Of Of Woe or: The conclusion of the behind the scenes series

Now it's time to wrap up this series of blog posts. We hope you've enjoyed reading these texts as much as we did writing them, and we also hope we can keep up the posting, not quite as often as lately, but every now and then, so that it won't be years between posts. But without further ado, the last two tracks on the album, the shortest and the longest.

Ibn Qirtaiba

Otto: The last song to be written for the album. I remember thinking that the closing track of the album, "These Are Ashes", began too abruptly – especially if it was following the delicate outro of Lenore, like we originally planned – so it needed a mellow, quiet introductory part of sorts. A short moment of peace and tranquility to catch up your breath before the final song.

This is a peaceful little piece composed really with nothing more than several overlapping guitar parts, followed by a few rumbling bass chords that serve as messengers of what's to come.

What I really enjoy in this little song is how naturally the first part flows despite being played in a slightly odd meter (one whole phrase lasts for a 15/4).

These Are Ashes, These Are Roots

Otto: Clocking at over 15 minutes, "These Are Ashes" is a real behemoth of a song. This song is truly a Frankenstein's monster, built piece by piece, sometimes picked apart, sometimes built again with the same pieces but in a completely different order. Although superficially it is a rather simple piece consisting of just parts 1a, 1b and 2 (the last one played entirely in 6/4), its structure is tremendously complicated beneath the surface. Taking its complex structure, occasionally really odd time signatures and long playing time into account, it’s hilarious we managed to play this song correctly from the first notes to the last ones not later than in our third attempt to rehearse this song! Somehow the different parts just flow smoothly from one to another so I must say it's surprisingly easy to play a song consisting of 20 parts (most of which are never repeated) without thinking about it much.

I also must say that my favorite part of this song is that proggy, heavily syncopated, off-beat bass-driven part I came up with one time when a big thunderstorm struck us. As the thunders started rumbling, I took my bass to the balcony and just sat there, playing different melodies off my head and looking at the thunderbolts flash all around me. That specific bass melody just stuck with me and I quickly came up with a guitar lead that somehow both follows and contrasts the bass melody. It fit this song like a glove.

Henri: I absolutely nailed the vocals on this one, I must say. I mean, I like my performance on the other tracks as well, but this one just sounds so massive. Also, at this point I’d like to give a standing ovation to Olli Hipeli, who played the keyboards on the album: throughout the album, he brought out just a bit more from each of the songs, but nowhere more so than here.

Otto: Hear, hear. I must echo that opinion: Olli really did some real magic tricks to this album. "Of Woe" is definitely not a keyboard-driven album, but his parts really are really vital to the atmosphere of many songs, furthering their sonic depth and complexity tremendously.

Henri: The final rumbling part after the clean guitars bit was fun to record. We just kept adding guitar tracks with slightly different tones like “this tone starts here and eight bars later we’ll add this one and then that one.” I’d just gotten me a Black Arts Toneworks Black Forest overdrive/fuzz pedal and while it was used on all my distorted guitar tracks, I recall here we did one (or maybe even more) of these rumble bits with my amp and pedals and Otto’s guitar.

And then the choral shouts, I think I came up with the idea. We basically had everyone who came by the studio (rehearsal room, basically) do some takes. I was actually quite surprised when we recorded Otto growling, he’d never really tried it as I recall, but his voice was awesome. Others who contributed included Ykä and Antti from IA and Jere from Desecrated Grounds. In the end, we had something like 15 tracks of screams, shouts and growls. Can’t remember if we ever played the song live before starting to record the choir bits, but afterwards we’ve had Otto and Sami do the choir shouts. And the audience, if they’re awake and willing (so far, we’ve managed to get only one audience to scream along).

Of Of Woe or: How do we manage these song structures, really

We are not ones to write straight verse/chorus/verse material, and if you've listened to our songs, you know that already. This time it's time for one of the most progressive song structures on the album and the penultimate part in our behind the scenes series.

Lenore

Otto: This is definitely one of the most impressive things we've done. Mainly this song is based on a structure by Henri, which the rest of the band fleshed out.

