Every 14 months or so, we enter the studio to record 10 minutes of superior violent noise (quality before quantity, you fucking crust punk spammers!) and last weekend, it was time again. The big change this time was that we decided to try a new studio for the first time ever, leave Micke Mikrofon and his Garaget studio behind and try a different place. Fortunately, the legendary Tore Stjerna was able to squeeze us into the insanely busy schedule of his Necromorbus studio, where all them cool black metal people record their wheezy hits. Fully expecting a recording that sounded like A Blaze-era Darkthrone, we headed over to Alvik for a weekend that was to be marred by more than a little problems.

The last month before the recording, Indy's arms have been a major concern. They keep cramping up, making it impossible for him to hang on to the drum sticks, which is a problem when you're a drummer. His doctor has been advising him to quit drumming immediately to stop this from becoming a permanent problem but Indy decided to soldier on until the recording was done. Sooo... we headed over to the studio, started to set stuff up and didn't get hardly any of that boring crap where you have to fiddle with knobs for 5 hours prior to starting recording, we just set up, adjusted a few things and were ready to rock. We started to realize what a fucking ace Tore is.
The first songs went smooth, first takes all the way, like we normally do it, no problem there, but after about 3 or 4, Indy's arms started fucking up, cramping like crazy, forcing us to take longer and longer breaks in between songs and also making it a mortal sin for Ola and Norse to fuck things up as there was no way of telling how many takes Indy had in him. Things were getting kinda nervous. Then, with two songs left to go, Indy's frail little arms just gave up and died, there was no way to go on. Norse recorded some additional guitars and we called it a night, feeling worried, but hoping the arms would be ready for action the next day.

Saturday morning and Indy's arms were still fucked. Things were looking bad. To make things worse, Norses amp started making very weird noises and then his guitar fell apart. This band is a fucking disaster zone!
We patched things up and did the best we could. Intense focus and concentration and a lot of mental boosting/intimidation in Indy's direction and we actually managed to get the last two hits recorded. Wow. Now we were on a roll and the problems had been bested, right? Right. Sure.
After som additional guitar stuff, it was time for the dreaded vocals. Singing on a Massgrav recording is like puking red hot coal for five hours straight or something - we try to avoid it as long as possible but there was nothing else to do, so Norse started. At the end of the second track, his voice made a weird noise and he got real quiet. Ice cold hands of fear gripped the trembling hearts of Indy and Ola (pretentious much? fuck off, get your own band and you can write whatever the fuck you want) - this had happened once before and that time it took Norse two weeks to regain his voice. The thing with this recording was that there were no second chances. After us, the studio was booked for three weeks solid and then Tore was going back to Portugal where he lives - so if we didn't finish now, it would take forever 'til we got another chance. Things were not looking good.
We cracked open the beer and let Norse rest for a while, Ola recorded a bunch of vocals without a flaw (take a wild guess at who's writing this) and we went for pizza and more beer. And then, we miraculously rose on 9 and got our shit together. Norse started laying down vocals like nothing ever happened and the night ended on a happy and drunken note, and with everything recorded, we went to the pub to work out the track order and stuff, which never happened of course.

Sunday. Last day. Time to mix, trim, arrange, fix and - most importantly - cheat. This part of recording isn't that exciting to talk about, so let's just say we got all the crap in order, sounding like it should. Again, Tore proved to be a fantastic guy to work with - having good ideas, working super fast, telling funny stories... if you ever get the chance - record at Necromorbus!
Before adding our ever-present 'funny' samples, we went out for lunch/dinner with Tore and his poor girlfriend, who'd spent all weekend in the studio. She must have been bored out of her skull and sick to death of hearing us belt out our loser anthems but she kept a brave face. Well, she'd been there for a month once, during a Watain recording, so maybe this was a walk in the park for her.
Ok, time to finish up here and that's what we did on Sunday afternoon as well and... let's just say we're very happy with the way the new recording sounds, it's our best work ever (yeah, when did a band NOT say that about their latest recording, but still...).
Fuck off.

(Look for a brief video clip from the studio. On this page. Soon...)