind of a gamble, because you never know how broken 'broken' is until you open it up and poke around, but it looks like if i can scrounge up $150, i could get ten analog inputs at once, then just have to fix... something. New prices would be double and/or triple that, depending on what brand/unit.

Actually, i am currently of the mind that i could even go for some of the lower quality preamp things like the tascams, as generally, i feel that preamps and AD/DA can be replaced, frankenstylee. I am thinking i might just need the most basic hardware and firmware for bringing in the right number, then i can just DIY the specifics of what is being sent there.

Currently on my mind, because i *need* exactly... nine, inputs for the thing i am going to be recording tonight. I may go mono overhead again, or possibly try to bribe the guitarist that lives near me to overdub his parts later here... If i had another small mixer, i might consider some sort of summed drum-mix solution...

But really i need to get cracking on getting at least two more channels into this box.

I wonder how cheep you could find a Firepod on the 'bay or CL?

Oddly, they still pull like $300. Which is odd because A. they were discontinued, B. they only went for just over $400 new when places started dumping them, and C. i would need two, or one plus a lightpipey 8x pre to make it go right.

The only Presonus box i am aware of that will do 10+ (meaning without a daisy chain or lightpipe) is the Firestudio Tube one, which actually has a full sixteen analog ins(ten of which are XLR, the other six are TRS), perhaps the only firewire interface with that many right out of the gate. That one seems also to perhaps have been discontinued now though. They still want $700 for the things though, not very much less used either.

On the other hand, Tascam has a couple new USB2.0 interfaces with 10-14 inputs, the US1600, US1800, US2000. MF is showing a busted US1800 for $150... If i had $150 right now, it would already be in the mail.

I don't get an Opethy vibe from this at ALL. Far moreso the Atheist thing.

In any case, it's all kinds of awesome.

Listened again, and all I can hear is Kelly Schaefer going "KRROOOOOOWLLLL!!!!" over the top of the super thrashy part.