Deliverance Session diary

We re-miked the drum kit for the mellow album to make it sound more "old". Actually, that's one of the only "rays of light" I can remember from this recording. That we were 50% finished...pathetic!

During the first 4 weeks I had half a day off. The other guys we're in a little better position as they could go home after they'd done their part, but for me it was like I was in prison. And the technical problems were piling up.

Steven Wilson was coming over to help produce the vocals and some other stuff, and we could see just how bad everything would fuck up in this studio. There was no way we're paying for someone to help us when the equipment is not up to date. We had to move. I made some pleading phone calls to Fredrik and Fredman studios. "Can we come over, please?" Fredrik was kind enough to let us come over and use one of his mixing rooms for the remainder of the recording. And since the change of studios, things started to become better. I remember we were so fucking nervous when we were first listening to the tapes in Studio Fredman. I honestly thought that the tapes would be blank...nothing on em.

I was pleasantly surprised. Everything we'd recorded in Nacksving sounded alright. Messy, but alright. Steven came over and the recording process suddenly became more interesting. I was worried about the sound, and moreso about the songs themselves...was it good enough? I recognized this feeling from all the previous recordings, so I more or less dismissed it as a "usual" recording "sickness". And rightfully so, I believe.

All the drums, rhythm guitars, some acoustic guitars were there. It was time to record the bass, but we were under a lot of time pressure. Mendez only had 2 days to record 16 songs he'd never even heard fully and obviously never played before. Me and him sat up during 2 nights and just recorded everything. I remember the first night, around 07:00, we we're still working, but were so tired we were laughing like children. Laughing at everything.

Nothing probably remotely funny in a rested state, but back then, hysterically funny. It was almost like you'd been taking some fucking drug. We had to concentrate ourselves not to let anything pass as OK instead of great. But he made it...I'm kinda blown away by it today.