Lenore really includes some of my favorite moments of the album. The part about two and half minutes in, where we use some odd time signatures, rhythms, syncopation and whatnot, was great already in its original form (and it beats the hell out of me how Henri ever came up with it!), but once Niko started playing a small part of it with a laid-back back beat groove, it transcended to being just simply awesome. Furthermore, how this part ends with an extended drum fill going well past the bar the riff ends up with was originally an accident: Niko never got the hang of it how the riff ended and when the next riff started, so he always started to play this extended drum fill towards the end of the riff in order to catch us up once the next one started!

Henri: I named the aforementioned part “the winner riff” when writing the song. It was years ago, so I’m not exactly sure why, but it might’ve had to do with the feeling I got from the riff, like “Yeah, I’m a winner! Huh!”

Thematically sort of related to Coeur, musically also follows the philosophy of “go anywhere, return if you feel like it”, although decidedly less of a quilt composition. At some point in time I realized we are pretty progressive with our song structures. And hey, that works for us. Also, I remember the first time we played this song live and when the 5/4 outro kicked in I saw a couple pairs of eyes brighten in the audience along with an audible “OOOOOHHHH!”

Otto: I'm not surprised by their reactions; after all I, too, find the outro of the song really great. That 5/4 melody seems to flow with remarkable ease despite the odd time signature and our album version just gets better once the acoustic guitars kick in. I really love that folky atmosphere of the outro when two acoustic guitars play the lead melody an octave apart while a 12-string acoustic guitar keeps up the harmony backdrop intact with its almost mandolin-like sound.

Of Of Wow or: A glimpse behind the curtain, part 4

This time we've written something about the only lengthy instrumental track on the album.

Challenger Deep

Otto: One of those songs I came up with almost during one single sitting. I just sat at my computer with my guitar and bass and the song really wrote itself. Completely instrumental, this song rather obviously betrays my love for post-rock and post-metal.

Henri: If my memory serves me, we had this idea of a song that would be sort of like a continuation of “In the Trench”, and we even had the title ready: moving from the Mariana Trench into Challenger Deep, the deepest point on the surface of Earth. Wasn’t long when Otto came up with this thing. Instrumental, so the theme is carried on in name only, but it’s picked up in words also in the following song.

Otto: I enjoy how this song contrasts really massive and heavy parts with parts that are quite light and airy, yet never feeling too abrupt.

Although we've managed a few times to tackle this song through in our rehearsals, I really doubt that this song is ever going to be a mainstay in our live shows. The album version is so moody, I find it hard to replicate the song's crushing atmosphere live.

Of Of Woe or: A third look behind the scenes with ECW

This time the topic is the official old song on the album. It's so old it was on our 2011 EP, Chapter III, already. That, however, does not make it any less good or it wouldn't have been included on the album. We're not entirely daft, you see.

In the Trench

Otto: The first song written for this album – I remember us jamming this tune back in early 2009 with Arttu, our previous bassist.

This version differs from the earlier EP version with some minor additions: there are some keyboard parts there adding some depth and harmony and there's a gong. Yes, gong. As we were recording the drums for the album, we discovered a great big shiny gong in the studio, so we decided that we definitely need a gong in our album. We recorded several good hits so that we could use one as soon as we had any idea where would be the best spot for a gong. Ultimately, it found its place in this song.

Henri: Another obvious difference is the addition of the subtitle "(Dear Eva pt. 3)" to the song title. Now, this has always been a continuation of the Dear Eva narrative, and I can't recall why we decided to drop it from the EP, but we did. This time we decided to include it to easily differentiate between the two versions as well as to make the relation to the other tracks explicit.

What we retained from the EP version, however, is that the second “verse” (“swallowing the brine…”) is one repeat (counting by the guitars) shorter than the first. This is because Niko, who recorded and mixed the EP as a school assignment, accidentally cut one repeat out and we didn’t notice until later. It would’ve been easily rectified, but we thought hey, why not give it a try like this? The lyrics were so sparse, I didn’t have to cut a single word, just shorten the long “LOVE” scream, which I couldn’t scream as long as I wanted to anyway.

