Taking Forever to Produce Material (ha!)

If you hadn't seen them already (scroll down, mongoloid), I poked some fun at myself and my silence/lack of updates by posting a pair of bullshit "studio update" videos that showed some footage of my fat, faceless ass sitting in a chair doing little more than nothing while the world waited. I did this all in an attempt to open a conversation about metal artists and their surprisingly common inability to satisfy fans with new content or news regarding new content. Did you guys get the joke? Did you? No? Of course you didn't. None of you ever fucking get it. A good chunk of you delete your Facebooks, clear out your iPods and break up with your girlfriends based off my stupid advice. You're a bunch of retards, all according to plan.

I'm glad you're dumb. Leave the smarts to the false. You're here to learn about metal, or rather, continue along with your very basic understanding of metal. Metal being a tried and true musical formula that has been dumbed down over generations into something simple to write and produce in a short time. As metal elitists, we only really like one riff anyway. It might be arranged a little differently, but it's all the same shit. It's sort of like pizza. There's an art to it, but at it's core, it's just dough and sauce and cheese, and really any jerkoff can just make pizza. You can put as many unusual toppings on this pizza as you want, in the form of say; synth or folk instrumentals, perhaps. It can be phenomenal, it can be so-so, it can be an abomination. Yet pizza is pizza and it's hard to really fuck up; since pizza in concept alone is just so great and better than any other food. As much as I hate bad metal, just as I do bad pizza, even the worst pizza is still better than the best tofu dish. Fuck tofu. If you like tofu, leave.

Little Ceasers and Dimmu Borgir. Two perfect examples of shitty pizza.

So when I'm told over the phone that my pizza is going to be ready for me to pick up and eat in 20 minutes, but instead it takes the guys in the kitchen eight years to get me only half of my fucking pie, forgive me for getting a little annoyed. 

You're just making pizza here, so what's the fucking hold-up?


Before I really get too far into this and give the wrong impression; (cause I just care so much what you twats think,) I would like to make it boldly clear that I actually did end up really enjoying Wintersun's highly-anticipated album, Time I. Not anywhere near as much as this fucking guy, but I did love the album. Yeah, it's overproduced. Yeah, it's way too short. Yeah, there weren't enough solos. Yeah, it's full of Chinese restaurant music. Yeah, it's not as raw and metal as the first album. Yet all that aside, I thought it was very much the inspiring musical journey through wind chimes and space and winter, just as band leader, Jari Mäenpää had envisioned it to be. It is indeed a phenomenal listen, and if you didn't like it at least a little bit, then you're wrong. You must be a Daath fan or something. How's that going for you? What's that even feel like, anyway?

With all that aside, the question still remains; after all the setbacks, after all the cancelled tour dates, after all the technical difficulties, after all the new equipment and frustrated record execs, was Time I truly worth the 8 years we as Wintersun fans desperately waited for it?

Not even remotely. If I had known what the end result was going to be, I would've stopped waiting. I would have stopped following its progress so closely. I got caught up in the hype just like everyone else who's retarded enough to still maintain a generally positive attitude about music. I promise it will be the last time I'm optimistic about anything. First mistake. Last mistake. No more mistaaak*cough-ahem*... It's true, Time I was a really good album, but dozens of really good metal albums are produced all the time. I know, because I keep downloading them all illegally.

I tried to convince myself for weeks that Time I was a god-level masterpiece of musical orgasms, because that's what I was expecting after almost a decade of tireless waiting. It's what I desperately wanted it to be. When it came time to face the facts however, I was left to realize that Time was only at it's best, a good album. One that will sit unremarkably among my collection of other metal albums that are also pretty good. Other decent metal albums, mind you, that were released by their respected artists in a timely god damn fashion.

