Sonntag, 3. Februar 2013

SCHEMEN






SCHEMEN

Schemen was the last song I wrote for this album. Initially it was meant to be the only testsong, and its main purpose was to serve as a crashtest-dummy to see how far we can get with our recording method. I was 'secretly' writing this song on my own and when it was done I showed it to the other guys and asked them if they are with me on the idea with the testrecordings and to use this song for it.

A few years back in time, I think it was 2009, I became quite fond of the Post-Rock genre with bands like Sigur Rós and through my activities in my other band Agrypnie which has quite a lot of 'post' influences in it. I started to really like this genre and always wanted to write epic songs like bands in this genre do.

So I had this old old acoustic piece I wrote for my old band, that doesn't exist anymore, which was written for 2 acoustic guitars and I fooled around with it after I stumbled upon the band 'Tides From Nebula' from Poland in 2012. I really liked the atmosphere and the dynamics the tunes of the acoustic piece had and I started to change everything. The acoustic guitars became electric guitars full of reverb and delay effects and I added some drums to it. One thing came to another and I kinda got my own style within it and it was done, I could finally reveal my idea with the rest from the guys of High Rise Fall.

So we rehearsed it and we figured out that it would be a huge waste if we don't release it somehow. All of us really liked the atmosphere of this song and we all thought that it would suit High Rise Fall's open-mindedness to have a song like this. I personally thought the song would be great as it was without any vocals in it but Gundi finally broke my stubborness and convinced me that lyrics and vocals would suit it well.

The lyrics of the more ambient feeling of this song are a scene description. They were popping up infront of Gundi's eye as he was listening to the song several times. The sound of the song reminded him very much of 'Silent Hill' with its dark and grey world. At the part where the guitars start with the bendings he thought it sounded like sirens. In 'Silent Hill'  the sirens announce the transformation of the cloudy grey world turning into hell. 'Schemen' means something like 'Silhouettes', it should describe the creatures that hide in the misty darkness of 'Silent Hill'.

High Rise Fall Anno 2013



HERE WE ARE!


Finally! Here we are! High Rise Fall Anno 2013! This is how we sound today! These are the results of our hard work and the time we put into these songs. As I said in the last post:

We were trying to create a reasonable sound which suits our music with our own know-how and our possibilities without paying any money for a studio or a producer or anything like that. Almost all on our own, with some connections we had. A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Martin of the JUZ Heusenstamm the youth center where we already played a few concerts with the old and the new line up. They lent us their recording interface for free! Again a BIG THANK YOU!
We all are really proud of ourselves how far we got, and I personally wouldn't have thought that our know-how developed this much that we can create a sound quality like that.

Sure you could argue that we could have an even cleaner and more polished sound, if we went to a studio, but we all in this band got this "Do-It-Yourself"-mentality and we are really satisfied with the reults!

Let us introduce you our songs:


FACE/OFF


and

SCHEMEN


(click on the names to get to the own segments of these songs)


FACE/OFF






FACE/OFF

Face/Off was the first song ever which we wrote together in the rehearsal room with all bandmembers attending the songwriting process, or at least the start of it. It was although the first song we would write after our 'Morbide Unterhaltungsmusik' album. 

Although we didn't finish writing the song in the rehearsal room, we all had our influences on the song, how the instrumentalists play their parts and so on. If I remember correctly, after 3 or 4 rehearsals more the music was done and it kicked off the songwriting process for the next songs for the upcoming album of ours. It also showed in which direction we were heading at that time, although we are quite openminded.

This song is quite important to us because it showed that, if we all work together we can write awesome songs, that pleases everyone in the band! It motivated me so much to write more songs for this band like never before. This pretty much IS High Rise Fall, how we sound, that we embrace not only black and death metal music but it hinted also to something more, to the fact that we don't want to write "just" metal music.

Lyrically, 'Face/Off' is about a collector who collects the most beautiful part of the human body. The face. The lyrics describe the whole collecting process from meeting the victim, hunting, preparing the amputation and the amputation itself. The name of the song plays around the movietitle 'Face/Off' . The lyrics aren't about the movie, but more about the getting-your-face-cut-off-part.

Samstag, 2. Februar 2013

"Screeching Sounds Coming Out Of The Depths From The Loung Pressed Out Via The Throat Of Demons" - aka Vocal Recording

REALLY WE'RE ALMOST DONE! TRUST ME!




We're getting REALLY close to the end of the recording process! Coming to the last bit, the recording of vocals, I cut a little video together again, that will show you (again) how we joke around instead of work.

So let's get this Blog started:

Sunday, 30th of December 2012



Dat 'stache!


I got picked up by Gundi early in the noon driving to the rehearsal room while listening to some The offspring to meet up with Jules....yeah I know we're trve!

We arrived, set up the computer, set up the interface, set up the mic's and voilá Gundi-san can start warming up! He wanted to get some reverb on his voice so he wouldn't hear just his dry voice. We wired up Gundis effect interface with the recording interface and of course we would fool around with it instead of starting to record!...geez that discipline! Soon Julian had left us because he had to do some other stuff and it was just Gundi and me from now on and we finally started to record for real this time.

So we tried around with some different vocal styles for the first song, and Gundi finally warmed up enough so yeah let's record that voice...or go eat something. We decided to eat some delicious döner kebap and got back to the rehearsal room and continue recording the vocals for the first song! We also changed around the lyrics until we were satisfied with them and I got to record some screams too and by doing that I crushed my voice for about 3-4 days...that's what happens if you don't use any technique and just scream around like an idiot.

The last vocal parts for the first song were finished and Gundis voice weakened a bit so we decided to stop right there and start the second song the next day.


Monday, 31st of December 2012



Trollface?
For the last day of the year 2012 I got picked up early in the morning, because we had not so much time that day because we were going to a new years party later that day. So we got to the rehearsal room early where everything was still set up from the day before and we started to record the second song...or do we? Gundis voice decided to troll us and got worse, he caught a cold and his voice was weakened so much that we had to improvise with the stuff like changing the position of the microphone so he could sing better and stuff but we were close to stop it right there and leave it be...but we wouldn't be cool if we couldn't find a way to make it work, right?

So I experimented with some delays and reverbs in cubase with the test recordings for the second song and I found a way we both were satisfied with, so we continued recording with those settings, and it sure does fit the song in our opinions!

We finished up, packed our stuff up, and drove home where we would have enough time to just change and take a shower (seperated of course :P) to get to the new years party...so yeah...Recordings are DONE! Finally!



That doesn't mean I'm done with it. Sometime after new year ( I can't remember exactly when ) I started mixing and mastering the two songs, which got changed a few more times until they sound like they do now. We're really happy with how far we got with the know how and possibilities we have to record songs on our own, without spending too much money for it.


We are going to release the songs on Sunday the 3rd of February at around 01:00 p.m. CET via this Blog, our Facebook page, our Youtube channel and our SoundCloud page!



We will write some narrations to the songs which you can read here on this blog, too!

You will hear from us!

Stay Tuned

Martin