'Down to earth' is released !

The new album 'Down to earth' is already available at least in Spotify, Youtube music, iTunes, Amazon music, etc.

I also manually released the album at Bandcamp where I can submit front & back cover artworks as well as graphical lyrics set (PDF) for the package, so if you want to see / get those, check out the release at Bandcamp.

It is done. Enjoy ! 

As I've been writing about posting the lyrics also here into the blog, I'll do it right now with this post.

1. Heaving earth

Earth's core glowing through time
Glowing point multiplies like designed
Earth's core one glowing domain
Grand design heading towards pain

Inhuman rallying on earth's surface
Underneath lies gigantic furnace
Life goes on and on this earth's surface
Giving planet earth one hell of service

Earth's core growing through time
Growing point multiplies like a design
Earth turns into one glowing domain
Grand design heading towards doom

Inhuman rallying on earth's surface
Underneath lies gigantic furnace
Life goes on and on this earth's surface
Giving planet earth one hell of service

Dismal to be alien watching as the earth keeps heating
Crestfallen aliens observing as the earth starts burning
Dismal to be alien watching as the earth keeps heating
Crestfallen aliens observing as the earth starts burning

Heat burn detox and clean
This earth is suffering
Heat burn detox and clean
All this was foreseen
Heat burn detox and clean
This earth is suffering
Heat burn detox and clean
All this could had been prevented

2. Void entities

Particles float inside massive wormhole
Timeless beings blocked by transverse wall
Ships passing by lights flashing worms' eye
Existing factors counted through the cosmic sight

As worms enter their endless tunnel
Anything around them shall plain crumble
Travellers of time and space continuum
Existing life flips void morphs minimum

Worms - Morph - Life - Death
Travellers - Enter - Endless - Space
Beings - Float - Through - Wormhole
Confirmation - Flash - Content - Reset

Death - Life - Morphing - Worms
Space - Endless - Enter - Travellers
Wormhole - Through - Floating - Beings
Resetting - Content - Flash - Confirmed

Particles float through massive wormhole
Timeless beings through transverse wall
Ships passing through flashing worms' eye
Existing factors reset through the cosmic sight

As worms enter their endless tunnel
Worlds around them no longer exist
Travellers of time and space continuum
Existing life transforms void infinitum

3. Planetary autopsy

Dead world scarred, surface lifeless
Dead world silenced, surface sightless
Dead world spineless, surface lightless
Dead world soulless, existence hopeless

Planetary autopsy, main body biopsy
Planetary autopsy, self made biopsy
Planetary autopsy, underground necropsy
Planetary autopsy, underground necropsy

Dead world scarred, surface lifeless
Dead world silenced, surface sightless
Dead world spineless, surface lightless
Dead world soulless, existing in darkness

Planetary autopsy, main body biopsy
Planetary autopsy, self made biopsy
Planetary autopsy, underground necropsy
Planetary autopsy, underground necropsy

Planetary autopsy, main body biopsy
Planetary autopsy, underground necropsy
Planetary autopsy, self made biopsy
Planetary autopsy, underground necropsy

The end is no longer near, the end can be seen right here
What caused this devastion, what unbalanced equation?
Dead world silenced, surface lightless
Dead world soulless, lost in darkness

4. Through alien eyes

Alien smiles and gazes downwards
Another earthling doped and prepared
This one is no worse than the others
Ready for the ultimate inspection ritual
Goal set for searching the final answers

Nothing is certain for this earthly species
Strange machines hummer in the background
Surgeons floating high up in the air resound

Alien signals and comes downwards
Another race ready to be operated
This one is no better than the others
Ready for the high tech inspection ritual
Goal set for searching the real answers
Nothing is certain for this unearthly species
Strange machines hummer in the background
Surgeons floating next to the human compound

Nano scalpels draw near
Target dreaming no fear
Locks broken secrets open
Black heart of earthling

Through alien eyes
Mankind should arise
Through human eyes
Mankind shall demise

Spaceship lifts up flies above horizon
Football in space earth was the name
Insects taken over planet up in flames
First it was heating next it was burning
Root of all the evil mankind's primeval action
Demolized black earth needs no caption
Through alien eyes mankind should arise
Through earth's eye man deserves demise

5. Space funeral

How could you explain all these feelings
Like massive black hole replacing the heart
Everything once loved is victim of restart
Shroud of nothingness drops over everything

Things that living creatures witnessed in light
Local solar system enters the eternal blight
Silent notes flowing inside the darkest point
Time itself locked out for another cosmic exploit

Solar system entombed
Space funeral finetuned
Beginning this one's end
Errors found in megatrend