If you are a popular, active metal act, it seems to be a pretty general consensus that a new album is expected of you every 2 or 3 years. Look up your favorite bigger name metal bands, and you'll notice that they release albums in a relatively short, consistent time frame that doesn't fall too far outside of this. (Disregarding the occasional hiatus.) For the sake of example, let's compare the discography of Wintersun to say, a different metal act that I also think is pretty okay:

Since forming in the mid-90's Suidakra has released a total of ten studio albums. Ten! Some of which were even recorded and produced only a year after the one that came before. Granted, I will admit that Suidakra is on relative terms, a much busier band than the norm. I expect most bands require sufficient time between albums to tour and promote themselves, so setting anyone else to such a strict standard would be unreasonable. I also can't say that all Suidakra albums are of the finest quality, nor am I saying that Suidakra makes better music than Wintersun in general. Suidakra, however, knows their craft, have perfected it over the years, and are proof that a band can release new and decent metal music at practically a yearly rate. A multitude of other bands prove to us that decent metal albums can be produced at, traditionally, a biyearly rate. So what gives? Why do the core members of bands like Wintersun, Necrophagist, and even Guns N' Roses have such a hard time getting their new material released in a timely fashion, and on the release dates they kept promising us; only to keep failing to deliver time and again? The answer, really, is simple:

A lack of trying.

I can tell you from personal experience that the reason I took so long to write new material for you guys to read is because I just didn't give that much of a shit. People kept asking about it, I got waves of support from readers, I have continued to receive the donations. I knew for a fact that there were still a handful of die hard TNM fanboys who would check my page every single day, in desperate hopes of some newer posts. I realized all of this. I realized there should have been a sense of urgency on my part to produce something to entertain you guys. I realized it would not only benefit you, but me as well; especially if I were to consider a career in writing. Regularly updating this page is the best way for me to make a name for myself, after all. Even if the complete substance of my character is just swearing. I considered all of these facts, yet I elected to masturbate instead. Day after day, when I could have been engaging the world-wide audience I spent years of my life building, I instead spent hours and hours toiling away on internet porn sites, trying to find something else that would help trick my body into coming with my chubby-handed grip.

What else can you do with a PC that can't mix tracks anyway?

Do you really want to know why it took 8 years for Time I to be released? Because Jari spent most of it waxing his carrot. I read all of his news updates. Every one. I knew of Jari's supposed woes. How his computer wasn't powerful enough, how he was low on funds, how Nuclear Blast could only do so much for him, how he had to cancel tours to focus on his album, and then had to cancel focusing on his album to play shows again. I heard it all. After all, he only addressed the internet maybe a couple of times during those long, seemingly endless years. Once to tell us that his computer wasn't good enough to mix all his tracks, and then once again to tell us that the software wasn't good enough to mix all his tracks on his new, better computer. I wasn't fucking buying it. I know lame excuses when I hear them. Being a fellow lazy person, I am myself a master in the craft of bullshit.

The fact of the matter seems that Jari simply wasn't trying hard enough. He didn't care enough. He didn't want it bad enough. The idea of thousands of happier music fans and sharing his artistic vision with the world wasn't enough of a motivation for him to do what was necessary to get this album released only a couple years after he started working on it. I sense this to be true, having ridden on a similar wavelength of leisureliness myself. The main difference being here, of course, that Jari had a lot more people depending on him; so therefore deserves a whole lot more scrutiny. Who reads metal blogs anyway? Loser.

Perhaps I'm missing part of the story, because believe me; picking apart Jari's broken English over the years was always a treat. I'm not completely against believing that he truly endured six long years of suffering, setbacks, disappointment and fruitless labor. (Just ask me what marriage was like...) However, he just wasn't providing enough evidence to me or the rest of world as to what his real problems were. If Jari truly cared about putting out his album in a reasonable amount of time, he would have realized the ridiculously simple solutions to all of the non-problems he kept claiming he was having. Let's review what they were, shall we? To the best of my memory anyway. Sufficient research is for pussies:

Problem 1: My computer can't mix all these tracks.
Solution: Less tracks.

The general consensus among listeners is that Time I's songs are overlayered with too much synthesized symphony and sound effects, and not enough genuine metal. So therefore, Jari's album would have ultimately benefited if he just compromised from the get go and decided to cut a lot of that excess out. Not only would Time have been released much earlier, it might have actually sounded better too. If he thought that a song with less symphonic background noise, or a lack of 40 voice-over echoes would have left something to be desired, then he should have just recorded more fucking solos like he's actually known for being good at:

Tracks for drums, guitars, and bass were completely recorded in Sonic Pump Studios as early as 2007. Jari was already sitting comfortably on the parts of metal everybody actually cares about for years before he took on the 5 year project of getting his twinkly keyboard fairy dust just right. I also think it should be a good rule of thumb that if you have a fairly modern computer, and you are loading each song with so many tracks that you're crashing it, then newsflash: you're mixing too many fucking tracks.

