ELVENKING Check In From The Studio

ELVENKING have been recording their new album with Nino Laurenne at Sonic Pump Studios (CHILDREN OF BODOM, AMORPHIS, APOCALYPTICA) in Helsinki, Finland. Check out a studio report below:

"Day 5, Tuesday – Snow, snow, snow in Helsinki. We changed studio room for the guitar recording moving to the new part of the studio. We built up the set for rhythm recordings: we set ENGL and Mesa cabinets, and we started playing on different heads and pedals. The final set chosen for the recordings is the following: ENGL Invader 100 through a Mesa cabinets, and re-amp back tracks with Marshall JCM800 with a Boss Overdrive on. Obviously it took a while to reach the final choice with fried ears. Also the guitars gave us a lot of tuning troubles, since it seems there is no guitar in the world perfectly tuned. But this happens during all albums recordings. After a while everything seems perfect….still fried ears or too much attention in the beginning?

Day 6, Wednesday – Days of serious guitar recordings. Starting with some heavy stuff and then moving the different atmospheres of the song. Some much more groovy, some sharpened like hell. Sometimes we needed to play a bit with the gain in order to fit the various moods of the tracks.By the way the rhythm tracks have been laid down pretty fast.

Day 7, Thursday – Rhythm guitars done. Good work! Now it is time to move on acoustic guitars. Let’s see what Rafahel has to say about: “It is always exciting to go in the studio recording a new album and this time working in a so professional and comfortable studio as Sonic Pump in Helsinki made the whole experience even more rewarding. Sleep and tiredness magically disappeared in front of the enthusiasm and as happened for the Red Silent Tides sessions me and Aydan did some full night recording sessions of rhythm, acoustic, classical and even some leads. going on without stops until the energies were there. For what concerns the acoustic guitars we have used a Gibson present in the studio, and another guitar lent by a famous Finnish studio musician, and we used an Alvarez classical guitar. The takes were then did with a single Neumann mic located between the hole and the 12th fret and connected to a LaChapell Audio pre.Ah I was forgetting about…! It was really important to give a great lesson in the kitchen to our Finnish friends cooking for them the famous “Elven Carbonara” while Aydan was recording. To be honest it was the very first time for me that I did, Be it has a good success!You can check out the recipe step by step soon in a very accurate documentary video!”On Thursday night we went out with Nino and Netta and they brought us to fantastic Lappi restaurant where we had the unique chance to taste the food from the far North. It was delicious! And yes…poor reindeers…. But so good! After the dinner we went to a place that has been named n. 1 in the world for best cocktail bar. And yes, it surely deserves the nominee! We went through a trio of different flavors in order to recreate a journey through the Northern lands. And you could really feel and imagine it. Amazing. The night ended up in a karaoke bar, where we had great fun and great performances. (probably someone will remember the 3 more difficult songs in pop music!)

Day 8-9, Friday and Saturday – On Friday and Saturday acoustic guitars recordings went on and were completed. We also set up the gear for lead and melody guitars. We used basically the same set of the rhythm, working on the heads EQ and using much more of the BOSS Overdrive to squeeze the sound. We used also different guitars to record the leads. The work was pretty fast and before leaving Finland we had at hands more work than what was budgeted at the beginning. And especially of great quality. And this is a good thing.

We left Finland on Sunday we sad hearts but with the feeling of having done a good job. It was sad to say hello to Nino, Netta, Tapio and all the great guys met at Sonic. But it is time to go home and complete the album."

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Jason Fisher    June 24, 2012