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.

Of Of Woe or: Behind the scenes with ECW, part 1

It's been nearly five years since we began recording the album called Of Woe or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gloom, and now it has finally been unleashed upon the public. To commemorate this joyous occasion, we thought we'd share some insight into how the songs on the album came to be, since it's something we ourselves would be interested in reading, coming from bands we like. Furthermore, we decided to do it piece by piece, or rather song by song. In this first part, we'll, however, cover the intro track as well as the first song proper, Cœur.

Sunrise Has Gone

Henri: This, the intro track, sprung forth from the soft arpeggio it starts with and the idea that it would get progressively louder, until becoming overwhelmed by distorted guitar, which then, in turn, becomes overwhelmed by noise that carries it over to Cœur, which we were already at the time playing with Otto making noise in the beginning. The original version was something like 7 minutes long, but we edited it down to less than three. I can’t recall who thought of the bitcrusher drums or why, but they were added because we could.

Otto: I have a vague memory that the idea of using bitcrusher drums was your idea, Henri, and your reasoning behind it was "because we can". I found no remarkable holes in that plan.

Henri: Yeah, that’s probably it. I recall programming them with this app I had on my phone. It turned out surprisingly good.

Otto: It did. I'm especially content how my idea of having a chromatically descending chord progression in the background turned out: it could've ended up sounding just pure wrong, but instead it added this kind of nice, jarring kind of effect to the song. A little bit of dissonance has never killed anybody, right?

Cœur

Henri: The second song to be written for this album, thrown together from previously written riffs from here and there, some added to tie the whole together and the result works rather well.

Otto: As this was one of the oldest songs of the album, having been written probably already in 2009 or early 2010 and also recorded for the first time during our drum recording sessions as a studio live take, I felt the version we were recording for the album needed some retouches here and there. Probably the most obvious part is our poor man's "choir" which is used for a few times here. I came up with this background vocal part while we rehearsed the song, originally singing those vocal lines just by myself. Once we were recording the vocals, I introduced this background vocal idea to Henri and Asa (our recording engineer) and then asked them to do nothing more than just come stand next to me by the mic and sing whatever they wanted to in the key of C# minor, us all three together. I think that the result worked really well (Henri: and would probably have worked a lot better without my input) and we've been singing that part together with Sami when playing the song live.

Henri: The age of this song shows in the evolution it went through over the years, prime examples being the choir bit Otto mentioned and a screamed vocal bit in the middle, which are notably absent in some early live videos.

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!

It be the sound of yer doom: Henri's gear

The other day I happened to stumble upon a blog post on a friend's band's blog, where their bassist talked about his gear, so, I though, why wouldn't we do that too? I know I would love to read posts like these from the bands I like and I bet there's some folks out there who are like me and happen to like our music. This is for you.

The best albums of 2012 according to Ever Circling Wolves

The year changed and we thought it might be fun to compile lists of our favourite albums of 2012. We listen to different kinds of music, you see. Some albums, however, could be found on more than one list. Note that the only list that is ranked is Niko's, the rest are in alphabetical order.

Niko: 

The hardest thing to do is to rank these albums. Here they come though..

Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind

Greatest hardcore bands in history. Artwork is exceptional once again and there's also 17 tracks that won't let the listener down.

Baroness – Yellow & Green

This record is very different than earlier Baroness releases. I like the sounds a lot and also the chances taken in the composing process.

Off! - OFF!

Punk rock as it should be! Total kick straight to the nuts.

High On Fire – De Vermis Mysteriis

Completely grooving brutality. Tremendeous drumming, killer riffs and the songs really speak for themselves. Kurt Ballou has done great work as a producer also.

Witchcraft – Legend

I also like the melodic stuff. Witchcraft blends those old school styles with catchy songs and vocals.

Fuck your five stars!! And top-5 lists, this just became the top-6.

Kowloon Walled City – Container Ships

This came to me a bit late (sons of bitches!) but it hit the scrotum on the first round. Lucky enough I can still enjoy this sludgy bubbling through 2013!

Henri:

Author & Punisher – Ursus Americanus

If you’re not familiar with this one-man-band, the situation must be remedied instantly! I mean, one guy doing drone doom with instruments he made himself! And he plays live as well! As if that wasn’t reason enough, the album is really awesome.

Conan – Monnos

It took me until the first days of 2013 to hear this album, but from the first listen it was clear that it would make the list. Sounds like ever so smoothly pushing oneself through a mountain while smashing up heads of orcs with a huge axe.

Kowloon Walled City – Container Ships

We kept an eye on KWC’s recording progress while recording our own album and, as it turns out, they were a hell of a lot faster than we were. The first time I listened to this album, I listened to it three times in one go. Raw-sounding and dire, I suppose this can be classified as sludge. I know it’s brilliant, though.

