Tuesday 27 May 2014

Farewell, Hell Hole

Winds of change are a-blowin' in the ECW camp. We're currently in the middle of moving out of our long time rehearsal space, lovingly dubbed Hell Hole. This was the place where the line-up came together, finally. This was the place where Ever Circling Wolves as you know us were born.

An ancient shot from early 2008, before Arttu, Otto and Niko joined.
This space, or rather a part of it, was first inhabited by my former band, Morg (who called it quits in 2010 or so), in the summer of 2007. Although Ever Circling Wolves basically already existed at that time, with me having recorded the demo ep, "Picturesque, Petrified" in the spring, it was with the acquisition of a better rehearsal space that my quest for an ECW line-up truly began. Late 2007 and most of 2008 saw lots of people try and find the motivation to learn to play my (in some people's opinion) obnoxiously slow and boring tunes. Then, along came Arttu, then Otto, then Niko, and suddenly we were an actual band.
Niko, Otto, Henri and Arttu, November 2008.
It was here that we honed the tracks that would become our first full-length album, "The Silence from Your Room". It was here that we practiced for our first live performances in the summer of 2009. And every time we practiced, someone was always hungover. And that was quite okay, hangover doom is great.
Setting up for practice, March 2009.
As you might remember, Arttu left the band in 2010. Arttu was replaced by Sami and at Hell Hole he made the decision to join the band after playing with us a couple of times. It was here he said after something like a couple of moths in the band that he still didn't have an idea about what my voice sounds like live, due to the shitty PA we had at the time. Anyway, with Sami on board, we hung out at Hell Hole honing new tracks and some old ones and in early 2011 out came "Chapter III" with one new track and one old track.
First pic with Sami, October 2010.
In April 2012, we began one monolith of a project: the recordings of our sophomore full-length album, "Of Woe", which is yet to be finished. The lion's share of the album was recorded at Hell Hole, with the exception of drums. We spent 20-ish long days spread over 2012 and 2013 in our homey basement tracking, tracking, tracking. The tracking bit is pretty much done now, thankfully, and we've taken a piece of Hell Hole with us, in those tracks. And so, when the album is finally finished, we'll be able to share Hell Hole with you.

-Henri

P.S. Here'e some shots from the recordings.
Laying down some guitars, July 2012.

And then some more guitars, August 2012.

And bass too, October 2012.

Testing vocals with GhettoBooth™, January 2013 – it worked, this is how we recorded the vocals!