The day finally has come! (Technically yesterday, but I wanted to make a post today). The official premiere of Lavaborne's first single "The Heathen Church" off of the debut album "Black Winged Gods" is officially out in the wild! Courtesy of The Obelisk. They were also kind enough to do a full review on the album as a whole on the article as well with some very flattering comments to regard. You can check it out here:
Pre-Orders for the album are also live! Which can be found on the band's Bandcamp, courtesy of the band's label Wise Blood Records! The track can also be streamed there. Link below here:
Cover Art below (Done by Nate Vaught from Brain Vaught Illustrations):
I wanted to share some stories about the process of making this record, because to say that the making of this record was a doozy, would be an understatement. However, hopefully I'll keep it relatively brief, but I figure some might find the following stories amusing or interesting.
We started the process in November of 2018. B-Sig had made the scratch tracks on his own and then sent them over for me to play the drums along to. Then around December of 2018 was when I started getting drum tones and began tracking. At the time, it was funny because I tried something different. I set up the drums & mics in my house's dining area with tile floors. I chose this area of the house because I honestly thought getting those reflections like how they did for some old school 70's and early 80's records would be a cool thing to try. Like how Judas Priest's 'British Steel" was recorded in Ringo Starr's Manson and they recorded the drums in the marble hallway with mics in the faraway to capture the room sound. I wanted to capture a similar sort of vibe with this record to some degree, given the limitations I had. The ceilings weren't high but high enough to get some clearance from the overheads. I spent SO much time getting the phasing as good as possible. I set up a room mic a few feet away from the drums in the living area to catch some room ambience. I got it dialed in pretty well and I was SUPER happy with the results. I felt proud because truthfully, I had not spent as much time getting drum tones in the past like I had this time around. Not that I didn't care as much before but this was also the first time I recorded in a totally different living space/environment so I had to figure out a whole new system that worked best for that room. When I was living at my previous living situation, the living room I recorded in was well known to me and I had my "go-to" placements and tactics that made the process go much quicker and efficiently.
So with that in mind, the first song I started with was "The Heathen Church" since it was the opener of the record. Even back then we knew it was the opener. I tend to like to work on songs chronologically, and that's what I tried to do. Then there were songs I knew I would save for last like "Master Of Medusa" and "The Final Mystery" because they would were the most challenging. I recorded the full song, and got that tracked and that take is what you hear on the album.
I then went into tracking all of "The Great Reward" next (Ended up scrapping the whole take and redoing it later because I wasn't happy with it). Then after that began to do "Flesh, Blood & Bone" when suddenly during that session, I get an angry knock from my old lady neighbor at 3PM on a SATURDAY no less, and she was basically crying about how she hasn't been able to sleep because all she could hear was my drums and it's too loud, this, that & the other. In her words verbatim, "Can you please move somewhere else?". Keep in mind, I notified her about making racket prior to as well. She also knew about this when I lived at home prior to moving into this house. The house I was renting next door to this lady was 7 houses down from my parent's house (At which my operation was at before) by the way and I was renting this home with our bass player Brandon Davis and his partner Mickey. Not planned at all, just happened that way and simply a funny coincidence. Plus it was cool to be close by to my parents in case of an emergency. Nevertheless, this lady was familiar about all of this so it came as a surprise to us that she would be as upset as she was about it. Obviously drums are loud, but I wasn't tracking them at midnight!
Derailing aside, the point is that recording in the dining area of the house was NOT going to fly any longer. I was bummed about this because I spent SO much time dialing in the drum tones, just for it all to come to a screeching halt. This essentially made me determine that I had to start making headway on making the garage in the house the new "Live Room", which was fine but it was also going to be an undertaking getting the room dialed properly for such a purpose. This process took about 3 more months after that first few initial tracking sessions, which made recording the album get delayed a little further. Not a big deal, but definitely a set back.
Fast forward to April of 2019 and I finally get the garage set up with some temporary and passable acoustic treatment, dial in the drum sounds again; getting them as close as possible to the prior setup in the dining room, using the same mics and generally similar placement. Only issue was, the garage was far less reflective and sounded more dead. In some cases that's an advantage because you can add in the ambience later with reverb plugins and such in post, but that's not as fun is it? Obviously the drum sound was different for a multitude of factors, but the common denominators in my case were the fact that I'm playing the songs, the drums and cymbals used were the same and the mics were the same, so the tones were still going to be similar overall despite being in a different room. Regardless, the results were still great, and aside from "The Heathen Church" being the ONLY song tracked in the dining room, the rest of the album was recorded in the garage of this house.