Lord Mantis – Pervertor

This album, like Monnos, evaded me during 2012 per se, and, likewise akin to the Conan effort, took exactly one listen to make it on this list. My ears say it’s a mix of sludge and black metal and, more importantly, that it sounds very good. And vile. Which is good.

Winterfylleth – The Threnody of Triumph

Something to satisfy my need for WITTR-like black metal, especially since the new Nachtmystium wasn’t all that great. Went on my ‘to buy’ list after half a listen to their previous effort, The Mercian Sphere. Also tops said previous effort. I think I spent most of December listening to this.

Witch Mountain – Cauldron of the Wild

A logical continuation of their 2011 effort, South of Salem. Traditional doom with a female vocalist, shamelessly devoid of any kind of hurry. Excellent riffs, excellent beats and excellent vocal melodies combine to make up an excellent album.

While compiling this list, I realised I’d heard a lot more absolutely brilliant albums throughout 2012, but many of them had come out earlier. Honourable mentions to Living with the Ancients by Blood Ceremony, Hisingen Blues by Graveyard and the Southern Lord reissue of Dopesmoker by Sleep (which did come out in 2012), to name but a few.

Otto:

Baroness – Yellow & Green

Though lacking in the heavy department, if compared to their earlier efforts, Green and Yellow is still a great masterpiece. John Dyer Baizley is getting better as a singer, record by record, and their unique brand of prog/metal/rock/southern states stuff is as great as ever.

First Aid Kit – The Lion's Roar

This album really blew me away; I had no idea somebody could still make so authentic 60's folk in the 21st Century – even less by these two Swedish girls, barely at the legal drinking age! I wish I could've made music this mature when I was 20; I wish I could make music this mature some day.

Kowloon Walled City – Container Ships

One of the greatest sludge albums of our time – the only drawback is the all too short length of this album. Half an hour of pure awesomeness is definitely not enough! Needs more!

Nerve End – Axis

Nerve End's first EP barely aroused my interest, as their musical genre is really not my cup of tea, so I wasn't that thrilled by the time of Axis's release neither. But the first listen through and I was already somewhat interested; couple of listens more, and I was definitely stoked! It simply doesn't make sense that this is an EP recorded and produced mainly in a living room – the sounds are of a world-class album! And the tracks, hoo boy! There are only a couple of songs in the world that can send chills down my spine the way the final minute of "Thrive" does.

Soen – Cognitive

While we're waiting for the next Tool album, this is probably the best substitute I can come up with; very Tool-y stuff with lots of Riverside and Opeth elements in the mix; all seasoned with Martin Lopez's smashing drums and Steve DiGiorgio bass awesomeness!

Woods of Ypres – Woods V: Grey Skies & Electric Light

In retrospect, this must be probably one of the greatest ways to end one's career. Though Woods V suffers from the same naïve lyrics as all of the WoY albums do, they don't bother me at all in this album; on the contrary, they fit the songs simply perfectly with their candor and sincerity. And boy, are late David Gold's deep, resonant and Peter Steele-esque vocals pure honey to my ears. Heartwarmingly depressive and gut wrenchingly beautiful doom album.

Not making it to the list, but still worth of honorable mention: Baulta – That's My House You're Living In (This might just be one of the best post-rock releases in a while, but I'm not sure yet, as I've just found it. Anyways, after a couple of listens, this seems to be simply an amazing post-rock album in the vein of This Will Destroy You, maybeshewill and Russian Circles.)

Sami:

Baroness - Yellow & Green
I saw Baroness for the first time at Tuska 2012 and the live experience was probably the best of the festival weekend. Energetic, innovative and very distinctive band. Their latest album continues the collection of awesome colour-themed albums with heaps of well-arranged and played pieces.

Betrayal at Bespin - Rains
Also a new acquaintance for me. These guys mix movie, post-metal and progressive vibes with a good taste. The year's most interesting domestic band.

Kowloon Walled City - Container Ships
Kowloon's Gambling on the Richter Scale was an awesome piece of brutal slugdy crushing. On this one they have lightened the sounds a bit but the brutality is still there. Probably my favourite sludge assembly at the moment. 

Kuusumun Profeetta (Moon Fog Prophet) - Huutoja hiljaisesta huoneesta
Every project involving Mika Rättö in one role or another leads to a certain win. Moon Fog Prophet scrambles elements from post-rock, psych rock and numerous other genres with a unique touch. Also, Rättö's distinctive vocals have a major role in this mixture of musical greatness.

Om - Advaitic Songs
Al Cisneros surprises with slightly different atmospheres and sound patterns. This time the listener is brought to a hazy Middle-Eastern scenery with epic string, bass and percussion tunes. It's a pity that the packacge contains only five songs and a total of 44 minutes. I would have desired one or two extra tracks.

Witchcraft - Legend
Looks like those damn Swedes do everything better than us. Including old-school-slugde-doom-hard rock. This band is a new discovery for me and this is the first album I hear from them. Seems like some kickass old-scool-crushing with an awesome tone.