What We Do in the Shadows

An inspection on the possible future of other projects I'm currently working with.

CASE 1: Gambanteinn

After releasing the debut EP Nielevä Pimeys via now defunct Fettered Redwoods label (no idea what happened to them, the label's boss just stopped answering my emails) I wrote a bunch of songs too similar to the old ones, which ultimately led to the premature termination of the material. I do not fancy mimicking my own tricks, you know. Some time went by, Aleksi joined Gambanteinn alongside Sepulchral Curse and I started composing new material from scratch. Fast forwarding a year or two and we were ready to finally release the 2nd EP of ours, titled Yö Johdattaa. We even published one song online as a kind of a teaser and while searching for a new label, something happened...

GMBTN 2016

To be honest I don't know why, but I kind of forgot the whole EP for six months or so and when I got back to it I realized how fucking terrible it was. Most of the tracks were total bullshit; too much progressive riffs, too much clever tricks, too much self-assertive arrangements, too much angst ridden lyrics and not enough BLACK METAL! On top of that the production sounded too thin and clean, like we were some radio friendly hipster duo, poorly imitating the very essence black metal while consciously avoiding it. Yeah, good job. At that time I told Aleksi the sky would fall before I'd even consider releasing the full EP as it was. As Sepulchral Curse had a tremendous momentum, my hands were full building Sounds From Below's prototype and no motivation to even think about anything related to Gambanteinn, the project slowly sank into a hibernation.

Come late year 2020 and I was beginning to feel a bit bad how the things ended with Gambanteinn. I revised the material from Yö Johdattaa and noticed that a couple of songs were actually quite good and with a little tweaking they could be damn great. I asked Aleksi if he would join me again on the task to reignite Loki's fire once more and actually finish a damn record. Gladly he agreed since I had no intentions to continue this project on my own. At the current moment I've reworked the two older songs I mentioned and completed two new ones. The next step is to make proper rehearsing demos (more on that process later) and go on with the composing until we have enough material for a full-length. This time we are going to record and produce the record ourselves to avoid the mistakes of the past. If everything goes as planned we will unleash the beast on earthlings during the year 2022. Beware!

CASE 2: Beyond the Below

In case you didn't know (and you probably didn't), BTB is an ambient solo project of mine which has three albums under its belt at the moment. After releasing the 3rd album I got really fed up with the ambient music for quite a while. One of the main problems was that I felt I never really knew what I was doing, as my production process was mainly trial and error. Lot's of error. Sure, I got a lot of positive feedback on the album, few people saying that my producing skills have taken a big step forward. Still, I felt really insecure to continue working on ambient music and decided to take a break as long as needed.

While not actively composing any new ambient tracks per se, I fiddled with some chill electronic song drafts just to improve my sound sculpting, mixing and production as a whole. I even bought a shit load of software from FabFilter, updating my arsenal to meet my needs. During the last December after countless hours of mastering my new skills, I finally felt I could start writing a new ambient album and today I'm happy to tell that it will actually come out in a month or two. The thing is though, that I'm not releasing it as BTB but rather under my own name mainly because the album's theme won't fit BTB's Lovecraft inspired continuum. Let's just say I've been working on something more intimate this time.

By the way, if any of you can do some visual arts I'm in need of a cover art!

CASE 3: Yawning Void and some other curiosities

After releasing Void's debut album I immediately begun writing material for another album. I finished two or three songs and at the same time we recruited Aleksi (yes, that same guy who is playing in SC and Gambanteinn with me as well) as the second guitarist and Johannes as a new drummer while I took the full control of synths. I think we had some minor plans considering the second album but they were put aside as Kari proposed we should do an EP with only one, epic song. The song has been ready for over a year by now and we kinda have booked a studio already but because of this fucking virus situation going on, we haven't rehearsed a single note yet. It seems that either we have to re-evaluate our recording schedule or we stick to the plan and accept the fact we can't play and rehearse the song together at all. We will see what happens...

Yawning Void 2019

Lastly, there have been some serious talk on me joining a certain black metal band, sailing the same raging seas that Gambanteinn is. All I can say right now is that my role would be to play drums and record and produce the upcoming material. I'm really exited and enthusiastic about the project and I wish I can cast off some more light on it in the near future.

And now that I mentioned it, I hope I could obtain some recorded projects to practice my mixing and mastering skills even further. My problem as an asocial idiot is that I don't know that much metal musicians around, so my options are horribly limited at the moment. Well, better start socializing then I suppose. Maybe I have to even rejoin some social media platforms, even though I find that idea rather disgusting to be honest. Or maybe I just need a manager, hah!