Space funeral finetuned
Solar system entombed
Finishing this one's end
Unable to make amends

How could you explain all these feelings
Like massive black hole replacing the heart
Everything once loved is victim of restart
Shroud of nothingness drops over everything

Things that living creatures witnessed in light
Local solar system enters the eternal blight
Silent notes flowing inside the darkest point
Time itself locked out for another cosmic exploit

Space funeral finetuned
Solar system entombed
Beginning this one's end
Errors found in megatrend

Solar system entombed
Space funeral finetuned
Erasing system completed
Begin the space funeral

6. After anomalous extraction

Before the portals of time
Opened very last time
Extraction was decided
Every factor calculated
After the portals of time
Closed very last time
No trace left behind
Experiment that had failed

Seen the portals of time
Appearing very last time
Retraction attraction
Elemental calculation
Seen the portals of time
Appearing very last time
After the portals of time
Closed the very last time
No trace left behind
Experiment that had failed

7. Debris and decay

Debris and decay, what all became
Debris and decay, accept all shame
Debris and decay, none shall complain
Debris and decay, afraid to embrace

Now that the solar system has been cleaned
Virus of warkind totally annihilated
Certain energetic elements floating up in space
Silent celebration of this experimental demise

Debris and decay, accept all the same
Debris and decay, admit the mistake
Debris and decay, look at the terrain
Debris and decay, failed to upgrage

Silent celebration of this experimental demise
Certain energetic elements floating up in space
Virus of warkind totally annihilated
Now that the solar system has been cleaned

Debris and decay, what all became
Debris and decay, accept all shame
Debris and decay, no more charade
Debris and decay, absurd to escape

Now that the solar system has been cleaned
Virus of warkind totally annihilated
Certain energetic elements floating up in space
Silent celebration of this experimental demise

Debris and decay, you will be amazed
Debris and decay, you will be betrayed
Debris and decay, you will try to dictate
Debris and decay, you will just deprave
Debris and decay

Through alien eyes promo

As it's just one day left before 'Down to earth' is released ... check out the promo video for the fastest song of the album. And don't let the goofy lego theme fool you out, lego men are not happy at all.

Playthrough video

 Since the release date is getting closer ... 4th April ... crafted up a "playthrough" video for the opening song just for fun. And the fun part is ... that it's not your usual guitar playthrough at all, but a guitalele playthrough instead. And drums on background aren't quite like the album version plus there's amount equal to solar system of reverb with drums, intentionally. Part of the fun. Video itself? Doomy of course. Enjoy!

Release confirmation and some thoughts about lyrics

 I got the release confirmation from CDbaby sooner than I thought; it happened during the night of last friday/saturday. Didn't take even a week, and the have a "warning" that currently the release confirmation timeline is 1-2 weeks on average ... and when I submitted, at one point it was stated actually that it's more likely 2-3 weeks. So, ... I am really happy that I got through so fast. I usually do this "administrative stage" very carefully and precisely, so that there wouldn't be any error and questions to be asked, that could well be the biggest explanation. It went through, because there is nothing wrong and no changes needed to be asked to make. Yeah.

This means that the release date is certainly 4th April 2021, coinciding nicely with debut album release exactly 10 years ago. Hooray!

Of course I can't say for sure, how the album appears on all the different streaming platforms, but it seems that it will be released at for example Spotify exactly on 4th April. I know that, since I already got artist confirmation mail from them and I went and tweaked the forthcoming release there already. Chose "through alien eyes" for artist pick, for possible curators. Also for the 1st time ever I updated M4D avatar / band picture in Spotify, as well as uploaded doomy starscape as header picture. About time, ehh?

I'll post the lyrics here probably next, bit of a shame I can't use the PDF I crafted for lyrics, with graphical background all through and special explosive fonts ... but that will end up into bandcamp site as bonus material for album, as usual. 

Anyway, about the lyrics, a brief thinking session since at some point I commented about "having a challenge of singing them, since the lyrics are quite cryptic" (or something like that). Actually that is somewhat misleading or indescriptive expression. I guess I was thinking the amount of lyrics when I was mentioning "cryptic", ... because, well, on this album some of the lyrics are definitely the least cryptic space lyrics ever on M4D release. There are some space visions for sure that can create weird space trippin' images for those have vivid imagination (like errr myself), but there is much larger portion of completely understandable, straightforward english lyrics instead of coded stuff, fictional place names, connections in fictional world, or word play things etc (take a look at 'Cosmic time foundation' lyrics for good comparison!). This wasn't intentional in the first place, but it happened naturally since the theme of "earth album" started to take its' shape. Since it's a fictional, scifi styled & sort of post apocalyptic vision of Earth, ridden with critical approach - it's about a place everyone know, not just a product of imagination: It comes from that, the fact that lyrics turned out quite straightforward and definitely understandable instead of being gibberish word play stuff. Hell, there is even a kind of "love" song for earth (or not just earth), a very doomed one. Though, that said, some songs are not necessarily so straightforward with lyrics, that is part of the bigger picture and not at all a coincidence which songs are like that. The songs happen in certain order, but funnily they were also composed almost exactly in the order they appear in the album, too. Small tales (songs) and when combined with each other, from start to finish, they form a much bigger tale / vision about the earth and solar system. 

