Alex's thought on the North of Nowhere experience!
Hello all, this is Alex the drummer of XIII as Dan mentioned I can now babble on
about Drums and the whole recording experience!
Everything Dan said was spot on this whole experience to me has been very special
indeed learning to play with Click tracks to actually be in time
working together closely as a band and making everything that we wanted to come to
life with the songs.
Equipment used for recording of North of Nowhere.
I used a Mapex M Birch Drum kit along with Zildjian Cymbals & 1 Meinl effects cymbal.
10" x 6" Mapex Pro Series Snare Drum (Remo Ambassador Skin)
2x 22" x 18" Bass Drums ( with Remo Falam Slam pads on beater side for clicky tone)
10" x 8" Tom tom (Remo Pinstripe Skin)
12" x 9" Tom tom (Remo Pinstripe Skin)
13" x 10" Tom toom (Remo Pinstripe Skin)
16" x 16" Floor tom (Remo Pinstripe Skin)
Cymbals..
14" ZBT Hi Hats.
17" Z Custom Medium Crash.
19" Z Custom Projection Crash.
8" ZBT Splash.
10" Meinl Filter China.
21" Z3 Mega Bell Ride.
18" Oriental China Trash.
Drum Sound..
To be honest I really was aiming for my own personal sound I dont like to copy I
like to be original in all I do! a sound that was really capturing me at the time
was Trivium's Shogun, Bonded by Blood's Prototype Death Machine album and With chaos
in Her Wake's Treason album all of these sounded great as drum sounds
so I wanted a big mixutre not copying but sort of like that sound. I Chose Remo
Skins for the Warmth and great tone they give off, I use Zildjian Cymbals
because clearly and Obviously they are the best and give me all the playability and
volume i need. Mapex drums cos they to me are the best drums in the world!
Firstly, My drum parts were recorded along with Dan he came along to play along so
we could get tempo's of songs correct and get the right BPM clicks on the go
the 1st day consisted of alot of setting up getting the sounds right and most
importantly getting my self comfy with my kit and the environment around me which
creates a good mood and vibe for me. Micing for the Drums!
.Bass Drum, We had one bass drum mic in each bass Drum pointing directly to the
center of the beater hitter
.Tom tom/Floortom, were miced I think all Shure mics wre used!
.Snare, to give it that crack we had an Shure SM57 on the top and another shiny nice
silver mic on the bottom facing towards the center.
.Overheads, Very expensive Telefunken's were used for over heads. Trust me these
mics are amazing and picked up every cymbals clarity
couldnt of done a better job then what they did.
The Album Experience.
This is our 1st Debut proper album so basically this is one we had to get spot on I
feel I myself and the rest of the band have grown as musicians
and can finally write music properly kinda.. lol! Click tracks were a major part of
this for timing issues as you may have noticed at more recent gigs
tracks are no longer played in a fast sloppy mess they are played in time and
properly structured to give that effect of heavy! To me the songs sound
amazing at Album speed!. It was a special weekend to me tracking Drums and is
something I will always remember we had a very good laugh whilst recording which had
to be done obviously!
I really appreciate all the help and time that Gary Wainman, Simon Jacques & Paul
Brady are putting into us I am glad they have the vision we do!
Gary really got me that sound I have been looking for, for a very long time! I mean
he is spending most his days just mixing this thing over and over again now to get
it perfect.
Are we really Thrash!!??
Personally this whole genre thing we dont fit in with we have always and always will
play what ever the fuck we like!
you either like it or hate it we just hope you like it we all like different styles
of music and this is what i feel makes us so diverse and unique
because we don't just stick to writing one thing we want to be ORIGINAL!... NOT THE
SAME!...
Yeah on this album you are going to have your few thrash classics, in Trisk,
Eclipse, Breaking Point but al these songs have unique edges to them they aint just
fast they have
Heavy grinding verses, Breakdowns, and many interesting parts that if you listen out
for are very clever.
But we also have a ballad type song in Retribution which ends up been heavy as FUCK!
and Beaten Path which when we wrote was just like holy fuck this is cool!
Final Say...
I really really hope you all love this album and appreciate all the time we have put
into this when it does finally come out I know its been a long wait already and
there is still
some time but I can really promise you it's gonna be worth that wait! To all the
XIII fans we thank you so much for all your support so far as they say it is the
fans that have really got us the
notice and come to see us play were ever we are we really appreciate it.
Alex XIII Drums!
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