I remember the thing that got me started on the lyrics in this one was accidentally getting some water down the wrong pipe. While coughing the water out, I thought of the line “I need you like I need the water I breathe”, i.e. not at all. Thematically, this is a sequel to “Dear Eva” (both parts) on our first album, but here the longing of part one and anger of part two have been replaced with bitterness. The theme then carries on to the two following tracks.

Otto: Oh, in the case you have wondered about the structure of this song, it's: Country - Moon - Naut*- Country - Moon - Cowboy**- Naut - Conflict - Slowdown - Astral*** - Slowdown.

* Henri: It refers to a band called The Naut

** Henri: The name of this part is after the movie Midnight Cowboy, which I was watching when coming up with the riff

*** Henri: This part is directly lifted from “Dear Eva pt. 1"; while the rhythm of the lyrics is otherwise different, the “Dear Eva” line is intact; hence the song's subtitle “Dear Eva pt. 3

Of Of Woe or: The second look into our brand new album

Last time we talked about one of the oldest songs on the album. Turns out this one is nearly as old, but it feels more fresh to us and it certainly sounds more fresh. Read on to find out why.

Haunted

Otto: I originally wrote this song pretty much verbatim how it ended up in the album, excluding the extended outro part. Originally the song just faded away once it transitioned from the main riff to the clean part. However, as we rehearsed this song, it tended to end up with extended jam parts and whatnot, so we figured out that there was probably some room to expand this song. What resulted was a bass solo, an extended guitar solo, a clean vocal interlude and a new, more powerful outro.

I remember originally presenting this song to Henri and he just discarded the idea off the bat, as the song didn't sound like us, according to him. I disagreed, but decided to wait. The next time I presented the song he was totally open to the song and we took it into our rehearsal regime.

Henri: I like to think we grew into the song, Otto just happened to be ahead of his time when writing it. In any case, I, too, am glad we added it into the repertoire.

Otto: Currently this is definitely one of my favorite songs of the album, if not even THE favorite. And why wouldn't it be? After all, in addition to being doomy as hell, it has got two very distinct guitar solos, a death metal part, a goddamn bass solo, really odd time signatures (at times even several different meters going on at the same time) and great clean parts. It's really one hell of a song.

Henri: I think the death metal part is more like thrash metal, though that is open for discussion. And that gives me a segue to mention that due to Niko’s insistence, we bumped the tempo up a notch in that part. We’d practiced it a bit slower and the increase in tempo made it quite hard for Otto and me to properly downpick the riff, not to mention how Otto was in a bit of a rush during the solo.

Otto: Despite these tempo-related difficulties, I'm pretty glad how the guitar solos turned out to be. I wanted this faster first one to be short, abrupt and somewhat atonal to suit the feel of the aggressive death / thrash metal part, whereas I wanted the second one to contrast the earlier parts by having more of an airy, Pink Floyd vibe to it with a clean guitar tone and some nice, soulful bends.

Henri: I tried to remember if I wrote the lyrics to this first, or this very short piece of prose (in Finnish) that was basically the same thing. Had to check it and the lyrics came first. Probably would have been cooler the other way around, but oh well. The clean bit at the very end was added considerably later, though, and that is also where the album title originally comes from, “icy fingers creep in slow / the ever-circling wolves of woe”, though later we decided to add the subtitle.

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!

Long time no studio diary

Ok, so, it's been forever since we last posted about our studio progress. In fact, it's been so long, we had just finished the drum recordings. And since it's been long, we've progressed quite a bit. But of course you knew that already, since you're reading our facebook page, right? Right. Well, I thought I'd type something up in any case.

What we've mostly been dabbling in is guitars. As we're hesitant to reveal too many details about the album at this point, I'll refer to songs by their working title. We've got guitars ready for "kurozu", "lenore", "renssi", "kööri" and "ibn-qirtaiba" as well as some guitars for the intro track. At this point we're wishing we were better at playing our guitars, but also very pleased with the outcome and the sound we've managed to conjure up using the finest in awesome signal processing devices. My personal favourite is the Black Arts Toneworks Black Forest Overdrive, which I purchased just after we recorded the live at studio takes. What we've been going for is, naturally, Soviet tractors and I must say we've come pretty darn close.

