Week five and a half – the final post

Studio diary 2006

This is the final post in the studio diary, which means that the album is completely done now! Hurray for Coldworker!

As mentioned in the last diary post, the mixing process continued a few more days into week five as Dan Swanö did his final adjustments and all that. He made a total of 11 mixes before we all agreed that we had reached our goal. Might sound a lot but I don’t really think it is. Some of the mixes were just minor changes. As for major changes there were perhaps four mixes. Who cares? Not me as long as mix 11 is the one you’ll hear eventually.

On July 6 the sound files were delivered by mail to Peter In de Betou in Spånga, the well known and very talented mastering master (!), but the actual mastering took place on July 10.

The whole gang minus working class hero Joel went to Spånga early as fuck in the morning. I had only slept four hours after my trip to Italy with Regurgitate (see report at nasum.com), but was totally excited about doing the last part of this project (musically, that is).

When we arrived Peter had already done his work, making the final but oh so important adjustments to the sound. Mastering is as important as the mixing of an album and having one of the best doing this final adjustment is of course really great. When we told Peter that we had recorded the album ourselves in our rehearsal room he could hardly believe it (actually neither can we…), so that’s how good this has turned out in the end.

When we all had listened through the mastered sound we spent some time editing the pauses between the songs with fades and crossfades, and THEN the album was done!



André looking "svår" in Peter's studio.



Two guitar heros, Yngwie and Bertilsson.



Oskar listening to the mastered version.



And here it is, the album!

“The Contaminated Void” includes the following songs:
1. The Interloper
2. D.E.A.D.
3. An Unforgiving Season
4. The Contaminated Void
5. Death Smiles At Me
6. A Custom-made Hell
7. Return To Ashes
8. Far Beyond Driven (bonus track on the Japanese edition)
9. Strain At The Leash
10. Flammable
11. Antidote
12. They Crawl Inside Me Uninvited
13. Waiting For Buildings To Collapse
14. Heart Shaped Violence
15. Generations Decay

As you can see we have put the bonus track in the middle of the album. Quite unorthodox, we know, but we didn’t want to destroy the atmosphere that the end of “Generations Decay” creates. Once you hear it you’ll understand why.

A three minute collage sample of the album will be available soon. Check the news for more details about that along with release dates and label info.

Thanks for reading this diary, see you in the recording of the next album…

Week five and a half – the final post

Studio diary 2006 This is the final post in the studio diary, which means that the album is completely done now! Hurray for Coldworker! As mentioned in the last diary post, the mixing process continued a few more days into week five as Dan Swanö did his final adjustments and all that. He made a total of 11 mixes before we all agreed that we had reached our goal. Might sound a lot but I don’t really think it is. Some of the mixes were just minor changes. As for major changes there were perhaps four mixes. Wh...

Posted: July 10 2006, 23:53:14 Read the whole entry

Week four - Dan Swanö takes command

Studio diary 2006 The report this week isn't that exciting since there hasn't been much going on for Coldworker. On the other side of town, though, there has been very much going on, since Dan Swanö has spent most of the week mixing like a maniac. I finished the last pieces of editing on Monday night and went to Swanö's new home studio (Unisound version 3 or 4) with the harddrive. Swanö plugged it in and we got a sound, he then copied everything to his system and was so excited that he spent the night mixin...

Posted: July 2 2006, 17:21:01 Read the whole entry

Week three - the final one

Studio diary 2006 The third week of the recording of "The Contaminated Void" obviously started where week two ended - with vocals. Joel came in on Monday morning doing his second session. He managed to record four songs before we had to break to have another photosession with Robert. The first one didn't result in that many useable photos and were all outdoors. We needed some more, some darker and in an indoor environment. Said and done, we entered the garage next to Coldworker Studios and shot a lot of photos be...

Posted: June 25 2006, 23:43:11 Read the whole entry

Week two - the short, but sweet one

Studio diary 2006 The second week was slightly shorter workingwise due to the annual Hultsfredsfestival in Sweden. Anders B went there as early as Tuesday and I went back and forth on Friday. But we managed to record some stuff anyway. On Monday we continued tracking the guitar. As mentioned above, Anders B had to finish his guitars as fast as possible due to the Hultsfredtrip so we scheduled two sessions with him and one with André in the middle. So Anders managed to track all his songs plus a solo on Mo...

Posted: June 19 2006, 01:14:29 Read the whole entry

Week one - from six-six-six to six-six-strings

Studio diary 2006 The recording of our first album "The Contaminated Void" begun on the unholy day of June 6, 2006 (06/06/06), which also happened to be the Swedish National Day. A good day to start some Swedish death metal in other words. In all honest the recording sort of started the day before when Dan Swanö and I put up the mikes on the drumkit. This was not entirely easy as the soundcard in my recording equipment failed to deliever 16 recording possibilities at once. At the end of the miking session we ...

Posted: June 11 2006, 23:31:23 Read the whole entry