'Down to earth' cover art

Haven't yet received final confirmation for the album submission process from CDbaby, but I didn't expect to receive it yet, anyway. Currently they have 1-2 weeks of average time for reviewing submissions, so it might and hopefully will happen next week.

In the meanwhile, ... here you go, take a look at cover artwork for 'Down to earth' below, front and back covers. As usual, clickin' da pics opens them in larger size if you wanna see more details.

Master V3 is the key

So, it's been a full weekend of tweaking & listening and ... it turned out that the third version of master is the very final version of this album. First version had some notable flaws and it was soon clear that it needs fixing here and there. But the second version was already a good one. In the end I had to make just some minor finetunings and tweaks and then it was time for 3rd version of master ... I listened to it multiple times with headphones and with speakers and was like "this is it, really!". Then I even went and blasted it with our TV & stereos combination. No flaws.

I've submitted the album to CDbaby system for analysing and set the release date as 4th April 2021, so that it is exactly ten years from debut. We'll see when it appears into streaming systems, but I expect it to happen in the early April anyway.

I'll post the cover artwork here at some point, too, closer to the digital release coming out.

'Heaving earth' lyric video

 Here you go, the opening track of the soon-to-be-released new M4D album:

Work, work, work ... song titles, album title revealed

Been working so much with details that eyes feel like 😵 and beyond ... but the great news is that the album is rapidly getting closer to reaching the very final stage. Yeah! It seems very realistic and possible, that the release date might well be set for 4th April, so it would be exactly 10 years since debut album. 

Well, I'll state more about the release when I get the final master ready, etc.

For now I can reveal the song titles and lengths here, and the lyric video for opening track might well be published later today in youtube (I'll write about it here if that happens!). Here are the song titles and song lengths:

Overall length of this album is 42 minutes and 42 seconds. Not planned, funny coincidence (think about 'Hitchikers guide to galaxy') ...

... and the album title is (drum roll) : Down to earth

Like said, it is a theme album for first time in M4D's existence. Theme being the earth, partly fiction, partly nonfiction (kind of). The theme wasn't planned at all, it simply formed while writing the lyrics and it came very naturally. And like I've hinted, this time the scale of these scifi doom tales is much smaller (ehm, think about titles like "century of interplanetary war" from debut?) as it's "just" about our planet earth, but on the other hand there is certain grand vision to it, too.

Vocals completed and massive progression

 I got the final vocals recorded already early during this week and the same working method has continued: Working on a daily basis, and multiple session during a day. Lots of work means lots of progress. Well, how much is that then?

Since I got the vocals recorded, I started cleaning the vocals where needed and finetuning them. I'm still doing that for 2-3 songs, but while I've been mainly working with the vocals, I've been also working big time with mixing in general. Lots of tweaking and tests - and few days ago I got the process pretty much done. Actually that process paused the work with finetuning vocals on remaining tracks. But now the work is progressing on the remaining tracks again, too - since I have pretty much all prepaped for final mixing and mastering, quite likely!

And not just that, I've been doing the space / ambient elements for the album, too. This time they won't be so audible, not in such a big role - but they are there certainly. In a certain way / style. Opening and closing track have most of this space ambience going on (opening track fully completed, closing track still work in progress) since it all fits with the tale of this theme album. Some of the soundscapes (of these space elements) are sounds I've personally recorded outdoors during past 1 year or so, some are created recently by myself and so on.

As a final point; I even crafted late yesterday evening (or night) the lyric video for opening track of the album. I will publish that possibly  already on coming days (or even this coming weekend, who knows!) and it seems that the album release date will be set for April. 

I just happened to notice, that the debut album was released on 4th April 2011, so who knows if I'd set that 4th April (2021 of course) for release date for this new album? Depends on how work progresses with these final stages. Would be funny coincidence, exactly 10 years separating the two releases. Time, the ever present thing on this doom project's albums, anyway!