 We've also managed to get some bass done. Sami got himself a Rickenbacker and the end result of said acquisition is an even doomier tone than before. He's also taken up a hobby of building himself stompboxes to further benefit the sound. Here's an illustration of one particular sound with the maestro himself plucking on a fine riff. Bass tracks are done on "lenore" and "renssi", with the rest to follow soon after.

There remains also some work for the guitars yet, plus, of course, vocals, and even some extra instruments such as keyboards (don't be scared, they won't be overwhelming) and acoustic guitars.

So, don't hold your breath yet, since while we've made good time, we're not nearly there yet. In the meantime, enjoy good beers and worship vibrations while the moomins circle ever on.

Peace, love and loud noises,
           -Henri

It's alive!

Alright, now we've got the other live cut from the drum sessions available for download. And it comes with a video! It's called "One Joyless Night" and it was originally on our first demo ep, Picturesque, Petrified.

The audio can be downloaded right here!
And the other live cut, Cœur, is here.

Oh look, a live track

Did we or did we not threaten with live tracks two weeks ago? Well, we've got one out right now and you can find it here:  http://soundcloud.com/ecwdoom/coeur-live-at-studio

I'm personally rather proud of it, seeing as it was the first time I've done a live recording. Or, well, we did have our first gig recorded, but not with such an arsenal of mics. And, frankly, we played a lot better this time around.



-Henri

The Wolves have left the studio; diary, part IV

Well now, dear readers. The Wolves left the studio less than 24 hours ago. What were we left with?

-Drum tracks for seven songs, ranging in length from roughly five minutes to a whopping fifteen minutes.


-Several mutilated drumsticks. I guess the majority of the drumsticks Niko brought into the studio were decimated.


-Very little time to sleep. Of the 56 possible hours (from Fri 4pm to Sun 12am), we spent roughly 40 hours in the studio! Bar our sleeping hours (3am-10am) the studio was constantly manned by at least three of us. Sheesh.



-All of the drum takes were done several times, in the case that our human drum machine should have done a mistake. (Well, actually, he did. Quite a few. Every now and then when he was not chopping the drumsticks into wee tiny bits (he is a lumberjack and he's okay)).


-Two studio live tracks, with video. One really slow and thick oldie goldie, reworked, and one from the new album. We were joined by three helpful gentlemen in the Sunday evening, who worked three cameras. If the videos and live takes are deemed releasable, we will treat you with a song + a video twice during the next summer!


-80-100 cups of coffee and a handful of beers consumed. Also occasional fits of pizza psychosis were witnessed.



-A promise of an excellent new full-length album full of some of the most intense and dynamic stuff we've created. But when will we record the rest of the stuff? And how? We've yet to decide, but the current consensus is that most likely the recordings will take place over the course of the next summer, starting in early June. The method of execution is still under discussion.



Keep it groovy,

Otto

The Wolves circling the studio, part I

So, the day’s finally here. We managed to drag ourselves into the studio!

So far:

-We arrived to the studio Friday, 27^th of April, 4 pm. With us: a handful of guitars, a bass, drum gear, Trace Elliott V6 bass head and Orange + Laboga for the guitars.

-Actually the name of the game for this weekend is to record the drums for our upcoming album; the guitar and bass stuff we brought are here only for the show. And perhaps for a studio live session, should there be enough time.

-Drums were set up by a bit past midnight, including 20 microphones. Yeah, seriously, 20 bloody microphones. Our drummer Niko and Antti - our trusty old pal behind the desk both in studio and live - went a little crazy with them now that we had access to some great microphones. (Antti stated that the official explanation for this is “Just because we can!”)

-Caffeine levels are kept in check with Henri making us new potfuls of coffee the instant the previous one gets consumed.

-We returned to the studio Saturday morning, April 28^th, finally ready to proceed to the recording itself. The total amount of tracks for the upcoming album is undecided to this date, but during this weekend we are supposed to record drum tracks for seven new songs (ok, one of them is previously released). If there is enough time for the studio live takes, we are going to record one new song from this album and one song that goes way back, to the beginnings of the band.

