please head to www.mezgarth.com to see exclusive photos from the making of our new album.

Guitar tracking is complete! We’re getting closer!!

We are proud to announce the list of bands who will be performing with us on our ninth annual Christmas Show. Each band was handpicked by us and are good friends of ours. There will be two stages:

Side Stage - Sponsored by Straight Razor Entertainment
Malice 213 (myspace)
Ark Peninsula (myspace)
Philo (myspace)
Ohio Sky (myspace)
2nd Half (myspace)

Main Stage
Caustic (myspace)
Forged In Flame (myspace)
Ringworm (myspace)
Chimaira

for those of you that have purchased, or will purchase, the VIP ticket - don’t worry the meet and greet is NOT at noon. do you really think us metal dudes are up that early? we will post more info on the times soon.

see you there!

hey everone

i hope our friends in the US and A had a good holiday.  i spent the night tracking.
i am a little behind schedule but there is good reason. i haven’t really spoken much about the lyrics and songs and themes for this record so i figured i’d let you in on a couple things.

i intentionally came into the studio without one lyric or vocal idea. The majority of the songs written for this record were written on the fly by us jamming in the bus. Two hours later we had a song. After touring we continued that spontaneous style of writing and it was an amazing feeling feeding off of each others ideas and just seeing where the riffs would take us. i feel this is chimaira in it’s purest and most vulnerable form.

i felt that i wanted to harness that same raw talent on the microphone as well.  I basically freestlye over a song, find patterns i like or words i might say and then build from there. I construct the lyrics and then go in to track it. After that I sit on it for a day, and then come back and fix things here and there.

i’ve done this method in the past with songs like Power Trip, Severed, Paralyzed, Down Again, Pure Hatred, etc.. so it’s not a new thing for me.  But to do an entire record like this, that’s a first.

i have four songs left at this point and i wish i had more. this is the most fun i’ve had doing vocals for a record ever.

i also wanted to talk about how cool chris’ samples are coming out. he is taking these songs to another level. he has always been able to do that with our songs, but this time around he is really prominent and some of his parts carry parts of the song rather than just adding a layer. we even have one song where it’s just him and i for a couple of parts. It’s definitely different and exciting.

we are still working hard over here

all the rythm guitars are done, bass will be done monday

and the next 2 weeks will be solos, vocals and samples.

a bit of good news for you all. the record release has been pushed up a week. The new release date is April 21st!

I moved into the studio last monday.  Things are moving at a slow pace.  It’s taking me about 2-3 days per song.  I have one full song done and about 3 other songs at about 60% complete. 

As you read in Matt’s post, I had the pleasure of slacking this past weekend.  It ended in rager fashion on Monday night in Buffalo.  Thanks again to Drew “Crazy Town” Stafford for showing Matt and I a wonderful time.

we have been working in shifts to get this record done. jim starts in the morning, rob and matt (when he’s not off at regional sporting events) track mid afternoon -early evening and then I have been coming in to do vocals around 8pm. we are about 40% done tracking right now. chris and i still have a lot of work left but we are confident we’ll finish it this year…haha hopefully by the middle of next month.

we got a new camera and are having a bit of difficulty logging some of the footage so be patient on the webisode front. todd “dead-eye” bell has returned to do some more filming so he should be able to help the problem. 

oh yeah, we have been filming for a dvd to come with the new record. 

time to battle the arctic wasteland that used to be cleveland and hit the studio, write more soon.

Chris and I decided to take a day off and go to Pittsburgh yesterday to see my Penguins play the Buffalo Sabres. Pens ended up winning 2-5. Sick game! Thanks goes out to our boy Drew Stafford for hooking up the tickets. Was hard to root against ya bro! Go Pens!

yo

 
so we are moving pretty fast
rob and matt only have 2 songs left to track on guitar, 1 song will be particularly irksome for them i’m sure.  jim and chris each have about 4 done and i have 2 completed.

expect a webisode this weekend along with more updates.

other than that i have been busy working on all of the packaging ideas for the release. even though it’s not until april everything has to be planned now to ensure it all comes out on time.
while you are waiting for a new webisode feast your eyes on this for a a while…