23 Jan 2015

The fourth of UNSHINE: Part 1



It's time for the new UNSHINE album.

The previous one, Dark Half Rising, the thematical record from the time of Gallic wars was our first international release and we experienced many new things with it. Thanks for the response. We were actually very satisfied especially with the work of Massacre Records, they made a huge effort to improve our visibility.

We have left the misty mountains of Ardennes now, the tribes there are living a new, much more peaceful and more stable period of life. Farmers are busy with their seasonal work, children are playing in the fields and the arch druid is interpreting the secrets of nature in a remote grove. Time of Caesar is over and the smoke of the bonefires is withering into the winds.

We are somewhere, in a nameless and a timeless landscape, between the worlds, observing nature's signs in the current season.

It's time to travel in the otherworld.

The song writing for the 4th UNSHINE album started during autumn 2013. It was all started literally from the scratch. I decided to write some riffs just off the top of my head - music that would pour out of stream of unconsiousness without any effort. Quite soon, the first song was built very quickly around the first riff that I had developed with my electric guitar. As a results of this new style of songwriting (to me), I noticed that these songs had an odd flavour of new type of gloominess in them. The first demos were very simple, but they were also pretty attractive and primitive, in some strange way. I felt that this was a very good start, it set a way how to do things this time.

Some of the songs were left in their very primal state and they are resting and waiting for the light of day (which may or may not come). Some of them got somehow dragged along during the year - I had an urge to return to them from time to time (a good sign!) and they gradually ended to the final demo stage.

By the end year 2014, I had finally around 25 songs more or less ready, which is most definitely, the highest amount of pre-produced songs in our history.

But as said, it all starts from here. When giving a new start, you have to throw all your prejudices and expectations into the fire and see what comes out of it.

Harri / UNSHINE