I am immensely proud to see the release of the new PARADISE LOST album “Ascension” today. This album marks the band's 17th studio album and it's very rare for a band to release an album of this caliber so far into their career, in my own humble opinion. Working on this album has been an absolutely fantastic and joyous experience.
We started off by tracking the drums in the middle of winter in January at NBS Studio in Söderfors, a converted missionary church owned and operated by Tore Stjerna. I have worked out of this studio before with LIK and Katatonia and absolutely love the big room for drums. Greg had the vision of the toms sounding more old school so we took off the resonant heads and went full on concert tom-mode on all of them and it sounded perfect (I will definitely be doing this more in the future). Guido tracked the drums and did a great job. We packed up, they flew home and Greg finished off all the guitar, bass and other production elements in his own studio in East Yorkshire, while I did some pre-mixing on the drum tracks.
A couple of months later Nick and Greg came to my hometown Uppsala in Sweden for the vocal recordings. This time we worked out of a smaller private production studio called Wasteland Studio. Nick, being a total pro, was well prepared so the recordings went very smoothly so we really had time to reflect on the songs and try some new ideas here and there, I even got to do some backing vocals which was great fun. All in all a very pleasant and creative session.
All that was left for me after dropping off the gents and the airport was to mix and master the whole thing at my own studio and a couple of weeks later the album was done and dusted.
I’m truly honoured to have been invited to work with a band that I have been listening to since the early 90’s and respect greatly and I hope everyone that listens to this album enjoys it as much as I did working on it.