Problem 1a: My computer can't mix all these tracks.
Solution: Then get off your ass and ask someone else about their fucking computer.

Let's say Time I is perfect the way it is, and it just had to incorporate all of these tracks in every single song. This is incorrect, but fine. I understand in such a hypothetical case, Jari would need a better computer. What I don't understand, is why you had to stick with using your own? You mean to tell me that in all of Finland there isn't even one other studio with better equipment, a more experienced studio tech, and (drum roll please) a better computer with better software that's perfectly capable of mixing all your music for you? Can you smell the bullshit from here? We all know that Jari finished recording all of his tracks years before Time was released. His only major problem was mixing it all together. So why did he choose to suffer by himself? Is it because he couldn't afford to pay someone else to do it for him? I'd give him that, but my next solution will royally void that possibility. The only possible conclusion I can draw, is that he just didn't give that much of a fuck. He's probably an awkward guy, who wanted to record this all in his own apartment and by himself, because he was worried what other people in other studios would say about his music and his mixing abilities. He decided to let us all suffer and wait instead of swallowing his pride. He wasn't experiencing technical difficulties so much as he was experiencing a social disorder.

Flash drive. 16GB. $10. Now put your music tracks on this, go outside, and make some fucking friends.

Problem 2: I don't have enough money.
Solution: You play premium Steve Vai Ibanez guitars. Sell one.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I can't tell you how many times I sold a beloved instrument of mine (or my body) just to make due. There's just no way to express the American dream better than that: your loftiest hopes and dreams, crushed by your endless debt and lofty life expenses. Perhaps such a concept is so second nature to me due to the country I live in, that I must be experiencing difficulty understanding how a Finnish man would never consider it a viable option. The words for selling your own belongings might not even be translatable into the Finnish language, for all I know. After all, Jari revealed in an interview that he has spent all of these years completely jobless, living on Social Security. This only further proves his lack of shit-giving to me. Not only did it take him six long years of feet-shuffling to finally produce Time, he literally had 0 other major obligations while he was doing it.

"I'm broke!" cried the man holding the Ferrari of musical instruments.

With such a cushy government system, why should anyone be bothered to sell their expensive toys? Your mouth is practically guaranteed to be fed, your health care is free and the roof over your head will always be paid for. But I'll tell you why: because you're telling the world that you 'need a better computer', that you 'don't have enough money' for, and you say this all with a straight face while you're standing in front of a collection of guitars that have an MSRP somewhere around $3,000. Fucking sell one. I'm not asking you to give up your whole collection, just one. I guarantee you that the $2,000-3,000 you get for selling only one of your guitars (maybe even more if you signed it and put it on eBay) would have been more than sufficient to afford the proper equipment and software required to mix your tracks without issue. If not a guitar, then I'm sure you've also got amps to spare, dude. I mean, being all techy and shit, I built myself a six-core, 16 GB PC with a decent graphics and sound card last year for a little over $700. I would have gladly built one for you too, if you shipped me that fucking Telecaster of yours. Don't bother pleading with Nuclear Blast next time for some hipster iMac bullshit. Just shoot me an e-mail, buddy. We'll work something out.

Problem 3: There's construction going on outside and it's too noisy to record and mix.
Solution: Relocate your forever-sitting ass.

"We are the Sons of Winter and -BBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--"

This excuse blew up my laziness radar harder than all others. "Sorry guys, I can't record anything because it's too noisy outside. Guess I'll just have to crack a beer and wait this one out!" Give me a break. Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that dog shit I smell. You mean to tell me there was nowhere else on Earth you could have worked on this? A major construction project takes what, 6-8 months? Sometimes even a couple years? In all that time it never occurred to you to just move your project and the necessary equipment to someplace other than this one lonely cave you've been recording Time in? Don't make me throw another flash drive picture at you.

