Mastering day

On the 28th of November morning I headed to audio mastering studio of Chartmakers in the center of Helsinki. As usual, I arrived too early and as it was horribly cold and windy morning spent almost one hour reading music magazines in a local library. The librarian was a nice person as he played Jethro Tull as a quiet background music(!).

At 10 o'clock I stepped in to the (always) friendly and cosy atmosphere of the studio. Stibe was already there and Jartsa and Teemal joined us later on. Svante Forsbäck came soon and said apologies because we had to wait few minutes before he had finished one earlier Rammstein-related work (cool!).

Svante has mastered our two first albums too and he knew soon what to do with the mix we brought. Most of the work done by masterers is like magic - something is done and miracles happen while an average band player does not have any kind of idea what's happening.

In the final mix of Dark Half Rising, Svante had to do some work with low frequencies which were a bit unbalanced. It was also nice to hear that the most spikiest parts in the frequencies vanished.

The session was ready just before 4 p.m. Next: The files will go to Massacre Records who will start the work with the production and promotion.

Harri

Pea Island photo session

On last Saturday afternoon we had a photo session for 'Dark Half Rising'. The dark half had risen indeed, it's November and during this time of year Helsinki is sinking to dark which is darker than darkness.

Before the actual session we gathered at Jartsa's home, where our talented make-up artists Kirsi-Marja and Riikka (thanks girls!) had a tough job putting us make-up. See, some guys at Unshine need a lot of pink powder before they can be brought in to light. Nice session took some time and we killed time by watching Rammstein DVD and having one or two glasses of cardbox red wine. The make-up girls told us not to drink too much of it, as the heat generated by alc..something turns cheeks red and we definitely did not want to look like Snow White and 4 giant red-nose dwarfs.

After two hours we took a taxi to Hernesaari (free translation: Pea island), where photo studio of Valtteri Hirvonen was waiting. The place is quite odd, it's otherwise quite quiet harbour area, but it has also pier for cruiser ships to Estonia & Russia. The big boats shined on the other side of the bay. It was pretty atmospheric.

Valtteri was the man who took also the band photos for our last album, so he knew what to expect. The photo session went very smoothly, Valtteri is a real professional and the whole shooting went very efficiently thanks to him plus again to Kirsi-Marja who took care of the make-up etc.

Check out our FB and Flickr pages for the pictures, the actual studio pics will be naturally released as the album comes out. Cheers!

The third album studio diary Part VI, Finalising chapter: The end of 2011 - November 2012

A lot of time has gone since the last update and lot of things have happened.

Thanks for the patience for those who follow this blog.

The album recordings have been finished and the tracks have been mixed during several sessions.

So, in the end of 2011 we had a raw material version of the album.

Next thing was that we took some breath and then started contacting agencies in Europe. Soon, in the beginning of this year we inked a promotion and a booking deal with Armada Agency from the Netherlands.

The album cover art work was started and finalised during spring and summer.

By the summer of this year we had actually received a couple of record deal offers from several companies.

During August 2012, we heard that we are going to get a deal from Massacre Records (from Germany).

The deal was sealed on the 7th of September 2012.

'Dark Half Rising' will be released during February 2013.

Before the release, there are a couple of things to do: First, we will have to master the album. Second, the album art has to be finished. Third, We need new promo pictures.

You will soon hear about all listed above.