Zvonko & Tomas arrived to the rehearsal-room together and we packed our gear in Dala-Danne's (aka "the rock") small van, and after two runs we were in the studio, meeting up with Svein, the owner, technichian & sound guru. He wasn't in the best shape, too much fun with some top class alcohol on new years eve, like two days ago...hahaha!
Anyway, Tobbe put up his kit and Svein pulled out all these microphones (have never seen so many microphones on one kit before, but he's a man with a plan!) 

I was setting up my gear in a another room, and this time I have a new Marshall cabinet (it's actually like 30 years old, but new for me). I'm using the same old, beat up, Marshall 100 watts JMP head + one of my even more beat up Marshall cabinet, why change a winning formula huh!? The guitars I use are one GRECO lp Custom which I've used for like on every recording/tour/rehearsal since early 2002, one ORVILLE By GIBSON lp standard, one GRECO telecaster 50's style and one GRECO sg special. Those are the trusty tools I've choose to record with this time, the other guitars as V's and strats are on holiday in the sun as we speak.
 

When I was done in my area it was time to try out the drum sound, and it almost immediately sounded as Tobbe wanted, so the mighty Svein showed
his skills once more! The sound is fuckin' massive!!! And why shouldn't it...we do have Mr. Thunder Bovik on drums!!!

Time for lunch, went off to a close by restaurant. Me and Zvonko had some tasty soup and the others had some fish.

Back in the studio it was time do some serious work. We were joking around that "Tobbe, you should be done at 18.30h, don't you think?", and he goes "yeah, yeah, right..." The time was aprox. like 16.00h.

And as the pro he is, that skin-beating maniac, around 19.30h he had nailed four songs with some serious fuckin' grooves that even a lame could dance to!!!

We decided to call it a day after some serious work, tomorrow it's time for Mr. Bassman to put his magic on tape. Can't wait until Thursday when it's time for me to start the big machines and crank those amps 'til they bleed.

Aweright people, that's all for today, but keep checking in cause there will be a daily update with some pics and maybe some movie clips as well. Peace and love!

January 3, 2007
written by Christian

Hey there folks!.
Time for some updates from where the magic is captured on tape. After Mr. Thunder was done it was time for Mr. Zvonko to put down his magic four strings on tape (and hell yeah, we do record old school with those big tape recorders, no freakin' digital crap here!!).

I was arriving like 3 hours after everybody, I was in need of some serious beauty sleep (being up for like over 40 hours in a row took its tole, it's a damn shame that I've got to work a "normal" work instead of making music fulltime instead). As soon as I arrived I passed out for a few hours on the sofa in the control room...

Anyway, I woke up to some great bass sounds, Zvonko was using his trusty Rickenbacker 4001, and his Fender Bassman amp with an old 70´s Peavey
4x10 speaker. Fuck what a great combination that is!!

It was a hard day for the bassman, some technical difficulties (not his fault, but it took some edge of his playing for a while though) here and there during his session, but we located the technical error eventually and it all went hunky dory from there on and Zvonko  was on top of the world
once again.

I felt like it was time for me to go home, and to bed!
Still some massive sleep to catch up before I had to do my share of magic.

January 4, 2007
written by Christian

I woke up early the next day, had some breakfast and headed for the studio, and as always when it's time to record the guitars I brought along my queen, DIVA. She's been there with me for almost every record the last ten years so it's a tradition to keep.

I started to listen to Mr.. Bassman's work the day before, and it got me in the right mood.
After some tests with a few different microphones we decided for a kind of different setup, but o'boy did it sound good!!

We started with the vicious boogie tune "Red hot mama", then on to the other three ones. It felt so good, we only changed some guitars and amps for overdubs and solos, but mainly it was the black GRECO lp custom the GRECO telecaster 50's style & the old trusty Marshall head I've always used. The sound is massive and with a tone to die for!!

After playing guitar all day and all tracks down on tape, there's only some licks and tricks left and I will do those after the vocals are done so I don't mess up Tomas' singing.

 

Anyway, time for some dinner. Be cool now people and patience all you music lovers, soon, this will
hit the streets for your pleasure.

The captain shares some love to you all!!
//C-man

January 6, 2007
written by Tobbe

Ok, so it's time for me to write some lines... Today we had some magic moments which was VERY welcome since yesterday was nothing but troublesome and weird (due to circumstances beyond our reach).
We agreed to let only Tomas, me and Svein (the engineer) be the present at the studio since the whole day was esteemed for vocals... We already tried some phrases yesterday and I could hear Tomas was in great shape. I could never imagine that he would perform some of the greatest singing I ever heard from him before...

We started out with the track Feeling Groovie which went smooth as a baby's butt with overdubs and everything. On to Faster...this bitch is one motherfuckin' rocker from hell! Tomas laid down the vocals with the right amount of rasp in his voice!

From there to Red Hot Mama...this swingin' boogie tune is one of the newest and therefore also hardest to find the right feeling... But after a couple of tries we got Tomas to get in the right mood for the song and BOY what a great performance! This will make you wanna dance....

Now I'm ready to tell you one secret... It's not often I get goosebumps from someone's vocal performance... Latest was several years ago. Today I had one of those experiences! When Tomas started singing on Virtue Of Liberty (my favorite track for the moment!) and put almost all the vocals down on ONE take I felt that famous chill down my spine! Jiiiz, what a great song this is...

Allright, time for me to get some sleep after a bottle of wine and the new Rhino Bucket CD... (these guys rock as hard now as they did 15 years ago...amazing!)

Over and out!
Mr. Thunder

January 7, 2007
written by Tobbe

Today, the final day of this session except for some bass and handclap in a couple of days, was the most joyful. I noticed a smile on everyone's face when they realized the shape every song was taking.

