Red Alert - Hell March

Here's a Auringon Hauta - Veden Loihtu, song is from Muinaisia Muisteloita album. It has been a long time since I played these songs, it was a total blast to play this stuff, first time in years... Enjoy!

Ok, this one's a practice run... I don't remember all the transitions yet and the fast blastbeat part is a hard one to tame, specially on hi-hat. There's million and one mistakes, anyway, keep in mind, this ain't a 'official' cover, just a rehearsal. Said that twice, I hope its understood. I'll be making a better version in near future. Enjoy.

New vid is up!

RIP oderus urungus

One more Auringon Hauta song. This songs lyrics are actually a spell, the birth words of beer. Cheers!

More Antabus, drums only, the song's called Symphatetic Murder.

A new Auringon Hauta song is out and the albums release date is confirmed! Its on midsummer! The date couldn't be bettter as the album is themed about Midsummers celebration.

A little update is due I guess... I'll be off the net next week, we're starting to record the second studio demo with Antabus. I've been updating my drumgear for it, I just bought a Paiste 3000 series 20" crash, needed to widen the tonal range of my accent cymbals and I was lacking a BIG rock crash cymbal. I got lucky I found it. Its in near perfect shape and its the first 3000's on the market, from year 1986.

Its going to be really cool recording session, as there are going to be few 'first time' things happening. Its the first time (ever??) I'm going to be using my own drumgear ONLY, the stuff I got in use is starting to be all prefessional quality stuff. Secondly, we're going to use two bassdrums, no double pedals. And this is also the first time we're using room mics, quite a few of them actually. Now that I have the big rehearsal room (63 square meters), we can get some nice feeling of space by micing the room also. That's a good old fashioned way to make drums sound huge.

On top of that the songs were recording top the old stuff in style and variation, there's more complex stuff coming up and I think we're starting to find our own sound, which is nice. We haven't really tried to hide our influences, there's a lot of stuff which sounds like Megadeth, Annihilator and Stone and so on... But the new songs sound familiar and yet like us, that's cool. I never intended Antabus to be really original sounding band, but our fine guitarists are just making riffs which are not like any band I've heard before. Still at the same time, the new songs are clearly defined 1980's thrash metal.

We're also going to document the recording somehow, probably we will release some 'making of' videos, which I will naturally upload to youtube and link over here also. I wish we'll make some fun stuff to watch, something that could keep up the interest of other people too, not just metal heads.

Oh yea, here's some videolinks I've forgot to add here before:

Some really good stuff in there Hex, I'm impressed, I really enjoyed Hit The Lights and Whiplash, gets the blood pumpin'

I do have one rather strong criticism though if you don't mind. You haven't covered Master of Puppets. WHY ON EARTH NOT?!?

Thank you!

Master Of Puppets.. Now that's not so easy song to play, the arrangements of that song (and album!) are somewhat weird and progressive, I've never actually tried to learn anything from the puppets album, our guitarist played the title song and Damage inc. all the time though...

Maybe I should learn it then and make a video of it or something.

It's great to see your vid's, Hex. Loving your passion.

Wait until you see the 'making of' videos... Those can end up being quite funny, the reality of music making is far from glamorous.

Its been a good while since I updated this thread. I have been really busy with drumming, its been a while since I practiced so much in a short time. Got to get it roll easy for the gigs.

Speaking of which, it seems that we might be getting more gigs in near future. Three nights are booked, there's talk about three more. And not just around here, in other towns too. We're thinking of trying to get something from west also as we've got some friends there. I think its about time to push the band on the next level, get more and bigger gigs and more visibility. Our performance and the music itself I'm quite satisfied with at the moment, it would just be nice people knew about us. Getting more gigs would work wonders on this. Besides I'm tired of playing in the same local venues time and again.

I'm also going to do a real facelift for my drumkit. For years I've thought it would be really nice to buy/build a completely custom drums and now I'm gonna make that happen. I'm in talks with certain Finnish drum builder guy who also sells drum parts, including different kinds of shells. All I'm missing is some cash. I'm planning to make kind of bit unique old school heavy metal kit, shallow big bass drums, six deep power toms and so on. I think I might do a mirror chrome finish, it doesn't get much more flashier than that and chrome is very rare finish around here. (Its far more popular in US afaik.) Its also a good looks for MANY musicians absolutely hate it. The point is that I want my drums to sound and look like something that people WILL react on, no matter if its positive or negative.

Then next thing I'm planning to change all the not so fancy hardware, mainly cymbal stands into something sturdier. And what not, lot of little changes are on the way. The point is that I want to get my drums in such a good shape I can play with the same gear for decades to come if I want to.

Oh yes, I got new drumming videos coming up too, I think I mentioned it somewhere. Next one is going to be a collaboration with a drummer friend of mine who will come cover the vocals. Its the Pantera song we're making.

Some project that, Hex! Would this be a case of like doing all the shells in one go or little by little, drum by drum? It's surely going to take some getting used to isn't it?

dubmeup wrote:
I'm going to do it all in one go.... Its the easiest way, save money, get the shells, wrap, laquer and so on and then drill all the holes for the hardware, laquer the insides, wrap the outsides and assemble the whole kit. I've done that before to the drums I currently use so I'm familiar with this stuff already. It will just take time for me to save the money for it. The whole thing will cost me something between 1000€ to 2000€ approximately, the first thing is to buy the shells and try to find few pieces of Yamaha 7000 series hardware I'm still missing.