With bloodshot eyes and high expectations from the studio,

Otto.

Or, in Henri’s words, "let’s get those arm flabs moving, and make some massive stuff!"

Five years and going strong

Roughly this time in 2007 I first had the idea of starting a doom metal band. First it was supposed to be just a solo project for me, and this in mind I wrote the first three songs, "One Joyless Night", "Loveless Moonlight/Cruel Dawn" and "Picturesque, Petrified", all of which ended up on the Picturesque, Petrified EP. The photo on the left is our first "official" promo shot and can also be found on the cover of the EP. If I remember correctly, I came up with the name Ever Circling Wolves, inspired by the Earth song "The Dire and Ever Circling Wolves", in the spring of 2007, before recording the EP, but after the photo was taken.

Download the Picturesque, Petrified EP here (in mp3)!

Or here (in a lossless format)!

Shortly after completing the EP, I started to gather a line-up for an actual band. Musicians came and went and we weren't really going anywhere until the summer/early autumn of 2008 with (left to right in our first proper promo shot, taken by Miika Karttunen) Otto Forsberg (guitar), Arttu Kantola (bass) and Niko Karjalainen (drums) (with me between Otto and Arttu) joining the fold. New eagerness flowed within us and new songs started to take form.

In 2009 we finally got the ball rolling properly. Our first visit to a real studio (Posti Studio) ended with us recording a full-length album instead of an EP like we'd intended. We also played our first proper live gigs, first of them (pictured on the left) at Lepakkomies (Helsinki) with the ever-awesome Temples and Chestburster, and the second at Hevimesta (Oulu) with the very heavy Wandering Midget. Towards the end of the year, more new songs began to emerge.

Download The Silence from Your Room from our bandcamp page!

Working with the new tracks was what we began 2010 with. This, however, got left on the backburner somewhat when Arttu decided to leave the band due to commitments elsewhere (check out his bands: Freedomination, Thomas Nobody and Mojo Waves). Luckily, we found Sami Nevala to replace him rather quickly. With Sami in tow, we resumed our arduous task of constructing new music, and at the end of the year stepped into studio to record an EP, Chapter III, which contains a new track, "In the Trench", and a re-recording of "Picturesque, Petrified" from the old EP.

Download Chapter III from our bandcamp page!

Or buy it from Dethroned Productions!

2011 started for us with the digital release of Chapter III, along with some gigs. New songs were introduced to the live set and they've been received well. We managed to pretty much write our next full-length album during 2011 and at the end of the year also got out a physical release of Chapter III with Dethroned Productions. We also got to play one of the most memorable shows of our career, on a bloody cruise ship!

Here's a live video from one of our gigs in 2011 (not the cruise ship show, however):

What 2012 holds in store, I can only guess. But we do have an album lined up, for one. Meanwhile, thanks for the past 5 years!

-Henri

...and around the next corner, you'll find...

So, Chapter III is finally out in cd form and can be bought directly from us by sending us email to contact(at)ecwdoom.com or from Dethroned Productions (which we recommend if you're outside Finland). And this means it's time to look forward to new things.

We've been busy writing and rehearsing material for a new full-length and we've now gotten to a point where pretty much the whole album is written and we've even managed to play all of the tracks through, save for the intro track, which is still under construction. The new material expands on what we've showcased before, in terms of dark, plodding doomy goodness, and adds new dimensions and dynamics to the mix, making for a (hopefully) more interesting listen than our debut, The Silence from Your Room.

Some tracks we've already showcased live, such as "Lenore", "Cœur" and "Haunted", and one we've already recorded once, namely "In the Trench", which is found on Chapter III, and they've been received well. "Cœur" has also been recorded on video on more than one occasion, and therefore I find it only appropriate to post a video of it here, so you'll know just what to look forward to.



By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes

-Henri

Studio Montage

Otto finally got our studio footage edited and here's the result:


-Henri

P.S. A shoutout to the following bands, whose shirts can be seen on the video: Kowloon Walled City, Converge, Katatonia, Fleshpress, Yup, Itkevä Tyttö, The Abominable Iron Sloth. You rock!