We started out recording Tomas and Christian screaming their heads off to Red Hot Mama and the other songs requiring additional voices in the chorus.

Early in On Parole's career we talked about using female voices in a song or two. We all love the voices that can be heard on some Stones album and later even the Black Crowes... Tomas knew this girl, with a great voice, named Sara and we invited her to sing some lines on Virtue Of Liberty and Feeling Groovie.
After a while we knew this was going to be great! What a nice voice! She added a whole new dimension to the songs...

After a couple of hours we said goodbye to Sara and her boyfriend and Christian started recording some nice licks on top of every song... I never knew that ONE note can do so much... He played this high note in the beginning of Faster and we all just DIED! You can hear it on the video to the right...it's too much rock to handle. If one note could summon up the whole rock'n'roll history, this would be it!

After this journey to heaven we discovered new ground once again when Tomas went in and pulled of some real mean and dirty blues licks on his harmonica. I didn't know he was that good... Well he practiced for ONE day so why shouldn't he? haha! Anyway it sounded real cool!

Now I'm back home, had a pizza and a beer, my ears are tired and my head hurts but my heart sings "she said faster, FASTER, faster than you can imagine.... Faster, FASTER more adrenaline!!"

See ya!
Mr. Thunder

January 16, 2007
(written by Christian)

Aweright people! The captain of rockarolla is here again to update you all music lovers!
Today was the last day of recording (after eight days of 'rest'), we had some bass and percussion to record before we head onto the mixing process.

Zvonko was already in the studio when me and the mighty queen of rock n' roll howling (DIVA of course!) arrived.
Mr. Z had borrowed a -74 blond Rickenbacker model 4001 (thanks to Johnny T-shirt!), since we had some major troubles with his own 4001, but as it turns out this one didn't do the trick either...a real bummer indeed...

So we had to go with Tomas' old beat up mid -70´s Fender Jazzbass, and mr Zvonko smiled like a kid in a candystore again! We have two songs to finish, Zvonko wanted to start out with the mighty "Virtue of liberty" and it sounded like magic when he started playing. It feels so good to hear those earthmoving basslines flow again .

I headed off to fetch some food for all of us, and the queen was aching for a stroll, and who can say no to those eyes huh!? When we arrived back at the studio with some delicious thaifood I heard that they had moved on to "Feeling Groovie"... Tobbe opened up the door with a big smile, "Zvonko is playing with his fingers instead of with a pick as he used to, and it sounds fuckin' smashing!!!" Once again he pulled out one of his tricks and made us all smile!

Off to dinner!

Now when all the basstracks were done, it was time for me and rhythm-meistro to head into the booth to track the most heavy and vicious instrument in the world...handclaps! I'm always the one who have to leave the room because I always start to laugh my ass off and keep getting off rhythm...hahaha. Well, we started out and as always when me and Mr. Thunder are trapped in the 'booth', we start to laugh our heads off, BUT!! We nailed it right away, still laughing like maniacs though.

After this we called it a day and packed our stuff since we're done recording for this time. Four asskicking tunes with some major stuff that will make you wanna get up and dance, play airgutar etc.

Hopefully we're up to get the mixing done between 26th to 28th of January with the mighty wizard of knobtwisting, Mr. Roberto Laghi, yeah you know who he is and what he's done!

This was all for now people.
Love from the C-man

February 4, 2007
(written by Tobbe)

Hello again! So it's time for mix... I have been waiting for this moment for a long time (ok, I know it has only been a couple of weeks but it felt like years!). I got picked up by Mr. Roberto Laghi at 9:00 AM on Friday and we went directly to Svenska Grammofon Studion (which is owned by Kalle G. from the Soundtrack Of Our Lives) where Roberto had hired one of the mixing rooms. The vibe was totally right with cozy light and lots of vintage equipment everywhere...

We started out listening to the dump-mixes to get an opinion of where to go soundwise. We decided to make the recording sound as "live" as possible and create the illusion of everyone standing in the same room playing as loud as hell! We dived right into the drums and after a while we got this BIG drumsound with great depth and room... Very nice!

From there we went to bass and we kind of struggled a bit with it since Zvonko did not use his regular bass (the Rickenbacker)...so we had to do some knobtwisting to find a sound as near his own as possible. But after a while (once again Roberto showed his skills) the bass was pumpin' and thumpin' with the right amount of attitude!

After this we went to lunch just to gain some energy to dive into the guitars... Well, Christian is one of these guitar players who always have a great sound. Don't ask me how he does it but I bet even if he played the shittiest, worse combo in the world, he would still have made it sound like Christian.... So, I guess you can tell from this that we did not need to do much with the guitars...they sounded massive from the beginning.

The next day (Saturday) we spent the whole day to create a nice sound for the vocals as well as putting all the pieces together, finding the right place for every instrument and so on. This is normally a time-consuming task...but it all felt very natural and we did not hit any major problems on our way. The funny thing is that even if they all are four very different kind of songs we manage to find an overall sound which worked really well...

The last day was devoted just to put all the songs down on "tape" (I know...nowadays you don't work with tape in that way...but we did record the whole thing on analogue tape which I am proud of...). We did two versions of every song. One with the vocal level at a point we found right...and one with the vocals just a bit higher. This to avoid the common event that you feel the vocals are drowning under all the guitars and everything. At 8:00 PM we had nailed all the songs and it felt great... It's very live sounding but still you hear every instrument clearly and the voice is crisp and natural. I'm sorry you probably won't be able to hear this in a while...we have two more recording sessions to do this year before the album is done... But eventually you will, and I hope you will like it as much as I do. Because this ROCKS!!

Take care,
Mr. Thunder