The band is on an unscheduled month long break at the moment, to all our displeasure; these things happen I suppose. We have ideas building for the final two tracks though, and we’re starting to talk about how we’re going to plan out the recording so things haven’t come to a complete standstill.

Jay, Trevor and I went to see Korn on Friday night, and I think it was probably their best performance yet (Jay and I have seen them 4 times now, Trevor twice). They played a good variety of old and new stuff, and rocked it all hard. Surprisingly the gig didn’t sell very well and the crowds were sparse right up until Korn started (which was good for us because we got a good spot on the barrier), but once they started playing more fans came out of the woodwork and they ended up playing for a great crowd.

So, two more weeks before our next rehearsal, I’m going to try to make the most of them and get some writing done so we can get straight back into it on May 3rd. I’ve also been thinking about album artwork and redesign for the site, we may have to look for an artist to collaborate with as none of us have the necessary skills for what we’re thinking of. (So if anybody reading has good drawing/painting skills and wouldn’t mind doing some work for us, let us know)

Yes, well, hello viewers of whom frequent the site of the almighty Kurodust. As the work progresses around the 10th track mark of our writing phase I sense some true excitement building in our sessions now. Aside from the musical developments I am as always developing things on the engineering end, putting thought into the recording process for this album and also just as importantly my guitar gear. I’m keeping it all hush at this stage, but i’m in the process of developing some new configurations with my guitar hardware to pullout more tone and chunk.

I’m excited !!!

There’s a party tonight!

It’s been a few weeks since the last post, but apart from the week most of the band went to see Ozzy, we’ve been working hard. We’re well on our way to completing the tenth track out of our twelve planned, and it’s turning out to be a catchy little party song (which is what we set out to do, so I’m pretty happy)

There’s not much else to report, when we finish the tracks we’ll be ready to start refining and culling down to our planned 8-10 for the final tracklisting, and then we’ll get down to recording. It’s all taking a long time but we hope the final product will be worth it.

After what seems an eternity, we had our first practise session since the Iron Maiden gig, and it went really well. The practise session has been moved back to Saturday Arvo, 3pm - 7pm. Being that we no longer had the lunch break in the middle of our session, we were a lot more productive. We decided to scrap what we did on the new song last time and just jam out some riffs that we would record and then revisit later in the afternoon when we had some lyrics worked out. What we came up with blew my mind as it felt powerful, yet also cool and mellow. The chorus is pretty full on and the verses are sort of laid back, with some awesome drum beats accentuating every little thing Rob and I did. The vocal melody isn’t following along with the music as much as what we usually do and it really fills out the whole track. By the end of the day we had recorded a very rough cut of the intro, the first verse and chorus. So it seems as though we might finish the song in two sessions once again.

Last, but not least, I would like to wish Ben a very happy birthday for last week.

May the force be with you… always

Trev

Time has certainly flown by since the Maiden gig. We have all been a little busy lately but are certainly on track with the work on our next release. As for the Maiden gig it kicked ass !!!, personally I thought the venue could have cranked the house up another 3dB or so but that might just be me going deaf from my Les Paul copy’s bark.

Although we are still in the writing process I’m starting to put some thought into how we want to record this thing. The methods I want to keep from producing previous works, the ones I won’t use again and some new ideas always make it an interesting process.

Ozzy soon !!!

Due to various work commitments, Kurodust is having a short break from rehearsal for a few weeks. We did have a band meeting on Saturday, however, and came up with some new ideas and approaches for our next song, so we’re not in an entirely unproductive state.

Now that we’re a bit happier with our process of song writing, we’re going to try and work more on the dynamics and texture of the music, and try to think about what we can do with our ideas rather than the first, most obvious path that comes to mind. We’re hoping it will add a bit more variety to our tracks and also further improve our skills as songwriters, as well as ensure the final track list for the next release will be interesting to listen to.

I’m really looking forward to getting back into it and seeing what we can do with the next track, so hopefully the next two weeks without rehearsal go quickly!

Yes, you guessed it, only two days until IRON MAIDEN !!!!. I’ve been listening to Maiden for a long time, the boys have always won 1st prize with me for being a solid hard rock outfit without losing the push and pull of the great blues origins, their dedication, their awesome artwork and a dozen other reasons. Been waiting a long time to see them, finally here. Rock on !!!!.

This week’s band practice was productive though we were all a little tired after the night of beer and sabbath beforehand, hehe. I must have been pretty knackered, apparently sleeping through the entirety of Sepultura’s Chaos AD without moving. We started a new track, it wasn’t too bad but will probably be left on the backburner due to lack of magic.

Up the Irons !!!

Not much to report this week: our Australia Day weekend band session went well and we finished Doll In The Dust as we expected. The chorus gave us the most difficulty, as we had planned on sticking to what we wrote in the original version, but it just wasn’t working out. We tried a few different things to give us the sound we wanted, and ended up using a different riff, but most of the original lyrics, so that was a good compromise.

The final structure will still need a bit of tweaking, but as with our other tracks, we’re going to leave it for now and come back to it later for final polish with a fresh view on it. I still feel like we’re getting better and better with every song though, so I have high hopes for our next track.

Another prolific week. We realised that we’re writing songs at the same rate as when we did Initialise, one song every 2 weeks, which is pretty cool.

We decided to go back to some of our old unfinished work, so we had a look at Doll In The Dust, which we wrote just before Rob went to Japan at the end of 2005. (After we finished Initialise we started writing some new tracks without actually getting together to rehearse: Jay would put down some drums in his sequencing program, Rob would put some guitar over the top, and I would write and record some lyrics to finish it off. Funnily enough, we managed to do this for 4 or 5 songs before Rob even left, and then didn’t do anything the whole time he was there)

The only thing we kept of the song was the chorus and the general themes; it’s interesting and exciting to hear the chorus that we’re used to from the old recording meshing so well with the new riffs and melodies we’ve written. The other major difference between our new version and the original is that it now feels like we’re evoking the emotions we tried for in the original, but ultimately failed to get across. It’s extremely gratifying to see that we’ve improved in that way.

So, I’ve actually lost count of how many new songs we have now, but I think Doll In The Dust will be our 8th. The plan is still to reach 12 new songs then cull it down to the best 8 and polish them up for release. At this rate it’s only 2 months away.

Well yes, as Ben has stated we have been working on yet another new track. This one has something extra special about it I think, and we are all happy with how it has been coming together… there is almost no doubt it will be making an appearance on the next album. I’m happy with where the riffs are going and having a great time belting them out, on all the new tracks.

Keep well all…