Blaakyum's Blog upgraded to website

Good day fans and friends. Blaakyum is about to lunch it's Debut album and just like any hard working band, internet has become a major part of a band's life, for other young bands out there, let us give you few tips:

Many young bands today say: "we have facebook, myspace, reverbnation, and all these endless social network sites, a web page is not really important" Well, True that most fans and promoters, talent scouts and business industry representatives, check social networks for new talents, but when a band catch a label's eyes and/or ears, the first thing they do is go to their website, and see how serious the band is, your website reflects a certain amount of dedication and seriousness, the more interesting it looks the more it reflects what the band is. Now this is definitely not a black and white issue, many great bands don't even have websites, and many fancy websites belong to bands who are not really original, talented or interesting, but let us put it this way, a fancy website for a mediocre band might not even be a target and won't receive traffic from talent scouts and label representatives, while a good band would miss a chance of giving a more positive image of itself if those people decided to check their website.
So a better website is always a plus in your band's promotion packages, sometimes it might be the small feather that tip the balance to your band's side.

So since this is the case, and since Blaakyum was way to busy with it's individual members lives and music scene that it had not had enough time to work on a proper site. We kept the minimum required by having a blog as our official website. This is about to change.

Just like a full length album a, "full length" website is due, but because of our album release deadline and so much pressure and so little budget, we will keep a "full length" website for later, but we will upgrade this blog to a blog/site within few days.

Cheers,

Bassem Deaibess,
Blaakyum

Blaakyum's Bassist and Co-reformer Rany Battikh review

I've passed by the studio yesterday to listen to Bassem's takes and he sounds better than ever. I thought he couldn't hit those high pitched screams anymore, I was dead wrong plus he's using new techniques that I've never heard him do before. (I'm a bad influence I know!)

The drums sounds great the way it is right now and it's still raw, nothing has been processed yet. I'm starting to wonder how great will it turn out to be when the mixing is done. For those who haven't heard Jad yet, you will be extremely pleased.

Elias' solos are amazing as usual and the rest of the guitars sound just like "Blaakyum", just like when we were setting our different sounds definitions back in 2007. (You'll know what I mean when you'll listen to the album)

Rany.

The Road is Paved, The Thunder Roars, and the Tracks are Laid

Finally the vocal recording process has kicked off, we have laid the foundation for four songs... All in all we have 11 (out of 13) tracks on our debut that has lyrics, 10 of them are full songs and one is an instrumental with a small vocal section. So now we have 4 out of these 11 recorded... And the results are satisfactory taking into consideration that I wasn't at all happy with my voice lately and it's very slow recovery pace... But we have finally reached the minimum accepted.
The growling parts are particularly great, by being forced to sing in a different way due to the fact that I cannot use my full vocal range yet (under treatment) I was able to mess around with my growling Technic and use a more "angry" approach, maybe because I am so angry of the fact that I cannot use my voice to it's full potential as I use to.
I know that bands usually do not go into delicate details with their fans, but as the frontman of Blaakyum and a person who is rarely satisfied with anything less than 90% perfect, it does make me feel a bit better getting this whole frustration off my chest... The Vocal recording is going very well, finishing 4 songs in less than 24 hours is actually a very positive thing and I cannot wait till we start the mixing process, then the mastering, and the deadline is getting close...

Because of my vocals problem setback, we were debating the possibility of delaying our release deadline. That is something we do not want to do. With the determination of our Co-producer and audio/sound/mix engineer Mr. Karim Noujaim, we will be ready before our deadline, if the gods of the Thunder and the Rain allows it, and they WILL \m/

Thank you all for the support.

Bassem Deaibess

Update on our Recording Process

Since our last recording status update was over a month and a half, you're definitely expecting an explanation, well here it is:

We have been recording the orchestral parts of the album, as some of you might have noticed through the Youtube clip we have uploaded for Am I Black Orchestration in studio... As for the vocals recording, that had to wait because of my vocals recovery problem, I know a lot of you are sick of hearing excuses, this is no excuse. I had a set back, I almost lost my voice completely for few weeks, and I am under heavy treatment, although I am not engaging in my full treatment before I finish recording the album and perform my two dates with Communion who are about to announce their comeback, usually bands do not share so much information with their fans, but who the fuck set the rules?!?! :)

To cut it short, after recording few songs, the band and I were not satisfied of the outcome, so we stopped the vocal recording and I started my vocal treatment, and in the mean time we continued recording the orchestration, which is not done yet due to the complexity of the process, but it is going out well and we will have a different thread on that. On Sunday (today) I will be entering the studio again to lay the vocal tracks finally after my voice has recovered a little bit, I am still not even at half my potential voice, but I am allowed to exhaust my voice a bit for the record, so... here we go...

Keep Metal Alive \m/

Bassem Deaibess