All Rise for the Lord Of The Night

Dear fans, friends, partners, haters and enemies,

Cutting Room Studios Sweden

 Lord Of The Night will soon be born, we are off to the final stage: The Mastering.
Blaakyum is proud to announce that it is mastering its album at Cutting Room Studios Sweden, and that its Master Mastering Engineer Mr. Björn Engelmann will be mastering the album in the few upcoming days.

Mr. Engelmann owner of Cutting Room Studios has mastered endless bands such as: Adagio, Behemoth, Bloodoath, Hypocrisy, In Flames, Meshuggah, Rammstein, Salem, Gorgoroth, Samael, Sonata Arictica, and Lake of Tears among others...

About Mr. Björn Engelmann:

Owner & Chief Mastering Engineer, he has been mastering audio since 1980 and took over from the original owners who started the company in 1978. Beginning with vinyl mastering, Björn has never left his first love of the analog mastering equipment. A long discography through the years and the confidence from the major record labels, Björn has lead the way for Scandinavian music in the realm of mastering.

We Shall Rise \m/

Studio Camp

This is Bassem Deaibess reporting to you live from the Alchemist Studios, where Blaakyum has deployed a temporary camp, working 24/24 around the clock to get the album mixing done before the 21st of this month so that it can find its way to the final mastering stage.

The Mastering Engineer name and Studio will be announced soon... But before that, we need to get the mix as good as possible. Now with the limited resources we have, we are doing a good job, opting to record everything in an analog like manner, not using any VSTs or Drum samples but rather recording the drums guitars and bass live was not an easy task, and it is true, you have to aim extremely high to get as close as possible to what you want. Sometimes I wondered why can't we get a killer sound like the ones in Master of Puppets, Black Album, Foundation of Damnation, and the likes... the answer is obvious though it has escaped me for too long, well, we do not have strong amps like for example the mighty Mesa/Boogie, for example: James Hetfield "discovered that utilizing the midrange frequencies straight from a modified Marshall amplifier, layered over guitar tracks of his trusty Mesa/Boogie MarkIIC+ as well as the Mesa/Boogie MarkIV, plus an ADA MP-1 preamp and a Mesa/Boogie Strategy 400 poweramp, he would get a much thicker and richer tone. He enhanced the frequencies by enclosing his four Marshall 1960B speaker cabinets with foam walls and U-Haul blankets, and carefully phase-canceled particular frequencies with eight closely-positioned microphones and two ambient condenser microphones." Ok so this is advanced alchemy... Nor do we have the all mighty Warhead Randall amps to use, add to it the fact that in the good old days overdubbing was required to achieve that heavy crunch, something digital recording has fucked up quite a bit in small studios...

So we had to be content with the few not bad equipments we have, specially the lovely little

Randall RH50T Half Stack that was used to record all the rhythm parts. One little amp for the whole sound we want, almost was an impossible mission, so there we are, I have moved to the studio, spending all my time here, our engineer Mr. Karim Noujaim consecrating all his time and energy for the mixdown, band members join every now and then, work around the clock, this is so exciting, fun and exhausting... And we hope you will enjoy listening to our album as much as we enjoyed creating it, blending it, and bring it alive with the best we can... Hail to Heavy Metal, the mighty Iron Fist of the Gods

Bassem Deaibess,
Blaakyum

The Alchemist

Definitely mixing a song is like preparing a magic potion, yes yes the likes of Getafix's potions (From Asterix, in French known as Panoramix)!! It is such an art, really sound and mix engineers are as artistic as any musician, and the action of mixing a song, is subjective, with endless possibilities and variables, and a Mix Engineer like any other musician can be an amateur, a professional or a virtuoso!! And we are lucky to have someone as pro and as artistic as Mr. Noujaim.
What can I say about the mixing process? Hectic, time consuming, and totally unhealthy when you have a deadline and squeezing months worth of work into not weeks but days... BUT it is such a pleasure, that you'd really feel like an alchemist of old; Welcome apprentice, to modern days Alchemist Scholarly Wizard practices \m/
The work is going great, and with every fine tuning of new sound in a song, the thrill goes up, you'd never know what to expect when you tweak -0.08 db in the mix, or when you slightly lower that noisy fat 80Kh frequency!!! Thrilling is all that... Magic at it's best... And the results are getting better and better... What is being cooked IS delicious. And the results are on their way to the final stage.

One more thing to add, is the orchestration, specially of the first and last tracks,  these two tracks are being heavily orchestrated (the last track actually is simply a symphonic tune that does not include any band instrument, purely Orchestra), and it sounds to us as much as we hope it would sound to you, majestic, royal, classical and very soundtrack like... We cannot wait to release our wrath and unleash our worst fears, love, pain, anger, and aggression upon the world... The day of Judgement is nigh, and the Judge of all times, the Lord Of The Night shall enter, and as they say in court: ALL RISE \m/

Bassem Deaibess,
Blaakyum

Blaakyum's Blogsite is up

Our blog has turned into a fresh looking website, this Blog/website have all the information you need about up-coming events, videos, pictues, and Album details, and thus we call it a Blogsite.

Have no mistake this blogsite IS the official Blaakyum's website. A more professional website will be up after our album release, but for now all our time is being spent in the studio and on the road to get everything ready and done with, before January Friday the 13th.

We hope you enjoy it.


BLAAKYUM

A word From our Mix Engineer and Co-Producer

Soldier of Fortune, Karim Noujaim

Finally I’m done pushing the record button for the drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals, and I believe we have it all. We really enjoyed these moments that developed a solid friendship and that will most likely be unforgettable for me and the band.

For the last 5 days I’ve been working on “Battle Roar” with Blaakyum, trying different processes for their instruments figuring out how all will be mixed together, compromising on how each band member likes the sound of his instrument, the way the production and me like the sound of the instruments, and the way they came all together. I can say that these last days were really constructive and we finally have a sound we like.

I hope you’ll enjoy “Battle Roar” while we’re polishing it and adding the final touches to it and while we’re working hard to finish Blaakyum’s album that will soon be released as scheduled and mentioned earlier.

The wait is over, it’s happening.
Karim Noujaim

You can listen to the un-mastered version of Battle Roar here


Battle Roar (First Edition, Un-mastered version)





12:55 AM 4th of December 2011

Final Recording Track Laid and Mixing Started

Yesterday Thursday the 1st of December is marked as the day I have finished recording my vocal takes and the end of the long process of recording (that took us three years to get the line up fixed, the gear right and the studio and engineer right).

Enter the Mixdown realm of magic, subjectivity and adventure... This is the first time I actually produce a full length album, and the first time I realise how enjoyable, annoying, and artistic is the work of a Audio Mix Engineer.
The results are satisfying and we have picked up the pace... We are going to attack soon... so be ware of the beast... \m/




Bassem Deaibess,
Blaakyum