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Exclusive Blog Is Exclusive: Rivers Of Nihil Visual Update #2

A few months back, we released a visual update of Rivers Of Nihil right before they entered the studio to record their next LP, and you can read that here.

9 years ago

2015-03-25 11.24.36

A few months back, we released a visual update of Rivers Of Nihil right before they entered the studio to record their next LP, and you can read that here. Now, a little bit later, the band have finished their next album, and we’ve got the awesome Brody Uttley once again filling us in on everything that went into the new record, along with photos! Check it after the jump!

“Hey guys,

About a month ago I did the first of two studio updates surrounding the recording of new album. In the previous article I took you through the equipment and processes that I used to record guitar and bass. In this “episode” I will be filling you in on the rest of the elements that came into play once we made the journey to Lancaster, PA (really no journey at all, only forty minutes from my house) to continue recording the rest of the album.

The first order of business when we arrived at Atrium Audio was to import all of the guitar and bass DIs that I had recorded at my home studio. Fortunately for the album I didn’t fuck anything up! During the first day we set up drums with Carson, Grant, and Alan (our drummer) and started getting tones. We also had the chance to meet Carson’s dog who shares the same last name as me: Uttley. He likes to hump stuff. After getting our initial tones on the drums we jumped right into tracking! Luckily Alan had been preparing for these sessions for the last several months and he was able to knock out six songs on the first day. He finished up the remaining four songs the following day. The drum kit that he chose to use for the album was his brand new Pearl Master’s series kit that Pearl was sick enough to hook him up with. Alan also used Meinl cymbals on this record. The natural drum tones that we were able to catch were absolutely phenomenal. We used a combination of Neumann, Shure, Audix, and Royer mics to capture the session on drums. We also used Vintech, Empirical Labs, Manley, API, and Universal Audio preamps and compressors to further enhance the sound. Carson and Grant are both phenomenal engineers, but if there is one thing that they absolutely blow my mind over; its the way they handle drum recording.

After drums we moved on to vocals. There is very little to say about this other than the fact that the session went incredibly well. Jake (our singer) was able to track 2-3 songs a day and had all of his work done in four days. The vocal performance on this album is definitely his best. I feel that working with Erik Rutan on our last album really kicked his ass into gear and had him super prepared for this album. For vocals we used a Manley Reference Cardioid mic. The clarity on this mic is absolutely insane. You could almost hear Jake’s food digesting in his stomach.

With drums and vocals wrapped up we moved on to re-amping guitars and bass. For rhythm guitars we decided to use a Bogner Uberschall through a Mesa 4×12 cabinet mic’d up with a Neumann KM 184 with a Protone Pedals attack overdrive in front of the head. For leads, dirty tones, atmospheric tones, and cleans we decided to go with an EVH 5150 III. We also ended up profiling all of these tones with my Kemper Profiling Amp so that live we can have the same tones that we got on the album. For bass we used a Darkglass B7K and an Aguilar TLC compressor. We also used a Martin D-41 for several acoustic parts that are on the album. The tones that we got on this album are some of my favorite that I have ever heard. Instead of having one constant flavor on the album we wanted to offer a large selection of sounds and tones to keep the listener excited.

This album will offer listeners our heaviest of heavies, our softest of softs, our saddest of sads, and our maddest of mads. We can’t wait for you to hear it!

Stay tuned!”

We’ll keep you updated with all things Rivers of Nihil as much as we can! Look for their new record out soon via Metal Blade Records.

-SS

Heavy Blog

Published 9 years ago