This week we will finish the new Urkraft album – A Scornful Death – and the biggest most important details was turned and twisted during this weekend we just went through. Most of the vocal is done and you people should expect some old school deep-throat metal grawls on this album. Thomas is spitting blood and passing out once in a while behind the mic., with some overall idea about making this album vocally as aggressive as the beats and the blasts and mixing all kind of bullshit from his everyday life into the process. That leaves some noticeable marks and even though he was 2 seconds from flipping the whole thing the bird, due to stress, personal issues and sickness, the situation is now turned 180.

The result is deep, dark and violent vocal works with somewhat of a new touch on top of it. On the pre-production for this album Thomas tried out some deep shouts and some new throat techniques, which now is used as dubbing for the grawl. Goes right in the panties.

The title track is now also featuring a second vocalist. Mads Haarloev (Iniquity, Strangler) joined us in the rehearsal Saturday morning and him and Thomas recorded some pretty serious duo shit. For those of you who remember Iniquity would probably agree that the vocal works was the most deep and aggressive in Danish metal ever and afterwards Mads has been working with some new music in “Strangler”. The vocal works on that music is very suitable with the new Urkraft music, so what’s more natural than to phone him up, shop for some alcohol and hook up in the rehearsal. We also ended up getting good and respectfully drunk later that Saturday night at Thomas´ new place, with some good results on the recordings.

  Also you can look forward to some choir done by Mads and Thomas on another track, which is an all new idea, but will probably be one hell of a ride once it is mixed and mastered.   

This coming weekend is all about correcting the last few details, run through the tracks and send it off to the Antfarm Studios. And so; its time for the Danish Dynamite Tour 2008, starting out on Wednesday the 30^th.

  This will be the last blog on our recording process of the new album. Let’s hope we get it out on the streets one day, so you people get a chance to disrespect Urkraft anno 2008.

Another update from the Urkraft camp where stress, metal – nightmares and headaches goes hand in hand with the recording process so far. Does anyone read this shit anyway? We are turning the nods on the last few details at the moment and have finished all bass lines, as well as some rather weird but smooth guitar leads. Birk has been working enormously hard the last week and been fucking up his fingers badly, but the end result is really amazing and / but not the usually Urkraft material. There are some very catchy and floating elements in the whole lead section on this album, due to the chaotic parts we have worked really hard with on this album and Birk has managed to compliment those sections with some pretty fantastic melodies and soli. It all starts to take shape and the tracks become very personal and individual now. This album is divided into various genres and each track has its own unique touch to it.  How difficult is it not always when trying to explain the music that we make and to give you people an idea of the results. We definitely hope this album will hit the streets some day, simply so you can check it out yourselves.  On top of the recordings we are working together with Kræn Meier (Sacrificial, Iniquity), who will be our stand-in bassist for the future. So far he is doing amazingly good getting ready for the Danish Dynamite Tour with Illdisposed and The Burning, and even though this is extra pressure on our work and time, we have never doubted his skills and it will be one hell of a tour with him on board.  Occasionally we have had an old friend of ours on visit who has been listening in on some of the material and now have recorded some seriously cool keyboard elements. As earlier mentioned we will not use keyboard on this album as we used to, but upgrade a few parts with some synchs and since we don’t like samples or computerized music in our music, we are happy that Tommy was willing to fill in with his musical abilities. This guy is seriously talented. We played a piece for him – no  longer than 30 seconds, which we think should just be hammered to the skies with some extra touch, and he provided some pure epic movie shit all over it. Think some of you people will find this specific part emotionally – but definitely without being emo… hahaha!!! No shit – the whole key-part is made to accompany the drum parts. Mikael (drummer) has made a part where he builds up the one middlepiece with slow and fast grind and some excellent technical stuff and it ends almost exploding and so Tommy has used this chaos to build up the keyboard part. Sounds great. 

The next days are vocals… Not much to write about yet. Probably won’t. Only this time it will all be old school grawl and some shouts – that’s it.  No screaming!

The music is coming on strong at the moment as we get the new material down on tape. Several plecters have been sawed down to nothing as the aggressiveness and frustrations are opened up for through the guitar and into the Mac…  The tracks are taking shape as we have now recorded all the basic guitars and we will move on to the more detailed part of the tracks this week. We have this time tried a new guitar amp, (thank you Aage Jensen) from “Engl”… to accompany our own Marshall 9200s. It leaves a lot more bass and filling to the riffing, even though it is more difficult to control due to its more imprecise attack in the sound – its muddier… But goes well with our intentions of doing a dirtier album with more noise and an album that is more organic in the over-all sound.  

