Mind the gap...

 What a pause...

We had a 13 years hiatus to focus on our personal things. Raising a family, a career, taking care of stuff. Well, who cares. We are back. More or less.

We did a little of cleaning, found the unrecorded material, created new one, sharpened the axes and other instruments.

I personally bought a new musical interface, re-learned FL-Studio, EZ-Drummer and all the other shit. Rehearsed my parts to recover elasticity and sat down to record some old songs. I decided that is was time to honor the promise I made when I left Chile, to record every Warhammer song to date.

TLDR: Jump to the end.

The Journey

I started in 2022 around May or something like that. I was checking a lot of Youtube tutorials about how to create a track with more than one time signature (like 120bpm and up to 180bpm). It was interesting, kind of time consuming, but I needed it because I wanted to record our song "Cthulhu" properly. The song has indeed a calm start and then an accelerated chorus, but the things go really nuts at the end, speeding up a lot. Sadly I was not aware to the technics to tackle the multi-tempo tracks or recording so i decided to give it a try with something easier and shorter to learn along the way, and that could help me realize if I was up to the task. After rehearsing some of our older songs I saw something astonishing: we had been playing multitempo tracks from really long ago. There were various songs that had more than one tempo. The thing was to pick one. The chosen one was "Altar of Extermination".

I created the drum track and set up the DAW for the multitempo. I did some tests, recreated the intro from two or three live takes that we had (every fragging one was different!) and then started to add the bass. 

The Intro

The intro was kind of a signature to this song, using a highly reverbed guitar to get a distorted violin like sound. That and a very simple drum gave me all I needed to get hooked. I was pretty excited so I decided to share the project with the rest of the band via Whatsapp. I send them a test and the answer was as always, discouraging. They argued about everything, the guitar, the drums, the, you name it. I decided I had to work a lot more and shut up, avoiding sending more tests until I had something really good, or at least, hearable. They send me some files with some more versions of the intro. Ignacio, our drummer, discussed some stuff about the drums and I asked (hopefully) for a guide to recreate the drums.

A year later

Some months later, in November 2023, I was ready with some kind of awful mockup. I changed my recording interface, from a Line6 UX-2 that I bought in 1998 when I first visited Sweden. It was still working, but the latency was a big issue and the old drivers that line6 never cared to update after W7, made all the work a little harder. I tried using an old template from 2011 but the software and plugins I used in that one were already deprecated (thanks Line6, talking about programmed obsolescence). So indeed, part of the time passed, was related to me waiting to have enough money to buy a new interface.

I decided for an SSL2+. I started to record immediately to make up for the time lost (pun intended). I was ready for a new round and I shared the new mockup with the band. The answer was better but the drums and the intro was something to work with. Janowar sent me a new intro and that was it.

The Fragging Intro AGAIN.

I had already the intro recorded and it sounded pretty damn well. But Janowar used a weird technique when we played the song live: when the drums were starting and we had no fixed time to how long the intro could be, he usually played it at whatever tempo he felt was going with the mood. The only thing important was synchronizing the last compass with the drums... IF. So, the new intro had no "metronome friendly" tempo. I had to "re-fit" the intro part to handle this and was forced to move the first drum crescendo to synchronize it when the guitar played the last compass before starting the song. A fragging nightmare. After months of work, I had to redo the intro.

By that time I decided to had a keyboard with an eerie sound as a background to the guitar intro. I did some double guitars and other neat stuff. Gone. Well, the keyboards still could be used. In the end it took less time than expected and it worked, but is was a real test to fit the 60bpm intro with no clear signature time into the 146bpm intro that the song had.

Guitars ahoy!

I decided to record the guitars using a method I learned from the master Glenn Fricker, engineer at Spectre Sound Studios. It consisted of recording 5 guitars playing the rhythm parts in different amps and with some variations of the balance. I used just different plugins here to get different amps and frag, what a difference with my previous incursions into the recording realms. The sound was WOW. And yes, the sound I like from guitars usually is not the one that works recording.

I recorded 5 times the same guitars and I was really tired after the thousand takes I did because, what a lousy player I am... I failed so many takes. To minimize this, I would said that I was using a wrong approach to the recording. But, in the end all went well. I just needed now to mix all the thing right and show it to the band. I did it by March 2024, and finally, I got a nice tap in the back for bringing the song to life. With repairs... obviously.

Fix the Drums

Nacho, our drummer in Warhammer, has always worked on doing his job better. At the time of the two complete recordings I had for "Altar", live, he developed his skills in the drums a lot, and the difference is there. One recording had simpler drums and for me was "yeah, less work!". Clearly a year later, he started using a lot of cymbals and complicated patterns between them and the timbals. If I was going to fix something I needed more than words. So, they (Nacho, Janowar) decided to do the right thing and they agreed on a rehearsal session to video record the drums so I could get an idea of the meaning of "the drums need fixing".

We had some Whatsapp sessions and they sent me the drum videos to check out. And the camera was showing the image mirrored. And one video was from the front and I didn't understand a shit of what I was seeing. The second one was from the back and the side of the drums, near the hihat. But mirrored. So I got an idea of what the movements of the drummer were, which cymbals to hit and when. I did my best, but I'm not a drummer and, as I said, Nacho's cymbal/timbal/patterns were beyond my grasp, if not completely, surely an amount enough to make me think I could never fix the drums. Nonetheless, I worked hard and got it "fixed". I showed the result to the band and they showed me the thumbs up. We were almost done.

Solo time

Janowar sent me previously his solo and was the first one to get into the recording. I fixed his amp, leveled some signal and cleaned up the wav. I adjusted the volume and the mix were as smooth as one can think. Time for my solo. It took me weeks to re-learn it to a decent level and then play it naturally. I started to develop after thoughts about it and tried to redo some parts. It didn't worked. I couldn't get another feeling for it, I mean, you get that one, you can variate the licks but redo it whole was impossible. I realized I was overcomplicating things and decided to check an old recording session from a Digitech GNX4 which had all the solos of Warhammer up to 2010. It helped me see that there was nothing wrong with the solo and it maybe needed just a little adjustment here and there. I recorded it a couple of  times more and then it was ready. Just the vocals left.

No Vocals Yet

No vocals yet but I tested a mastering and everyone was blown away. The band really liked it and we are planning now our next cooperative effort. We have one in sight, but to make things a little easier, we are considering re-mixing or mastering the old records and then move forward with the rest of the songs. That means Souls of Warriors, NN, Old Rotten Whore, Oblivion, Time of War, Timelost and Sectarium will get new life in the coming months (years). I cross my fingers to get it done fast, but I know it will take time. While you're waiting for the Ultimate Warhammer Album, I'll be posting the singles as always. I will load them up to Mega or Gdrive (both?) in full wav, flac and mp3 quality to download plus you can give us some love in Spotify or in Soundcloud.

TLDR

I'll try to be back soon with "Altar of Extermination" in my hands. Up till then, UP THE HAMMERS!