Problem 4: I've never recorded a symphonic album, or used computer software like this before.
Solution: GET HELP. Ask Devin Townsend for it like you said you would that one time.

The original Wintersun album was recorded by Jari on nothing more than a modest 16-track mixer. That album was raw, nasty, vicious, gritty and pure musical tits as a result, but as an ever-growing artist, Jari wanted more. He wanted to create an epic, symphonic metal album like so many artists before him, but on an even grander scale. Something never before accomplished in this dimension of music. He had no way however, to afford a real orchestra, so he decided to embark on the multiple year endeavor of teaching himself how to do it all digitally. The ultimate result is he that he got himself in way over his head, and the final product turned out a little too sloppy, with way too many tracks overpowering the most important elements in his music. 

Devin Townsend is the master mixer of the metalsphere, or at least when he wants to be. He actually makes an artform out of 'way too many tracks' in each song, with his signature 'wall-of-sound' approach to music. It's overproduced, but done so intentionally in a way that sort of works. He's even overcome the clearly overwhelming obstacle of acquiring a computer that can do it all. If there is one guy ever, who could have helped you, Jari, complete this album with the proper know-how and proper equipment, it was the guy you were seen interviewing in this video right here, not asking for help:

He's human, and he's assisted with many well-known musical acts in the production of their albums. He's sitting right there. Say something. Anything. Jari. plz.

But who knows? Maybe after the end of the video, or before the video, Jari was all "hey help me" and then Devin was all "fuck you pay me right" and Jari was all "but I'm broke" and Devin was all "so sell some stuff right" and Jari was all "ERRWHATHUH??" I can't say for sure whether or not Jari reached out to Townsend for help, but it would make sense to me if he never bothered trying. Judging from this exchange and all other exchanges I've seen Jari in, he just comes off like sort of a socially awkward fellow. The type of guy that would sit in his apartment and struggle to teach himself how recording with computers works for half a decade without asking anyone else for their input. If you thought Time I sounded overlayered, it was probably because it was recorded by a guy trying his best to figure out how to do all that major computery shit with no prior experience. It already sounds like a way better album just knowing that. It's like when you see some kid's CGI project for his art school on YouTube and you say "hey that's pretty good for a student!" Yet if you ever saw something like it in a Hollywood setting, you would be like "fucking looks fake as fuck, fuck this shit."

Problem 5: All the stress, pressure, and overall frustration has given me writers block.
Solution: Yeah? Well... you... oh fuck. Shit oh fuck.

I think I forgot where I was going with all this. What's the point I'm trying to even make? What's the point of any of this? People need to get off my fucking back about posting this thing. Look, forget all that shit I just talked Jari. Overall, I still liked your album and thought you kicked everybody in the dick musically when I saw you shred faces in Boston last December. You seem like a nice guy. This is stupid. Why am I giving you such a hard time? Is it because I'm some jealous fat faggot who can't play guitar well and I have maybe nine fanboys on the internet who always agree with me when I sound this mad? No, that can't be it...

So your album took forever, so you don't have great excuses about it -- so what? It could have been worse. Your album could have gotten delayed for a legitimate reason. Like say you sliced open your guitar playing hand with a broken glass, because you got all white-girl-drunk and couldn't handle your appletinis like some Skrillex-headed shit I know.

Michael Keene; pictured here with busted hand, as well as fat lip I gave him for that hair cut.

Fuck you Michael Keene. Your band is loved by kids who wear baseball hats and lip rings. Nobody gives a shit about your ironic guitar color. But I guess since I'm feeling all worn out -- and therefore mysteriously positive -- I'll tell you that I did really like that Devin Townsend album you put out last year. It was almost better than Epicloud. Actually fuck that, I take that back. It's not even close:

Better luck next time, wannabe. You'll never hold a candle to the erupting volcano that is Devin Townsend with his overflowing streams of metal magma. I mean, with tunes like this you can't help but understand why MetalSucks is all about this guy.

