So I've been a huge fan of the following Black Metal bands for a few years now...
Windir (Sognametal band - Blends Norwegian folk melodies with black metal)
Summoning (Atmospheric Black Metal Band - has louder keyboards than guitars and blends in
mideival music)
Melechesh (Oriental Black Metal Band - Crossbreeds Black Metal with Middle Eastern Music)
I've always wondered what It sounded like if you crossbreed the three into one sound. If you mixed the three, what would it sound like? I always wondered that... So I put myself up to the challenge of mixing Oriental Black Metal and Atmospheric Black Metal.
I always wrote Oriental Melodies well. Don't ask why. I am not perfect at it and I am quite inexperienced at doing it at a Melechesh Level but melodies Unleashing Vengeance had had a very strong oriental element to them at times so, I wondered if I could do it again...
Crossbreeding in Summoning styled melodies and instrumentation and production with oriental Black Metal is one hell of a challenge. The two just don't mix well.. Getting them to mix was hard. I got insanely lucky. Since I have actually wrote Atmospheric Black Metal before, I thought mixing the two would be something I could do. Poof. 30 minutes later I had written 5 songs.
Songs 1 and 4 have no oriental elements and are normal Atmospheric Black Metal Songs. However, tracks 2,3 and 5 are a completely different animal, being much more of a mix of Oriental Black metal with Atmospheric Black Metal, complete with Drum Beats, melodies (which are not the best oriental melodies done but they have that vibe) and also have Atmospheric sounds to them such as the production atmospheric black metal needs (louder keyboards than guitars, echoey production on keyboards, etc) plus medieval elements (Trumpets and stuff)... It's a weird mix but it works...
But mixing the two wasn't enough. I thought later on once I had perfected the tracks to see if I could add in Sognametal elements into it. I've tried to mix 2 out of 3 of these styles before, but 3 into one sound? I've never done that at all, and I wondered if I could crossbreed Sognametal melodies and Oriental Melodies to make some weird hybrid. I also thought, sognametal and Atmospheric sound great together, why not mix all 3! SO I worked on re-writing the songs in 2 phases:
Phase 1:
I added in sognametal style melodies that were based off of Windir's melodies but altered heavily, such as downtuned, timing changes, etc... I played them with these changes on several instruments including keyboards and guitars for tracks 1 and 4. For tracks 2 and 3 I decided I needed to try to mix them with Oriental Melodies. That mix is.... Weird Sounding! I did it well though...
Phase 2:
I decided the sound of the music wasn't Oriental Enough. So I added in Sitar for tracks 2,3 and 5 plus tribal drumming (like on certain Melechesh Songs) for track 5. Now It sounds really odd, but neat...
Can you say Atmospheric Oriental Sognametal? I Can!
In all seriousness, I think I may have made the absolute craziest, weirdest, yet best sounding black metal album I have ever done. It sounds like NOTHING out there, in any way, yet sounds cool. I decided that this would be the next Unscrupulous vomit cd (which was going to be about the Dunwich Horror by HP Lovecraft) and the last with this style. That's right, I don't think I can crossbreed these things this well a second or third time. They just don't work well together normally and the mix is so volatile that it doesn't really flow well, so I don't think I'll be doing this band any further... Fans of Unscrupulous Vomit will be like "WTF! Melechesh Influences in this! WTH!" but whatever. It had to be done once...
Update : Here we go, the album has been recorded since this post was first made, and the vocals came out great! I did choirs for this cd and they are epic, but don't expect them to sound as good as Summoning's Choirs... I used a multivoice chorus to add multiple voices to the sound when I only sang 1 in the first place.... It's kind of crappy sounding because that effect adds a LOT of noise into the sound and I had to lowe the volume a lot to compensate for that... Anyway, here is a link to the new cd on noisetrade!