Once that was underway, I finished the drums in roughly 1-2 weeks. Then we were off to rhythm guitar tracking! This time was also something new that I wanted to try. I decided this time I wanted to try my hand at quad tracking the rhythm guitars for an even bigger and thicker sound. To achieve this, B-Sig laid down the main rhythm tracks L + R, and then Freddie and Myself laid down the additional rhythms, Freddie being on the left and me on the right. Below is the list of the gear we used for all the rhythm tones:
Brandon S:
Bugera 333XL Infinium Tube Head Boosted with Boss SD-1 Pedal (rhythms)
Randall RX20RH Solid State head Boosted with Ibanez TS9 Pedal (rhythms)
80's Randall 412s Cabinet (rhythms)
Jackson JS32T Rhoads with Stock Pickups (rhythms)
Epiphone 1984 Explorer with EMG 57/66 (rhythms)
Freddie:
Laney IRT120H Tube Head (rhythms)
80's Laney 4x12" Cabinet (rhythms)
Schecter Hellraiser Solo-II with EMG 81/85
Max:
Reverend Sensei RA with Seymour Duncans
Ibanez V170 Acoustic Guitar
Mesa 4x12" Traditional Cabinet
As you can tell we used a wide array of different guitars, amps, pedals, and so on. The result were tones that all complimented each other very well in the end and I'm beyond happy with the results of this. I think for this band in particular, this will more than likely be the process of rhythms going forward. Now some may ask, "You're the drummer for the band, so why did you play a rhythm track on the record?" and the simple answer was that I wanted to. I learned a lot of the songs by ear and they were a lot of fun to play, so with the permission of the other guys, I was able to have a rhythm track on the record and it was super fun! Not to mention, also convenient since I was producing the record anyway. It made it easier to knock it out on my own time rather than trying to coordinate schedules with the other guys in the band. I knocked out all my rhythm tracks in about 3 days.
Rhythm tracking pretty much took place in 2 living places. My lease with Brandon D and Mickey ended during the tracking of the B-Sig's first layer of rhythms in September of 2019, so I had to find a new living situation, found new roommates and we continued operation at the next living space I had from the Fall of 2019 until June of 2020. B-Sig finished his rhythms there, Freddie and myself also finished ours up there as well. We had started on bass tracking there but then the lease ALSO ended for this living situation and at this point I was ready to move into a home on my own, and possibly look into purchasing a home. As those who know what that process is like, especially in this economy, it's a bitch and a half. So once the lease was up and I was on the search for a new home, we decided to continue operation at B-Sig's house/basement in September of 2020 onward in order to keep the process rolling and not delay it even further. We went on to finish the bass guitars, leads and overdubs, and finally the vocals. We finished tracking the whole entire record in February of 2021. I mixed it and mastered it in May. Took a month or so off from listening to it to make sure I came back to it with fresh ears.
As you can tell, the process for this record took a LOOOOOOOONG time. One would argue far too long, and I would actually tend to agree. But it also didn't help that I basically had to move 3 times during the making of it, and we all work full time jobs (Some of us even CHANGED jobs a few times during the making of it as well) and have multiple projects ourselves. So with all that in mind, it's no wonder it took as long as it did. Although, through all the setbacks, the roadblocks, the hours and hours of getting the best possible takes, I can say with full certainty that I am beyond proud of this record. I've never worked so hard on a record in my life, and I believe that results speak for themselves.
It's given the band the opportunity to collaborate with Sean Frasier (Label owner of Wise Blood Records) and so far that has been such an excellent venture. It's allowed for us to reach and connect with more people already, even prior to the record fully getting released. This record is a milestone for me, and one that I know I can often use as my calling card. I knew from the moment we began tracking that I wanted this record to go places and make a mark. My goal is to hopefully acquire more work based on the merit of quality "Black Winged Gods" has to offer. Even if nobody cared at all, I could still sleep at night knowing how damn good this record is, and I urge anyone who cares about anything I do, or what any of the people involved do, to pre-order this record if you liked "The Heathen Church", or to pick this record up when it arrives and play it loud and often. Me and my brothers in the band put SO much time, effort, blood (& Bone, Ha!), sweat, and tears making this record that can't be understated, and I can only hope that comes across in the music/delivery.
Thanks for reading this, and I hope you found the process interesting. Our work is certainly not done and I'm very much looking forward to the future. See you all at a show soon!
- Max Barber: In-House Studio Owner/Music Producer & Audio Engineer
"Can you please move somewhere else" LOL