Hey guys. I was one of the lucky 50 to get into the studio last friday. This is what I had to say about it on dreamtheaterforums.com:
(ITNoG = In The Name of God, 8VM = Octavarium, AIA = As I Am)
k, so I get there to meet Jackie (bout to crash) outside the place and get some food before getting in line at 1, but we both expected there to be people there before 1, and the line might start (it's naive to think otherwise. ) and sure enough there were about 25-30 people already online, and there's jackie at the very back. We say hello and everything (she got there 5 minutes before I did) and then someone tells us that they will be handing out envelopes to the first 50, and that's it. We felt pretty good at this point. Sure enough, guy comes out, we get our envelopes, BAM,we can go get food. Got some decent Indian food about a block away, get back too early, wait outside freezing or nipples off for 45 min until we get in there.
All nice n warm, we head back into a fairly large room that can't have a capacity of more than 60-70 with mics set up overhead and such. Mike comes out, people go wooooooooo blah blah blah, and says that the group will be recording two vocal parts for two different tracks. At this point we were allowed to open our envelope's and we saw this:
So the first track he cues up is the 25 min epic with the working title of "The Pumpkin King." he tells us it'll be in a 6/8 feel with big loud "HEY!"s on 4 (1-2-3-HEY-5-6). tempo similar to the end of ITNoG. We recorded 2-3 of those with regular shouts as loud as we could, then we did 2 with "cookiemonster" vocals. let me tell you, this part we were chanting over was FUCKING \m/. We needed a few keepers so that they could double/triple it to make irt sound like >100 people.
After that we went on to a track that I'm 99% sure was called Prophets of War, but my mind is a little jumbled and crazy right now. The part was in 4/4 with us saying one of those words (lyrics by JLB) above on 1 for 3 measures and then a full measure rest (TIME-2-3-4, FOR-2-3-4, CHANGE-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, FIGHT-2-3-4 etc). The part we were singing over was more straightforward, in the wien of the chorus of SS, but a little more \m/. We did a few takes of that in normal and cookiemonster. The MP had us record a few saying ASS AND BALLS instead of each of the 4 lines, which was :lol. The the engineer (guy who worked on Moving Pictures, Operation Mindcrime and others) suggested that we do one with everyone saying a different single-syllable word of their choice on the 1, to make it sound more likea large crowd were not every single sound is enunciated perfectly clearly. That was fucking :rollin. Heard alot of "cock, dick, shit." I said, HAM AND CHEESE, RAPE SMALL BOYS, WHERE'S MY CAR, and DO NOT WANT. damn i'm horse from all that growling and yelling.
Once that was done Mike thanked us all and said since we've been so good he's gonna give us an album taste!!!! OMGOMGOMGOMG!!111one
He then proceeded to play the first track of the record which was around 8 min. Unmixed, vocals not all done, but wow, this was seriously fucking cool. It's a blur right now, and it all happened so quickly, but it starts with a really cool syncopated riff with Jordan coming in for some long sustains with crazy/cool sounds (might have been continum), then it kicks in to an awesomely progressive riff fest with interesting melodic sections, climaxing in a long, fast, beautiful ascending pattern before coming down to a mellow section that honestly reminded me of Awake in some ways. There would probably be vocals over this section, but they weren't done. I only remember certain parts at this point. There was a Toolish riff circa lateralus, but nowhere near "rip-off" territory, and once MP came in with a cool beat it lost almost all it's toolishness. All I can concretely remember after that was a jaw-dropping JP part toward the end of the track that was honestly crazier than anything he did fromToT, but this time it wasn;t just a guitar exercise played at 200bpm. it had the soul of the end of 8VM with the fury of the solo in AIA. Just awesome. by the time I hear the final version I will have probably forgotten most of it, and I'm sure some people who were there have commited a bunch of the vocals to memory. I have not, so look elsewhere for that (I remember that the phrase "worship me" was repeated). Stunned we all filed out of the studio and got shit signed by MP. Most got their lyrics sheet signed by him, while I got this signed:
Unfortunately none of our names will appear in the linear notes. MP even said that they don't thank their friends anymore, just family. Something about space or whatever, but I didn't mind. I felt so priveledged to be 1 of 50 DT fans worldwide who got this opportunity. You guys can be sure that I gave it my all in there, as did most, it was special.
Steph, I feel so bad about all the crapthat happened. I hope you didn't assume that getting their at 1 would be ok, but I understand why you might have. It made me even more pissed off when I noticed that this chick in there with her boyfriend was barely singing at all. That could've been someone else who would have killed to get in there. It's a damned shame.
Arry', saw you too, sorry buddy.
Great day, won't soon forget it.
some people never cease to make me laugh.
