So here is the first official studio blog for the recording of the new God Forbid album. We entered Trax East studio in South River, NJ on Monday, March 3rd to begin tracking with our good friend and long time producer Eric Rachel. He’s been involved in most of our albums. He co-engineered and mixed Determination, co-produced and tracked Gone Forever, tracked the drums and bass and mixed Constitution of Treason, and recorded and mixed our live audio for our upcoming DVD. Needless to say, we feel very comfortable with Eric. He has great knowledge on how to get amazing tones, has a keen ear for tight performance, is always learning new and cutting edge recording techniques, and just brings good vibes to the studio which make a possibly stressful situation a lot more fun. He really doesn’t get as much credit as many other producers, and I think he should.

We are very comfortable at Trax East. It’s a 15 minute drive from my house, and it’s high quality and close proximity makes it very hard to go elsewhere. Many bands come from all over the country to record here. The first day is always lax. It’s sunny and nice out. We take it as a good omen. The first day is drum tone day. Corey shows up a few hours late with our friend Donnie and a rental van filled with his drums. I’m am peeved about his lateness, and Corey is annoyed that I am annoyed. These disagreements are common. Dallas and Byron are also there. We all help bring the drums inside and up the long stairway. Eric and his assistant Kyle help Corey set the drums up, tune drum heads, and place mics. They try something a bit different this time, and actually give each individual cymbal it’s own mic.

Later that day, I received an email that our DVD test copy was complete, so I decided to leave to studio to take a trip to Brooklyn to Dave Brodsky’s place to pick up a few copies for the band to check out and critique. I left everyone else to work on the drum tones. This is unlike me. Usually I am involved in every aspect of the recording, and my control freak tendencies can get the best of me. I’ve been trying to give everyone more freedom, and not try to sway every note. It can be hard for me sometimes, but trusting your team is important. I came back the next day, and the drums sounded great. I wasn’t totally sold on the snare drum sound, but that always changes with sampling.

On day 2, we began tracking drums. Before we would start a song, we would have to set and adjust the tempo maps. We record all of the songs to a click, and have done this on the previous 2 albums as well. There was some discussion about not doing the songs to a click because Dallas felt it might just be more natural and organic without, but Eric persisted that we record to a click for editing and tightness purposes. During pre-production, Corey had a little trouble adjusting to playing the songs to a click, and we had programmed the tempos way too slow for most of the songs. I don’t think that helped, but it was stressful because some of the songs didn’t sound totally right in pre-production. It was better to make these mistakes in the demos because at least we could analyze it and adjust when doing the actual album. The new tempos we set for the tracks were much more accurate and energetic like the songs were when we wrote and rehearsed them.

We were tracking songs at the pace of 2 per day. This might not seem like a lot, but the new songs are much longer than previous albums. The shortest song was just under 5 minutes, and the longest clocked in around 9 and ½. Here’s how the process would go: Corey would go through around 4-6 takes of a song, while Eric would take notes on what parts were played well, and parts that could be played better. Than they would listen to the best takes, pinpoint the substandard parts, and go back and punch these parts in. It’s just like the old school tape splicing they did like on A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica except we’re using pro tools instead of tape(And it’s a lot easier). The only song that seem to really kick Corey’s ass was this one that’s been tentatively titled “The Black Metal Song”. It has some Dimmu Borgir inspired melodies and riffage, but it also has the first ever GF blast beats. Having never played them before, I think it took some getting used to for Corey. The last couple days were his best playing days. He really nailed the last few tracks.

We were in the studio for 10 days for 2 weeks in a row with the weekend off like a 5 day work week. I was hoping to get all of the drums done in 5 -6 days, and begin to start getting guitar tones, and maybe get a song or 2 done. After stressing over this for a couple days by going all over 2 states collecting all of our guitar amps and cabinets, and needlessly renting another van, we didn’t even get to start guitars within that time frame. Either way, it made sense because we actually had a 2 week break before head back in the studio because Eric had to mix the new Aborted record. So it made more sense to wait until we went back to the studio fresh to do the guitars and bass straight through.

One highlight during the recording was being able to get out of the studio for a night to check out the All That Remains/Chimaira tour at the Starland Ballroom which is literally down the street from Trax East. It was nice to share some drinks with old friends, and enjoy a great show. That fucker was packed too! Congrats to both of those bands. We resume recording on March 31st, and pretty much are in the studio for the entire month of April. During this break, we are to try and work on more vocals for the album, and try to track some B-sides with our Pre-production engineer, Steve Lagudi. Expect another update first week of April. Peace.
Doc Coyle

Welcome to the Studio Diary of God Forbid.
You can read all about the proces of making God Forbid’s new album.

Hope you will enjoy it.
Best regards
Revolution-Music.dk