Denmark’s modern metallers MNEMIC have updated their studio diary with the following posts:

GUITARS – September 30th

“After a week of recording drums at the Antfarm studios, we moved back into our own studio. This week we are starting to record the guitars. For this process, we have tried out some heads and some different cabs. Apparently it was all in the cabs. We are using three different cabs - and one of them is the first Marshall cabinet I bought when I was 17 years old. We even tried Line 6 cabs, but they have this canned sound (yes, they sound like shit). Compared to the Marshall cabs, they didn’t stand a chance. Randall cabinets sounded pretty good too, but in the end we ended up using one Randall cabinet and two different Marshall cabs.

“Last year I had the opportunity to buy a 5150 Tubescreamer and I have never been more happy about an amp or sound. Guess what? We are also recording with it. Why not try to record with something that you actually can replicate live? As far as recording the amount of guitars, we are trying different combinations, all-in-all to make it sound more dynamic. This means instead of recording with the same amp for an entire song, we are combining three different heads for different parts in each song.

“The majority of the rhythm guitars are recorded by Rune [Stigart], who is doing a great job. First day, he nailed three songs and now it’s my turn to try and fuck things up. We'll keep you updated.”
BASS – October 5th

“Two years ago we actually got really tired of spending hours and hours in the rehearsal [studio] and made the smart move of investing in studio equipment for everyone in the band, and voila, everyone in the band works with ProTools. We are probably the last band on earth to have done this, but in the end, it makes the whole process easier, as we can work whenever and wherever we want.

“So happy we are all done with guitars for 15 songs. It’s been really heavy, heavy - as in sitting hours and hours recording to perfection, listening and being focused. Moving on to the bass parts, today we setup some of the new gear we got in from our friends at T.C. Electronic. We are trying to go different ways, as we’ve always recorded with Ampeg but now it’s time to try something else.

“We setup both the Ampeg stack along side T.C.’s RebelHead 450 bass amp for comparison, and came quickly to the conclusion that the RH450 had a much more raw but clear sound than the Ampeg. As all digital processor units are trying to emulate warm, tube-based amps and analog units in general, we must say the DSP took us by surprise in the RH450: it even has a build-in chromatic tuner - the knobs on the interface are the basic tone-controls that every amp has, but the cool thing about it is that they are also semi-parametric, in which its possible to change where the tone-controls grab your bass sound. Without kissing too much ass to our beloved sponsors, we are actually and honestly quite impressed by this piece of wonderful hardware that we are using for the Sons of The System.

“We have begun tracking the first song called ‘Climbing Towards Stars.’ Not much to say about it other than it’s mid-tempo, heavy, and all in F# more or less.. so yes, it’s heavy. Should Tomas [Cowan Koefoed, aka O’Beast] nail 15 songs in 2-3 days, he will definitely come out as a hero.”

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