5 things you didn’t know about “Time Tears Down”

It was sometime between the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012, when we had enough songs finished, our first label deal and when we were finally ready to start working on our first full length, but yet untitled album. Like with the first self-titled demo, we didn’t have the budget to rent an expensive studio, so the plan was to do the whole thing in our home studios again.
In May / June that year most of the rhythm section had been recorded and there were some first discussions about how to name the album, so here’s No.1 on the list of things you probably didn’t know about “Time Tears Down”:

1. Time Tears Down should have been called “Back For War”

Initially, the idea was calling the album “Pulse of the Dead”. But we didn’t have any idea how to visualize that, so we decided to call the album “Back for War”. It just felt more appropriate for our band’s situation back then, since we had struggled with line-up changes and other problems at this time and after all that, we were finally ready to be “back for war” again. The new idea also gave us more options for the visual side of the album. Unfortunately, in August 2012 the movie “Expendables 2 – Back for War” was released and there were way too many similar elements (fire, explosions, war, color scheme) in the movie’s artwork – not to mention that it had the same title! So, to avoid any confusion or relation with the movie, the idea was dropped again and the backup option was brought back to the table: A track from the album called “Time Tears Down”.

2. The artwork of “Time Tears Down” is an evolution of the demo-debut artwork

After the search for a visual concept for “Time Tears Down” didn’t work too well at all, Benni had the idea to re-design the artwork of the self-titled demo debut. Since the artwork already had a clockwork to visualize the “Time” part of the title and most of the songs from the debut got re-recorded for “Time Tears Down” anyway, it suddenly felt just right. So the artwork for “Time Tears Down” basically was an evolution of the demo debut’s artwork.

By the way, the clock on the album shows 20:12 in the European time format, which stands for 20.12.2012 (2012-12-20, if you are from the US), the last day of the earth according to the Maya calendar, which predicted that the world would end on 2012-12-21. Obviously and thankfully, they got that wrong, haha.

3. Movie references in “Time Tears Down”

At the end of “Fire the Machines” and the beginning of “Back for War” you can hear some audio samples taken from the 1982 movie Blade Runner. The laughter at the end of “Fire the Machines” was taken from the movie as well as the high-pitched scream starting at 0:15 in “Back for War”. And, if you listen closely, you can hear the famous “Wilhelm scream” at 1:02 in “Fire the Machines”. By the way, the demo of “Function or Perish” contained an intro, taken from the movie “White Noise”, but it got removed on both, the demo debut and “Time Tears Down”. The version with the “white noise” intro was only released on the limited CD “Unreleashed Vol.1”.

4. 13 Tracks for 2013

To give “Time Tears Down” a relation to its release year, there was the idea to add a 13th instrumental track. The track was written and recorded by Kevin, but for some reasons didn’t end up on the album and the recording itself got lost. However, you can listen to a demo of the song right here:

Eventually “Deadlife” became the 13th track on “Time Tears Down” which was the first song ever written for Parasite Inc. The track was already recorded prior to the “Time Tears Down” recording sessions and was remixed and mastered together with the album.

5. Nothing spectacular happend during the recording?

Recording the self-titled debut was a bit of an anarchistic process with a lot of chaos and drinking involved. Recording “Time Tears Down”, however, was a rather dry and work focused process, but it doesn’t mean, that nothing silly happened. There was some goofing around with takes gone wrong and other silly recordings. Check it out:

“Pulse of the String Break”:

“Function or Polka”:

“Chaos at the Ending”:

“End of Melodies”:

Another funny fact:
The vocals were recorded in a flat close to a church. During the pre-recording-process the vocal recordings had to be interrupted every 14minutes because of the ringing church bell. It must have been a lucky coincidence that during the time of the final vocal recordings the church bell was off for maintenance.