Exile on Easy Street

Saturday, January 7, 2006 by From Exile and Anthony

Today we finished recording our new album! We started the day off with Beau completeing the screaming vocals for a couple of songs. Then Eric experimented with clean vocals. We patched up one stray guitar lead that we had forgotten to do yesterday and then planned our course of action for the next couple of weeks.
Let's take a look to see how the band's studio beards are doing...


Remember, when Chuck Norris helps you jumpstart your car, beard positive, fist negative.

Now let's take a look back, two years in the past and see how From Exile has matured:

December 2003


January 2006

And again...





Great work guys.

So now we are done, more updates to come while we are back in the studio for mixing and mastering. Peace out and thanks for reading our studio blog!

From Exile

Rockstudio

Get on the Mic!

Friday, January 6, 2006 by Anthony
After a late night last night,
we came in today and finished up several important studio tasks:

1. Ben and Eric finished their guitar solos.

2. Vince banged on his grandpa's bass drum.

3. Eric accompanied Vince on some floor tom overdubs.

4. Beau took to the microphone and belted out vocals for 4 songs. BAM!

Be sure to click on the links above to witness Blogsclusive video content.
Here are some additional photographs of today's proceedings.

Beau thinking about the mic.
Beau blurry on the mic.

Tomorrow shall be our last day of scheduled recording for this record. The band plans to return to mix later this month. Bye!

Back in Business

January 5th, 2006 by Beau

Vince and Eric headed to the studio early this morning to help Anthony get everything running again. Ben and I headed over there a little bit later. Here's a video of us on our way to the studio:

Check it out, we're mobile

Luckily when we arrived at the studio everything was back in working order and they were already re-doing the lost tracks from yesterday. Here's a video of Ben and I shortly after our arrival:

Back to work

Here's a photo of Eric and Anthony in the tracking room preparing to record more leads:



Later on in the night Eric began adding keys to some of the tracks. Here is an eerie photo of him in action:



Meanwhile, Ben and Vince entertained me with a lil tune:

Quiznos Subs

All that's left for tomorrow is a few leads on "E&B" and beginning the lyrics. Check back tomorrow for more updates.

$hit has hit the fan!

January 4th, 2006 by Beau

You may notice that I'm posting the blog for January 4th on January 5th, there is a reason for that and you will soon find out.
The day started like the past few days with Eric and Ben laying down lead guitars. Here is a video of Ben getting some advice from Anthony and then putting it to use:

Gimme that rock candy

Then Eric went to work, here is some footage of that:

Riffage

Also during the day, Vince and I worked on finishing up the lyrics for "Epic" and "Dougale". Here is a video demonstrating the process we were using to write the lyrics:

Lyrics workstation

Then, around 1 AM, the shit hit the fan. We heard a pop coming from the HDR and then the faint smell of smoke, "This can't be good". We tried rebooting the system to no avail. Upon opening the HDR and removing the hard drive we found the culprit. The chip that controls the hard drive motor was fried. The last time we had backed up was the previous night, we had lost the entire days worth of work. Here is a video of the situation:

The burnt drive fiasco

To make things worse it was now 2:30 AM and we still couln't get the replacement hard drive working. Needless to say we did not feel like blogging. We decided to call it a night and work on it in the morning. Hopefully recording could continue tomorrow and we could try our best to recreate the lost tracks as well as still make progress on the album. To be continued...

It's a Pirate's life for Ben

January 3rd, 2006 by Beau

Another day, another blog. Today we rocked out some more leads with Ben and Eric both spending extensive time ripping on the axe. Ben finished up the thrashfest known as "Rocktober". Here's a photo of him complete with regenerative eyepatch:



He's a pirate, ARRRRRR!!!1

Vince and I spent most of the day working on some sick lyrics. Here's a photo of us pumping out the good shit on the couch:



A-Dawg rocked the mixing board as Eric spewed forth some disgusting leads; here's a photo of the dirtiness:



We ended the night with Ben busting out some murderous leads for "finale". Here's a video of Ben in action:

That shit is murderous!!!1

And I can't forget, I got my car back today and it works. Not sure what they did but it didn't cost me a dime thanks to Firestone guaranteeing their work. We'll be back in the studio tomorrow finishing up the leads while Vince and I finish up writing the vox. So check back tomorrow or die.

A day and a half in the life of From Exile

January 2nd, 2006 by Beau

Another big day in the studio. We took two cars to the studio today so that Vince could drive me to to the auto shop to get my car fixed. After the car was safely in the shop we headed to the studio (more on the car later). We started the day off with Eric dropping the sick licks on "Epic" and "Thrash1". Here's a BLOGSCLUSIVE video of Eric shredding.

Eric Shreds!!!1

Vince spent a good portion of the day tracking Eric. He also spent a good portion lying on the ground. Here's some blogsclusive proof:



Vince also added another great blogsclusive video of some typical studio behavior. But before I get to that, back to my car. I got a call from the auto shop saying my car was ready and Vince and I headed out to get it. After picking my car up I was able to make it to the next door parking lot before it died on me. I walked back to the shop and told them what happened and they were shocked saying it had passed all the tests. Apparently they forgot to apply the "drives 10 feet" test because it would have failed miserably. Well it's back in the shop now, stay tuned tomorrow for an update. Oh yeah, here's that BLOGSCLUSIVE video I was talking about:

Ya Gotta Tell Me When You're Taking Video!!!1

I spent most of the day working on lyrics but also found some time to read as well as create a photoshop picture of the band. Here's my rendition of From Exile "The self titled 1991 album":



I'm very proud of it so don't tell me if you could do better or some shit like that.

Later on Ben got goin on some leads and I nearly sharted upon hearing the final product of "Evil 2". Expect great things. We'll be back in the studio pounding out more destructive leads so check back for more blogsclusive news, photos, and video.

Battle Axe

January 1st, 2006, by Vince

We spent New Year's Day doing the exact same thing as last year: locked away in Anthony Stubelek's studio of rock. We began with more fixes to guitars and bass, and prepared to attack the lead guitars for the record. Once again, the search for the right tone was tricky. Fortunately, Mike Jarocki was nice enough to lend his ESP KH-2 to the band for use on leads. After trying several amp/guitar combinations, we decided to use the KH-2 through the Dual Rectifier for the leads. Re-read that last sentence. That took us about 8 hours to do. Such is life in the studio. Frustration can arise when things do not go swimmingly, which can be often. We have about a week left of studio time allotted, and are feeling the pressure of a restrained schedule. These next few days are crucial to the outcome of the album.

Here is Ben diligently working on his lead parts while Eric begins tracking.

Tomorrow we will begin a large chunk of the lead guitars for the album. You care.

With the Force of Dragons...

December 31, 2005 by Eric.

On the final day of the year 2005, From Exile attacked their increasingly weakening workload without mercy. Ripping through the rest of the clean electric guitars (Ben's tracks on the Evils and Phantom Jam), we moved on directly to the acoustic guitars. Anthony (the manthony) spent much of the day chasing the dragon (searching for good tones for our acoustic parts). Tragedy struck, however, as Beau, on his drive back from Florida, was left stranded 30 miles from the studio, thanks to his car's unexpected death heading north on I-95. Luckily, he made it to the studio in time to eat dinner with his fellow Exiles: a fantastic feast of burgers, hot dogs and crab stew (!!), courtesy of the generous Jarocki family. After dinner, I finished the acoustic rhythms and leads, allowing a little time for Ben to work on a few bass parts. That's all for now, we're very tired. We will update again tomorrow morning.