Progressing with them vocals

 So, the work has continued on daily basis, one session per evening. As a result it seems that four songs now have very possibly the final vocals recorded. Three are 100 % sure, one is borderline case - might well be final vocals there too, but need to finetune some very small details possibly.

Three songs that have rough test vocals will have vocals all recorded from scratch. Based on the final vocals with other songs, these remaining songs shall improve the way the others did. 

Vocal sessions on

I've been doing vocal recording sessions on a daily basis since last writing, evening sessions. Tried several different vocal styles, while getting closer to the certain kind of mood I'm after. As a result I've done demo vocals for three more songs now and just one song remains with no vocals at all currently.

In past I've usually progressed fast, but this time I have a different kind of approach to the vocals. I don't want to rush them, I will try different vocal styles and ideas until it feels really fitting to the song in question. Currently, I think some of these vocals might be final vocals, but certainly not all of them are. I'd say one or two songs might have final vocals with them, and that's just fine. General feeling for this vocal work is good, at this stage.

When it comes to lyrics, I have done hardly any changes to them and I can say I've arranged them surprisingly well in my mind last Autumn. Makes things much easier.

More as things progress. 

Never (ever) say never

It feels funny now, but it didn't feel funny yesterday ... What I happened to write in my previous blog post few days ago, about not expecting any problems whatsoever, really, even that I haven't yet recorded anything in this new environment. I felt it while I was writing that comment, that this is stupid, you know, usually when someone expects no problems, then problems he/she will get in that matter. And that's exactly what happened in my case, too! :) I can smile about it already, but well ... I won't go into details, but let's put it this way; yeah, I was not expecting any problems. Yet I got bunch of problems. I had just listened the opening track and felt like it will be interesting to test record some vocals for it. Then I opened my DAW software and bang, I soon noticed that not only I couldn't record a thing, but I couldn't even get the projects playing at all. At first I almost laughed, because I thought it's really quick thing to fix, nothing big, certainly not something that takes much time. You can guess how it went, right? It wasn't quick thing to fix at all, there were about 3-4 problems at first that I spotted, and as I got few sorted, I thought it's soon done. But it wasn't. I couldn't get it all sorted out for some good 8+ hours or so (!) ... in the end it was pretty simple hardware problems and I got them all sorted out but damn it was frustrating. Itching to start doing some tests after half a year break from it all, and then I can't do a thing.

Well, that's all about that, bad news that vocals recording got a really buggy and frustrating start.

The good news is, that after I got the problems sorted and I got into doing tests and even recording for real. Even that I had about half a year complete break from the whole project, I was surprised how I could instantly see how I had arranged the lyrics/vocals in my mind six months ago. That meant I got into recording pretty soon. Yeah.

I have recorded layered vocals for three tracks already. I'm not sure yet if they are final recordings but in some case they could well be. Even if I got bad start for recording vocals, now it's going really good and it's certainly much more relaxed recording the vocals in my own "space", both physically and mentally. I can't say it would be easy, as I'm aiming for certain kind of twisted mood here and there - it all goes with the grand tale the album is telling about. Heavy tales and heavy music. Not just heavy, there are something mellow and strange too, gotta see if I could try some new vocal styles ... in any case, since I'm not in hurry, I have all the time I need for getting the best possible moods out of myself. Recording vocals has always been something where I'm out of my comfort zone, so to speak. But it feels good to challenge oneself, sure.

Pictures below from today's session.

Next on the list

 "Yes, it's been a while" ... 

... in the meanwhile our family moved to new space, notably bigger one (with me having my own working & recording room), sold away our former home, have been doing lots of renovation. For example sauna room got reworked into almost like scifi doom reality: Pitch black walls which reflect faint light coming from ceiling, yet also you can see the wood patterns below the black. Grey sauna benches with dark grey metallic support structure ... next summer coal black floor tiles will be installed and some finetuning the the lighting and the actual sauna stove, too. We wanted bit different looking sauna instead of the usual wooden or light environment and it really is turning into something like space meditation room.

Well, lots of renovation things going on, but like said, now I have my very own room which is a combination of daytime working area and sort of home studio recording room. Really, really good and inspiring to say the least. Best of it all, now I can record the vocals in my own private space and concentrate into the matter much better. While I have had my hands full during past few months (packing, moving to new place, renovation stuff etc) I think I might progress into recording the vocals during the March which just started. Gotta do some experiments first, see that my systems are working properly and so on, since I haven't recorded anything yet here in this new environment. I'm not expecting any problems though.

If there is a problem, more like a challenge; it's the lyrics I've written myself. Long, detailed, partially cryptic - will be quite a nice little job managing to record them all the way I've pre'planned.