5 things you probably didn’t know about “Dead And Alive”
Hi everyone, Kai here. A little over 4 years ago we released our second full length record “Dead And Alive” and while we somehow didn’t collect a lot of “making of” stuff during the recording process, there are still some unreleased snippets which we can share with you guys
1. Gang and shouts
After our last show in 2017 we had a spontaneous gang-vocal-recording at the rehearsal room of our friends in Soulbound. Part of the session were members of the bands Soulbound, Bloodspot, All Will Know and Burden of Life. The guys from Bloodspot did the chorus-shouts for “This World” and later the rest of the guys did the backings for “Dead and Alive”. Here’s a short video of the recording process:
2. Vocal recordings
Back in 2017 the main vocals were recorded in our former bassist’s studio that he was building into an old, abandoned barn in a forest near our hometown. Because of its location there were no fortified roads nor streetlights and at the time of the vocal recordings even the barn itself didn’t have lights itself. Most of the vocal recordings happened at late night so it was always a kind of an eerie feeling to make the way through the forest and do the vocal recordings in a barn in the middle of nowhere. Here’s a short clip from the vocal recordings of “Red Wine Collider”:
3. Empty Streets and Alive
Here’s a little secret that was never revealed in any interview before: During the writing process of a possible title track for the yet unnamed album, there was some back andforth between an initial idea to call that song “Dead but Alive” or maybe something like “Empty Streets”. But after doing some research it turned out that there already was a song called “Empty Streets” from another band called “Scandroid” – I guess you can imagine where this is going to from here …“Dead but Alive” later turned into “Dead and Alive” and “Empty Streets” became our first officially recorded cover song. A remain of that process can be heard in the first verse of the lyrics where it goes like “and I’m out, straining through these empty nights alone”. The line was originally written as “and I’m out, straining through these empty streets alone”
4. POV Rollercoaster
Once the album was done it was decided that “Headfuck Rollercoaster” should become the first singlefor the release of “Dead and Alive”. To safe some time and work, our label offered us to hire a guy who should take care about a lyric video for the song. However, the first preview of his vision (containing flying sperm and random images – he obviously didn’t get the lyrics!) was not exactly what we were looking for. But see for yourself in this unreleased preview:
5. Mixing the album
The final mixing of “Dead and Alive” was done at Benjamin’s newly built basement studio. After “Time Tears Down” was mixed in a bedroom (which could be best described as “a mixing engineer’s worstnightmare”), Benjamin built a great sounding room into his basement that made things a lot easier forus… and there even were cookies