The fact that we are trying out a new way of recording this time, where we are not placed in a studio from day x to day x, makes the process a lot more cozy, but the fact that we are not away (from our everyday life), also means that a lot of other stressful factors is circulating your head all the time… Also why we are getting more and more exited to start touring – especially this time, since it is an all Danish bands tour and that we will play some of our new material and make you people sweat, but mainly because we need to get out of the rehearsal and out of little DK…

We are finished with almost all fillings regarding guitar melodies and “effects”. We actually decided during the work with details to record some overlays which probably would be made with keyboard, but now is done by being creative on the guitar. We can now do it live in concert, which of course have been a big issue during these details. And of course when you record the way we do this album, new ideas come up and as earlier mentioned some tracks where not entirely finished, so the guitar details have been a big extra time element. But it is all very successful and we are very satisfied with the results. The new material is so much stronger than we first realized and it will be such a boner to hear the final master when Tue Madsen has mixed and mastered it.  Check out the small guitar movie clips… More to come. Solo´s and shit are still not recorded.    

“A Scornful Death” is the working title for this new 3^rd Urkraft album… You know what Scornful means…? (The last time we had some difficulties telling people what “Aberration” means…) “Scornful” means contemptuous, disdainful, derisive and if that doesn’t help you can try with “mocking” or “disrespectful” … A word or act you stumble upon everyday…. We have established a studio in our rehearsal for tracking guitars and bass and so far put down half of the guitar tracks. In company of coffee, plenty of beer and junk Birk and Thomas have been locked away in this fully red dressed concrete room without windows for a few days. The process is actually pretty smooth going and the creative level is somewhat not as painful as expected. The reason is again that some tracks, even though they have a start and a beginning, are not finished and this recording session is based on making the music go with the drum tracks, even though some parts were not entirely done. But it works and the process is rather interesting and goes along fine with the whole idea about creating an album as we sit down in front of the Mac. That meaning finishing the last details and maybe correct or totally change riffings here and there. We seem to fully control this situation…  As always it is great to hear the tunes recorded and with a little better sound as when we are rehearsing. We will upload some video clip of some guitar takes as soon as we can… There’s a long way to go…

You might be interested in knowing who will produce our new album.This weekend Tue Madsen, our producer on the last 2 albums and a guarantee for good sounding metal albums, came in with the last train in Copenhagen and was ready for starting recordings early morning the next day. Normally we have traveled with all our gear to Aarhus, to the Antfarm Studios, but this time Tue came to Copenhagen and we have been able to lend the studio of Anders Lundemark (Konkhra). It’s an all new, really nice studio right on top of our rehearsal.    Well early morning is not exactly true, since none of us are really keen on getting up too early. The plan was that Mikael (drums) should have aprox. 3 days to lay down all tracks and on top have the opportunity to correct or change eventual stuff that we were still in doubt about. Some of the new tracks we haven’t even really rehearsed as a band yet and 2 tracks are only 85% done… and again only played individually by Mikael and Birk. Its strong coffee to swallow, when the time is suddenly there to begin recording, but we have not been preparing this album as much as our two other albums – and that is 100% planned. It is time for everything to change… No rules, no “this is what we usually do”, no detail bullshit and no regrets… Absolutely no regrets! We are convinced that this album will feature the most aggressive and dark death metal yet to come from Urkraft.  The rest of us was convinced already after the first few tracks, since Mikael really had it in him and without too much pain finished after almost 2 days. As already mentioned he has this time added some new cool elements to the music that is working out perfect with the whole “let this album be more aggressive, more noisy and more relaxed”… Relaxed means that we trust in what we do and are pretty much just relaxed about the recording process… Anyway – the 3 days went really smooth with Tue and we actually managed to start up the guitar tracking.   It is always a great pleasure to work with Tue Madsen. He certainly adds his portion of relaxation.         

Nothing has been decided yet about the build up of the album, but we can of course release a working title for the album and the track titles:
“A Scornful Death” (working title)
“The Power to Crucify”
“Intermezzo”
”Eternity’s Chamber”
”A Miracle Grotesque”
”The Murderer in All Men”
“Fed To Dogs”
“Ghost 08”
“Shrieking of the Mad”
“The Prophet & The Rose”