Recording in DAN SWANO's Unisound Studio – Interview mit HUMANGLED's Andrew Goreds

Part One of this interview can be found here.

Maybe you can name a few italian magazines, media or other bands that you are befriended with..but keep it to the Brutal side please.

We have a good pool of magazines in Italy which are dedicated to Metal, with all and none of this we have preferencial contacts so it’s hard for me to recommend any, really, but I think that the only focused on brutal stuff is Grind Zone.

I just want to name the other bands of our bass player and drummer: Zora and Symbolyc. These 2 truly kick asses in the brutal way !!! Quite different from Humangled stuff but I do appreciate their heavyness and wall of sounds, that’s not a secondary reason for why we contact these guys to have a terrifying rhytmic session for our riffs, but more than all for the fact that they are fantastic persons at 360°.

Humangled - Refoetalize

How well is extreme italian music recieved worldwide, I think there’s a lot going on with such cool brutal bands as FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE and HOUR OF PENANCE?

I am aware that certainly Italian metal scene is not well known for extreme stuff, but mainly for power metal, or Lacuna Coil nowadays. In extreme metal there’s still a big gap between italian bands quality and number of listeners worldwide, and I am glad to see that some bands – like ours – are starting to gain attention from foreign labels that have an ear open on what is going on.

And they really should, since Italian Brutal stuff rules! Are you planning to tour “Goremany” this year?

Goremany… Hately… Swuiciden… we should rename all Europe states like that, no ?

Yes, we should, def.

About the “tours” it all depends on how we are going to grow in the coming months, certainly it will depend also from the label situation as we are now “in the talks”. Still a little bit premature but in our minds and projects certainly.

Then keep me posted guys! OK, as for your upcoming output “Fractal” I heard you recorded at Dan Swano‘s famous Unisound Studio. Please tell me how did the recording go?

Well, Unisound is not a typical studio. Let’s say that hardly you will be going to record something of your music there unless Dan Swano is part of your band !! It’s a bit like a “sancta sanctorum” place where he mixes and masters the other bands music in total respect of their will. This is a quite rare thing I believe. We got to know each other personally in Orebro/Sweden and stay in the studio to discuss about our sound objectives for the record mixing session. It was quite surprising for us to see that our basic guitar sound settings were “saved as…” by Dan himself guess, they were already some good even if not like on the CD.

Do you remember any of the miking techniques or technical details?

As for as the technical aspect of Dan’s work I enjoy the fact that he has a total knowledge of Analog and Digital stuff, being working in music since his teen years and having mixed and partecipated to more than 200 records. Therefore, explaining to him the kind of sounds, and effects, we wanted to achieve, starting from our direct recordings… everything turned out more easy than re-record everything in his studio.

Which amping did you use, did you use Re-Amping? How much of the drum was triggered? Please tell any stories from the Studio…

We recorded direct input from our guitars with x2n and then treated in studio according to our personal taste. The drum was recorded with Ddrums, without edits as we wanted some natural appeal for “Fractal”.

It is incredible to look how fast Dan can control all the sound environment with his pro clicks on Cubase 5. While we were talking he was already “sound processing” in his mind I believe; from our side we gave precise descriptions of what we wanted to achieve, and here we are.

Humangled

What Vocal-Miking-Technique was used?

I would shortly say: a Shure SM58 + antipop shield + my mouth 10 centimeters far from the mic., no other reverb or FX.

In LIVE, when changing vocal styles during a song, I think that is necessary to adapt the distance from scream (far) to growls (near).

What about Dan, is he cool for recording? Do you want to tell us how expensive the recording was?

Dan is not only a hero but also a very clear talking guy, I’ll never tell you a promise or a word that cannot fulfill with or fix the situation. The recording costed exactly as per the prices he displays on his website, you can calculate with the timing.

You got anything to say on Digital vs. Analog?

Yes, our band’s choice is for Digital. Total control of your sound, and you can even emulate “dirtyness” of analog sound. Pieces of hardware worth thousands of Euros are now perfectly replicated by suites like UAD, with no loss of quality.

OK, as some people might discuss the meaning of “perfect” in that case, I’ll keep it short, he he…So, when will the Album “Fractal” be released in Europe?

We are still defining for the label but I hope within the first half of this year our debut will land.

Then good luck to you! Any last words, wishes…

BrutalSounds has a very innovative approach for a metal blog, covering the technical aspect of Brutal Death Metal that is the mostly unknown part of this genre of music; being a difficult goal, like tabbing Origin’s guitars, I wish you all the best to gain a good follow and make the genre spread like a virus.

Thank you very much, and I’ll try tabbing those ORIGIN-Tabs hehe…OK thank you for answering my questions, and again all the best to you and HUMANGLED!

Thanks for your support and luck for your work and projects as well. STAY BRUTAL and keep supporting real music !

Be sure, we will.