It has been play time down the rathole! Like kids in a toy store we lined up a wide arsenal of analogue and digital pedals for any needs. We brought out all kinds of different effects to color both clean and dirty guitar parts as well as fx leads and anything in the twilight zone between guitar and synth sounds. Sometimes we’ve been wanting to go for a old broken 70’s sound, maybe spiced with old analoge pedals such as Sovtek’s Small Stone pedal that was built in the shell of an old landmine. Multieffect pedals such as the flagship in TC Electronics G-System, just as the Boss GT-3, my old companion for the last 10 years has been up and running to provide some of my custom settings maybe for the last time… From Guyatone, Seymour Duncan and Electro-harmonix we used various tube pedals such as a couple of overdrives, reverbs, stereo delays and tremolos and compressors. No need to put your trust in plug-ins, if you can have the real deal in hardware.
On the amplification side we explored the clean channels of both the Alligator and Mr. Hector amps and the good ol’ rectifer together with Celestion equipped speaker cabs from Laboga. Great thick, full clean tone.
Instrument wise, the active emg’s has done it’s work and for the clean guitar parts we have been through various passive single coils, split humbuckers or a combination of both on a bunch of different top of the line guitars.
The tuning is an absolute crucial aspect to get a professional end result and since we detune to C (with further alternations),yet do not play neither 7 strings or baritones all our guitars have gone under a modification process called “plek” at a place called Guitar Labs. This is undoubtedly the most accurate and precise work you can apply to a guitar for the optimal intonation. Highly recommended.
Basically all guitars on the last album were played by me, but this time Jonas is playing a lot more of the clean and lead guitars himself, simply because he’s been a very active composer for this record. It’s a proven fact that often it’s better to let the one who wrote the part also go ahead and lay it down since a certain feeling can get lost in the interpretation by another person when you have a lot of bending and vibrato, it’s all in your fingers.
The summer has really swept big time over Sweden and the air down the rathole sucks. We have to keep the door open and have two fans on full effect to create some kind of circulation. Sitting down here it’s hard to avoid thoughts of having outdoor barbecues, having an ice-cold beer down town, go swimming, eating your own reaped strawberrys with ice cream at your balcony, taking off on spontaneous bicycle rides without obligations and a goal, yeah that kind of shit i like to do in summer… but the fact is that we’re down here in the rathole making the best album in our career, so that’s gotta mean some kind of sacrifice right? We have a few days of edits and keys now and after that it’s time to get Mattias “Kryptan” Norrman down for a session of bass guitar and glue the cracks of the tracks together.
