Not long after I joined the band, we played a string of really cool shows all over the UK. The stand out show, however, was with Killswitch Engage at The Rescue Rooms in Nottingham. Just us and them. Supporting our idols and heroes, but not just as A support band. We were THE support band. I held a door open for Adam Dutkiewicz and he said thanks to me, and I tried to respond but instead said "eeeiihhhhhh". The most surreal and stand out moment of my time in this band. I don't think any of us came away from that gig uninspired. And not long after that, the conversations began. "When are we going to start writing the album?". And after a practice a few days later, me and Andy sat down and started. The first thing we wrote was a very early version of what ended up being the chorus in Cascades. I had some riffs to contribute from when I was at University. I recorded a bunch of material for some coursework projects, part to prove songwriting ability, part to prove I'd paid attention and knew how to record stuff and not make it sound like a 5 year old did it. I sent all of this to Andy, and he took what I'd done and began to develop it. The backbone of the songs stayed, but they became something more than what I'd written. They essentially became the way I initially pictured them being in my head, but couldn't create alone. The process had begun. And we were all excited.
All the above was the easy stuff. The parts that flowed out of us or were already written took little to no effort to develop. It was everything that came after that that was the challenge. Sitting in my flat for hours jamming riffs to each other trying to find something that we could develop or something that was cool and needed tweaking. Some days we wrote a couple of riffs. Some days we wrote full songs. Some days we wrote nothing at all. Bare in mind this would be 4 or 5 hours at a time, and we were meeting up 2 or 3 times a week to try and get this all written whilst also juggling full time jobs, gigs, practices, relationships, eating, sleeping and so on. Some days we thought we'd never finish. And eventually, after many months, we decided to take a look at what we'd written, and when it was all put in a folder, we realised we had enough. More than enough. We'd done it. We sent it to Adam so he could write lyrics over it, turns out he'd had lyrics written before we'd even finished writing the record. So there we had it. We'd written the album. Now we needed to record it.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we recorded the album with Ben Gaines, our drummers brother. The recording process basically began with us giving Ben everything we'd done, him laying it all out into an organised project file, and then recording everything again, only with guitars that don't sound they're underwater and drums that don't sound like they've been imported from a SEGA game. The drums were the first thing we addressed, and mapped them all out in the software to a drum program. Even at that point they sounded great, but they weren't permanent as Sam wanted to record his drum parts (which he did like an absolute boss, I'll get to that later). Then me and Andy spent a few weeks smashing the guitar parts out. We wrote a LOT of intricate guitar parts and layers, this took longer than we expected. Some of the riffs really came to life when we recorded with Ben, and started to really stand out and become more impacting than we initially realised. It was a really enlightening and uplifting process. We finished everything apart from a couple of clean parts, we were on track. We recorded a few vocal parts, a decent chunk of them. But then, shortly after this, the hurdles began presenting themselves. We went on tour, preventing us from recording. I don't regret those tours, Europe is one of the best things I've ever done in my life, and the fact music allows me to travel and see the world is something I can never be thankful enough for. But when we got back, we were exhausted, and we didn't get back in the studio for months. And then we started arguing. Getting at each others throats. Nit picking, blowing things out of proportion, getting stressed out and burnt out, and it was swallowing us. It was becoming like a musical ocean. What I mean by that is, when you go out to sea, people always worry about sharks. About having a swim and a shark swooping in and making you its dinner. In reality, sharks don't kill that many people. The water kills thousands, people drown all the time. The sharks were the issues we were blowing up over, but these issues didn't really matter, we were already in the water. I feared we'd never get the recording finished. So I sat everyone down in the back of our van after a show in Birmingham, a sort of realigning pep talk of sorts. No shouting, no voice raising, a conversation between five friends, planning a route forwards and a goal at the end of that route. And it worked.
One of the first things raised was getting the drums recorded. So we booked studio time, 5 days of it, and Sam spent months preparing. He'd sit in his drum room for hours with headphones plugged into his phone and drum along to the entire album, time after time after time. He became a machine. And when we came to record the drums, he recorded everything in 2 and a half days. Normally beast mode is used in reference to people with big biceps and snapbacks that forget about leg day at the gym, but that day, Sam was the sole definition. He absolutely didn't forget leg day, there's some double kick patterns on this album that sound like actual thunder. He killed it. And now all that was left was the remaining vocals and a couple of guitar tweaks. Adam, Andy and I all have vocal parts on the record, and we spent a solid week or two honing everything in. Tweaking, adding things, taking things away, rewriting melodies, restructuring patterns and lyrics. Ben came up with a ton of good ideas and helped write one of the catchiest choruses on the entire record. And then, we recorded a tiny vocal part, one of the tweaks I think, and realised we'd finished. Like actually finished. The album was done. I can't explain the feeling of all that weight that lifted off me. It was a genuinely emotional moment. I mentally and physically felt lighter. We all had a celebratory pizza party afterwards which helped put some of the physical weight back on, just watched some videos on youtube and hung out as friends. Probably the first time we'd all sat back and just enjoyed each others company in months.
We both lost and gained a lot of things during this whole writing and recording process. We lost Pete, guitarist and founding member (who I replaced). We lost Lou, bassist and founding member (1st picture). We lost Daryl, bassist and Greggs no.1 fan (2nd picture). We've all lost relationships, both friendships and romances. Sam's lost some family members. We lost Adam for a few hours in Barcelona. For a big chunk of 2015 and 2016, we'd all lost our minds. But we have gained an album. A documentation of all of this. 12 tracks of music that we're proud of, that tell a story that's much bigger than the 5 of us. And we hope you enjoy it.
September 1st. This album will be available everywhere. PLEASE check it out.
You can pre order a physical copy by clicking here.
Thank you for supporting us.
D.S
&
Skies In Motion
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