Deliverance Session diary

Again, Steven did an amazing job producing the clean vocals and such. He only spent 10 days with us, but during those days we definitely did some great work. My favourite part, the mid section of "A fair judgement" is one of them Wilson-produced sections. Magic! And he also played a lot on both albums. For "Damnation" I had an idea to incorporate some vintage keyboards like mellotrons and electric pianos. The only keyboard thing I ever recorded is the intro to "April ethereal" so I don't really know how to play it, and the same goes with the rest of the band, so Steven played all the keys on both albums. He also did some backing vocals. It's a shame he's already in a band to say the least!

I did all the death vocals during 6 or 7 hours which is a new record for me. Lyrics? I had written them all in the studio. Pretty much dragging some ideas from my inner core. I was writing like a maniac for a couple of days and I was done with everything the night before we were supposed to start with the recording of the screams. As for the Steven produced clean vocals, I had written specific parts for those segments which I ended up using as a core for the lyrics, writing around whatever feeling I had on the cleanly sung part. Didn't matter if that was in the middle of the song. It had to be done this way. Guitar solos and leads was the last thing we did. Peter did his solos first and then I did mine. All of them improvised in the studio pretty much.

For the mix, we were kinda jaded about the question...who's gonna do it? Fredrik wanted to do it, but we and the company felt that we should try out somebody else. Not that it was really important to me who's doing it. I just wanted it to sound good. Besides, after all the music was there, it meant the songs were done thus my job was done. To be honest, I was so exhausted I didn't care about anything at that point. We eventually chose Andy Sneap, who's regarded as one of the best. That's basically why we chose him...I'd heard some of his work previously, but didn't really know anything about him apart from that he'd been in the band Sabbat, back in the days. Somebody said that he's one of the best, and I was like...well, him it is then, whatever...I was totally fucking sick with exhaustion. Me and Peter flew down to the UK and to Ripley where Sneap's studio is located, gave him the hard drive with the "Deliverance" album, and fucking passed out on the couch. I was sleeping, Peter checking "Hat trick" on the computer and Andy was working.

I'd told him how tired I was, and he went like..."Get some rest and let me take care of it." Exactly what I wanted to hear! And he did a great job! Only asking for our opinions at the very end of the mix, say on the 8th day out of 10 we got slightly more involved. Once it was time for the effects + when everything started to sound nice and heavy, I couldn't help but to be interested again.