Its a big project, but its not more expensive than buying a used pro level drums and I can then have them in custom sizes. For example, Yamaha 7000 series toms were never produced in square sizes... My plan is to get the benefit of Yamaha's awesomely good hardware, warm sound of the maple shells and the sizes I want. And also I can make a unique finish. Yamaha did produce drums with chrome wrap back in the day, but the insides were always just plain wood, I'm planning to have a semi transparent laquer with piano gloss on the insides which not only looks damn cool but it also changes the sound.

Glossy laquer behaves like inner ply of some really hard wood like birch or bubinga and that will boost the high end frequencies which translates into stronger projection. Clear attack and lot of projection is very good to have for rock and heavy metal, it makes the drums more audible when played acoustically. There's always the battle between my acoustic drums and guitar half stacks.... When playing live its not that significant as the drums are amplified anyway. My plan is to make maple shells sound bit more like birch shells would, I'm trying to get the best of both worlds so to speak.

That sounds like it's going to be pretty special! A lot of work but so worthy. I'd love to build myself a guitar but i doubt it will ever happen. Go you! Building your own one off instrument(s), now that's being 'into it'

Thanks.

Building a guitar takes quite a lot of effort, its way more complicated than drums or some traditional instruments. Depending on if its made from scratch or if some parts are readily made.

Building my own drums with my specs is probably the cheapest way of getting exactly the kind of instruments I want. Finding old drums with those specs would take a lot of time and money and custom ordering new drums is completely out of question as that costs way too much. And then there's nice side of being able to combine new drums with vintage hardware. It'll have other drummers wondering what the heck are these things. Those who know vintage Yamaha drums will instantly know the hardware is from old 7000 series but the sizes are something else.

Last weeks have been so damn busy its hard to keep track on things.... I have been practicing a lot, last Friday we played one of our best shows ever. Small crowd, but damn they loved us! We also met with members of a local thrash metal band who are quite popular in the underground scene, we'll be playing with them in January. Top bunch, really cool kids. They treated me with such a respect I didn't anticipate, their drummer pulled me backstage right after our gig to have a chat, he tried to buy off my snaredrum and what not. He was so excited to hear that he'll be playing with my drums on our next gig.

Speaking of which, my plans about that one changed all of a sudden. An unexpected strike of good luck. I found out that somebody's selling 1988 Yamaha Tour Custom kit in mirror chrome finish! The drums are "turbo" sizes, the biggest, most badass 80's drums you can imagine. Those toms are all square sizes and the bassdrum is whopping 24"x18"! Bassdrum and four toms and some tom arms, only 500€. Old Tour Customs are typically quite cheap for a professional line drums these days, but five hundred is VERY cheap. I saw this same kit for sale several months ago for 750€. I guess the guy selling them got bored in trying to get rid of them and lowered the price. So screw with the custom kit, (for now) as these drums are exactly what I was going to put together anyway. As a cherry on the cake I just made a deal of a 18"x16" floor tom of the same line... All I'm missing now is two smallest toms and another bassdrum. I'm watching ebay too, these things show up from time to time in US and Germany.

To add into the weirdness, 8000 Tour Custom drums were the second option I was already thinking about and I never expected to find a kit which already has the mirror chrome finish. These drums were never manufactured like that. My plan is to build a drumkit so good that its enough for any venue out there. I'm already halfway into having a professional drums, next step is to update some pieces of hardware and get road cases and few mics.

Did I mention that I'm in talks with two other Finnish thrash metal bands about a possible tour together? I know our group alone cannot do that, there's a logistics and management problem, but if we team up with one or two other bands, its whole another situation. It would be perfect arrangement with the bands in question, one group has a PA system, the other seems to have pretty good contacts as they've played way bigger shows than we have. The rest of the gear will not be a problem, we've got drums and some good amps, there's definitely enough guitar equipment and what not. Actually both of these bands have had bigger, better gigs, the other band recently did a short tour in eastern Europe.

I got a feeling that something might come out of this.

Oh yea, check out my new drumkit. Pretty neat, isn't it?

Just a quick update on my music stuff... I'm doing nicely on updating my drumsf, lot of new (vintage mostly) hardware etc. I'm also finally making my custom snare drum, I'll post some pictures and stuff later. And then the cherry on the cake, I'm negotiating with a German drumstick producer about a possible endorsement/business partnership/promotion deal type of thing.

No specifics yet, I just contacted them about ordering drumstick from them through "the backdoor" as I wouldn't want to use their in German only webshop for obvious reasons. I also mentioned that I would be interested in promoting their products in Finland as I know quite a lot of people in Finnish underground metal scene. The catch here is that they don't have promotion/distribution in Finland yet and they're planning to widen their markets to other countries. This might end up into a mutually beneficial deal, for me it would probably mean fairly priced drumsticks and for them, new customers.

This is really really awesome if it'll work out! I never thought there would be a change for me to get in business with some drum gear manufacturer. Apparently I poked my leg between the right door. Fingers crossed that this turns up into something good.