Biography

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Chapter VII

Finally, coming back home, meant resting days. Well, sort of, I had started to write for what was becoming "Deliverance" and "Damnation". I was kinda jaded and didn't really feel like writing, didn't have any inspiration at all. I wanted to write heavy music, something heavier than we'd ever done, still I had all these great ( I thought) mellow parts and arrangements which I didn't want to go to waste. My best friend, Jonas of Katatonia, heard my moans..."What shall I do?" He's the one who came up with the idea of doing 2 albums...one heavier, one mellow. The idea wasn't brand new as our former label Candlelight, and Lee Barret had sown the seed after we did "Morningrise", although that idea was more based on doing a single, all mellow album. Not two albums.

Anyways, this was so exciting that I more or less decided that this is what we gonna do. I decided even before asking the rest of the band, that's how excited I was. When I eventually told them about these plans, all of them we're into the idea. When I told the label however, there was a little more talking involved to get them interested.

Basically I had to lie somewhat...saying that we could do this recording very soon, it won't cost more than a regular single album + it will be fantastic. We didn't even bother to negotiate the contract. These two albums count as one album in the contract, so we only got funds and advances for a single album. Are we crazy? Maybe stupid? Yes, I believe so, but we have a sincere devotion for music an for doing experiments, so money is never an issue.

Them "lies" I told actually came true eventually. We did record both albums during 7 weeks, which is what we spent on doing "Blackwater park". I had heaps of material already...I'd been writing for a long time at home. I got a lot of help from my new "toy", a Boss BR-8 digital studio. Well, studio....it's a 8 track thing I bought off Dan Swano. Anyways, if it wasn't for this device there probably wouldn't have been any more albums at all.

With this I could record all ideas as I got them instead of compiling material in my head and then record the stuff at friends houses, friends who had the means to help me out.In the end I had about 2 full Cd's worth of demo material which I copied to the rest of the guys in the band. Rehearsals? Only one this time. We had one rehearsal for 2 albums worth of material. Insane! Unlikely as it might seem, it keeps the material interesting to us, and that is of great importance for the band. Looking back, I obviously think that we'd be saving a lot of time and troubles had we done a few more rehearsals, but this is how we work nowadays, and it's, although it sounds weird, convenient.

I had booked Nacksving studios for the recording, Fredrik Nordstrom was supposed to help us out, but we'd been arguing over his fee (this is so ironic in retrospect) that we'd decided we can make it without him. There's a guy working in Nacksving, so he probably knows everything we don't. Steven Wilson was also booked to come up and help us with the production. So far, so good.

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