On the Edge

April 30th, 2010

“Standing at the edge, stepping out and falling down.”

- Agrippa93: The Edge of Sanity

Alex and Will played with their other band Imperium Mortis at a show in Danbury, Connecticut last Thursday, which is our normally schedule practice time. Alex did some networking with the person running the gig, which will lead to us getting a show there in the near future. Danbury is quite a drive and far enough that most of our local fans in the Hartford area wont make the trip, however it will be a chance for farther exposure in that part of the state and more padding on our press kit.

I thought after 2 weeks of not rehearsing that we would be a complete mess, but it turns out that we were still pretty tight, with only a few slips here and there. The last time we played these songs was at the show at the Webster Underground on April 16th. We ran through our set list once and then started experimenting with some Black Sabbath including Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Paranoid, and Heaven and Hell. Heaven and Hell is a song I’ve been wanting to cover for years now and it would be a cool song to do live. We’re looking to include a cover song in our setlist, but haven’t pinned one down yet.

After a short break we revisited The Edge of Sanity, because our next focus would be to get a solid drum recording. When we were ready to record drums I set up not only the Simmons SD9K electronic drums channel in Logic Pro, but also 2 guitar tracks, a vocal, and a click track so that we can all be recorded at the same track. The additional 3 are called throw-away tracks because I’ll only be using these as guidelines for editing the drums. Eventually guitar, bass, and vocals will be recorded individually in a more controlled situation. Again, like the previous 3 songs (Forever Wasting Time, Among the Ruins, and Evocation [Transmutation]) the drum part that Alex plays is recording through the SD9K as MIDI and edited through the piano roll editor in Logic Pro. This allows for further control over velocity and placement of each drum hit later on.

After a few takes of Edge, we had time to get in a drum recording of City of Pyramids (Transmutation) using the same technique. There was a rough recording of Rich on bass playing the intro, which along with the click track served as a good guideline to begin the song. We’ve played this song enough in rehearsal and live that it only took one run through to get a solid drum recording. With both Edge and City done with drum recording, I’ll be spending the next working on getting these edited and aligned in preparation for the the other instruments.

The remainder of our time in the studio was spent rerecording some of Scotts leads for Pale Horse and doing the final listenings to the song for any last minute tweaking before its release on Monday. As it stands, Pale Horse is my favorite Agrippa93 song, however I always feel that way about the latest song we finish. We’ll be putting together a demo soon of our latest songs for distribution at shows and to WCCC and this song will be on it.

Our next show is coming up on June 5th and it’s the big one, as we will be opening for Fear Factory and Prong at the Webster Theater in Hartford, CT. We’ve been looking forward to this opportunity and see it as not only an honor to open for an awesome band like Fear Factory, but to win over some metal fans to our brand of Progressive Industrial Metal. Following that is our June 18th show at the Webster Underground with several other bands.