It's been a while, but in a nutshell this is what happened.
I had been asked to do the Labyrinth album by their manager, who assured me that the new material was "really heavy" compared to their past stuff. I wasn't really into the Euro power metal style, so I thought that this newer "heavier" stuff might be more up my alley.
So, I asked to hear demos. Again, to cut a long story short, I never got any demos, and after several radical rearrangements of my schedule, during which time the band was supposedly working on these demos, I flew to Italy hoping that the new stuff would indeed be heavier as promised.
Well, it wasn't. By this time I had already lost several projects due to the rescheduling so I opted to continue on with the album rather than fly back and sit idle for weeks. In hindsight that might have been the best thing to do, but there you go.
I tracked the album and about half the vocals prior to flying back to the US, and then mixed the album a few weeks later once the additional recordings had been done.
At that point, one it was mixed, everything was approved by Brian Slagel of Metal Blade, and I sent the band the mixes which they told me they were really happy with. So, once I got their approval, I had the album mastered and the band approved that as well.
Then a couple of weeks later they (or perhaps Olaf) had a change of heart, and decided to remix the album themselves. Apparently my mix can be found out there on the internet, so it is possible to hear the different versions.