Listen, musicians experience some setbacks during the recording process, and regardless of my impatience as a listener, I should be more accepting of the fact that shit happens. Especially since that's what my therapist and ex-wife keep telling me. Most of the time, we should try to cut them a little slack. They're human, and they have problems too. With that said, however, I think everybody experiences setbacks in life. Yet instead of leaping over these hurdles like most motivated individuals would, musicians love to lazily trip over them. Trip over them, turn limply toward the world and cry "look, I've fallen, and I can't get up!"

You see, musicians are just lazy by nature. It's not like all that long hair is just for show. They don't know what real work is like. As metal performers you have one job to do, and that's to write and play metal music. Your job is not hard. Preparing meals at a break neck pace for entitled lard creatures in a hot kitchen is hard. Mopping up bathrooms at the Amtrak station is hard. Checking out tampons and Doritos for 9 hours straight at Walmart is hard. Taking the fall after your boss was caught embezzling money from his company and going to prison is hard. Fixing cars is hard. Picking corn for pennies because you're in the country illegally and don't have a choice is hard. Performing open-heart surgery is probably hard, too.

Do you know what's not hard? Sitting in a chair in some airconditioned studio, noodling on a guitar the exact same music you and everybody else in your genre has been sitting in a chair noodling out for decades. For every studio artist that's "working" with his guitar, there are 10 million dudes "playing" with their guitar. Playing with their guitar, up in their bedrooms, because that shit is actually fucking FUN. I don't feel bad for any of you. Shut your smelly cigarette holes.

So that extra JUN DIDDLY at the end of your palm-muted riff sounds a little different from everybody else's riff. That's good. Call it original, and then call it a fucking day. Play a solo; I heard those sweep arpeggios are popular these days. Find a guy to play some blast beats behind it, I bet that will sound good too. Put out a Craigslist ad for cookie monster impressions. VOCAL TRACKS COMPLETE. Record over 8 songs of this shit at 4-8 minutes a pop, have your art school drop-out buddy mix it for you and pay him in weed. Done. Now call it music and go see if you can trick anyone into buying it. Maybe some label will sign you, just for being such a safe musical bet.

While I'm at this, do you know what else isn't as hard as the average job? Touring. Your life is a road trip with your best friends, and if you starve and suffer the whole time, it's because you didn't save up the money to do it right. You know, like the musicians who know well enough to have real jobs that suck on the side. If you miss your friends and family, that means you weren't metal enough to be completely rejected by them, and you should stop trying to play metal anyway. Clearly you're not callous and mean enough to make it any good.

My final thoughts on all this: The invention of broadband internet has made it inexcusable to be completely silent about the status of your album. Inexcusable. If my bitchy coworkers can let me know via smartphone how good their dessert looks every night their boyfriends treat them to Denny's, then I see no reason you guys can't throw a "drums are almost done" update on your Twitter or Facebook. Seriously. Here's Finntroll recording their new album from start to finish in just a couple of toughish weeks; like how long it's supposed to be:

And then:

See? Some serious focus and effort over the course of a couple weeks, and then you don't have to worry for another couple years before doing it all again. Produced in such a short time, and I guarantee this album is going to be exactly as bad as any Finntroll album is supposed to be. Way to go, boys. So what say you, Muhammed Suiçmez? As much shit as I just gave our friend Jari up there, at least he had an excuse-laden update to show to us every couple years. Your silence is simply deafening, and the last I think anyone heard about your new album is how it's being "you know wrapped up you know" in a video interview you did in 2010. Ever since then, stupid metal blogs like mine have been writing about how we're never going to hear your stupid album. What's the fucking problem here? Did you die? Were you intent on completely reinventing wanky tech death or something? If so, the solution probably lies in more fretless bass solos. Trust me on this. 

Well, I guess that wraps up this article, kids. Knowing what my comments are going to look like before I get them, I am fully prepared to be asked: "Well Brenocide, if writing a great metal album is so easy, why don't you do it (fatty, fag, etc)?" The answer is all too simple, my friends. It's because women like Hitomi J-Cup exist in this world, leaving me utterly powerless from having to wank on something besides a guitar.

Speaking of white sauce, anybody up for some Domino's? 

I'll even bring it over.

- Brenocide \,,/