Force Majeure in session

Closure: the end... or actually just the beginning.

2011-02-27T08:12:00.002+02:00

Hello boys and girls!

Long time no see. Sorry for the deadly silence over the few past months. No excuses. At the beginning of January we finally finished our massive work that is the second album by Force Majeure. We recorded a total of 11 new Force tracks, more than 63minutes worth of music. The quickest of you might have calculated that the average track length is approx 5min 40sec. Some distortion to this figure is brought by the two epics of the album. Other is 9+ minutes and the other one which will be title track of the album reaching almost 12 minutes.

We got pretty much the total package ready, even artwork. Stunning stuff... wait and see. Currently we are negotiating and finding out the best ways for you to get your hands on this future classic album. :) So patience my young followers of Force!

Visitors are welcome

2010-08-20T13:16:00.000+03:00

Hail to thee, mighty warrior of metal and steel! I had the pleasure to visit the studio again. It has been a while since I was there, then it was snowy and freezing cold (Perfect weather for creating an album filled with arctic Finnish power metal). Anyway, this time I was on a mission from Jussi to supervise and arrange some female voice parts for a song or two.. And yes, we had a woman in the studio! The lovely and super-awesome Alexa Leroux from the amazing band called Shear. She was kind enough to lend her beautiful voice for our album, which had been screaming for a woman's touch for some time now. Some pervy 90's eurodisco wibes do the trick, let me tell ya! We nailed the needed parts in no time and left our beloved John Van Huikka back to his other projects. Big thanks to Alexa!!

As you can see from the guestlist, the album is gonna be epic and grand, but all the special guest appearances are used to spice things up a notch, not to make it sound like a Metal Opera. It's still us, the Forcemolinos rocking it out. Just a little bit of backing vocals to go and we should be ready to mix!!

Bass, Sex & Satan, everybody!
-Jake

Ankkaa on joskus vaikea käsitellä

2010-07-22T09:16:00.004+03:00

Good day, ladies and gentlemen!

Once again we've been in radio silence for a while, sorry 'bout that! The album is shaping up pretty nicely. A couple of days ago Ricky finished the backing vocals. There's some vocal parts (still thanks to Mr. Blom) that remind me of good old bands like Kansas and Journey. Sometimes a bag of old tricks sounds more fresh than basic bag of new tricks! Stunning indeed.

We also did some narration parts with Mr. Marc David Taylor who dropped by to lend his "trailer voice". Good job and a nice guy, many thanks from Force camp! And a native speaker is always a native speaker - so no "rallienglanti" this time :)

We've reached the finish line for this recording session, phew! Finally, it's been quite a rough journey but meanwhile we've had much fun and the result will be more than rewarding. Okay, there's still a couple of visitor parts coming up and some acoustic guitars but we're on the last 10 meters before the finish line. I can't wait to finish this and wait the day when all of you people can hear the new Force album.

Peace out,

Jussi Reuhkala

Caught Somewhere in Studio

2010-05-27T08:33:00.002+03:00

Proceedings in the Force Majeure land: the light at the end of a tunnel is growing bigger. And it's not a train. It's a kick ass album.

There's still some keyboards and some backing vocals to do. And there's also some "visitor parts" left to do. We have outsourced some parts to people who we want to lend talent from. Mr. Kimmo Blom dropped by to do some backing vocals. It's always nice to observe pro people at work. One evening and backing vocals to 10 songs done. That's what I call professionalism. Almost everything with first take. And Kimmo hadn't heard the songs before the session. Thumps up and thanks from the FM camp to Kimmo.

I think that the album is shaping up to be a quite versatile. A couple of long and epic songs, one speedy, nasty and a bit trashy song. A couple of more traditional ones and no ballads this time. We're so sorry ladies ;) The Scorpions has done all the ballads worth to mention so no need to compete on that area.

The point of this writing was that we'll be on your home stereo. Sooner or later. Until then, keep checking our site and blog. And see you hopefully in the aftermath of Saturday's Sauna Open Air, 12th of June. We'll be playing some new songs in NKM metal fest at YO-talo. Be there.

Men Who Stare at Goatse

2010-04-30T08:33:00.014+03:00

Howdy hoy boys and girls!

We had a nice and very productive studio day a couple of days ago. Last wednesday was among the best studio days of the whole session. Nice! Ricky did suberb lead vocals for three songs and John "myöhässä kolme akateemista varttia" Huigur and I nailed keyboards for one song. This particular track got some new feel to it due to atmospheric keyboards and renewed chorus that Ricky nailed.

Asim Shearah of The Nibiruan dropped by to do some special guest starring in one song. Asim's parts added just the flavor we wanted. So many thanks to Asim!

Also our dear all-around man and friend Mr. T. Talvikunnas dropped by to take some photos. Here's some pics that was caught "on film":

Ricky concentrating.

Singing booth.

Suit man is let loose from office to nail some bass.

Producer chair feat Kusipaeae.

Fisting the world.

Rear view :)

Caffeine, caffeine... and what else?

Coffee and cheap sunglasses.

And for those of you who wonder about the title of this post... find out yourself :) No, actually it's about us staring thru the glass the goat cheese salad of cafe picnik.

JR

HIRRMYINEN NÖITÄ!

2010-04-25T09:08:00.003+03:00

Hello there, people of the universal interweb!

Again, sorry for the lack of updates in this diary. Our humble excuse this time is that we've put our energy on the creation process of our second album. The album is starting to shape up - some vocals, backing vocals and keyboards are still on the works. And, oh yes, some special guest appearances coming up. Nice.

One demo of a new FM track "Blizzard" is featured on Finnish radio Radio Rocks page. http://beta.radiorock.fi/?iid=829 Check it out if you and vote if you feel so. Most of all: (like Paramore would say) Mosh, Mosh, Mosh!

Next week I´ll promise to add some new pics and maybe some video footage. We got some crappy quality footage filmed and perhaps I´ll make some kind of crappy montage out of them... We'll see!
-JR-

Scream for me Kanapekoniparilapatonki!

2010-03-01T06:35:00.002+02:00

Saturday morning at noon me and Eemeli met at our rehersalroom and loaded the car with two tomtoms with wornout heads, couple of snare drums and some empty paint cans kindly provided by Tikkurila Oy, and drove straight into the studio with the latest Freedom Call album blasting out of the car stereo! Our aim was to be there at 12.30 but as written in the wind our beloved engineer & co-producer John Stamos Huikka was not in the premises yet, so we chose to start the day with fresh coffee and "kanapekoniparilapatonki" at Cafe Picnic.

Ricky Tournee joined us with his brand new haircut anxious to start recording the vocals for the album. After finishing our breakfast Huikka showed up and led us down to the basement and we got down to business. Ricky started with the song called OMG which will soon be found among the greatest songs in the book of Power-Metal. After few warm-up takes Rickys famous cutting voice was hot and ready to record. He nailed the tune in no time with myself, Eemeli and Huikka acting as producers helping him out with the vocal arangements and sharing our views and ideas to get the best possible performance out of him. It seemed to work really smoothly.

After Ricky had finished his parts, the rest of us started to set up the percussion arsenal in order to record some tribal drum parts for the song known as "Kebab-Ahtisaari-Turkish". Of course you cannot do tribal drums with out some company, so I called my friend and fellow drummer Letku to help me out and stomp some cans with me. After having lunch at the famous restaurant Vega, we grabbed some beers and started to bang the shit out of the percussion set we had set up. It was amazingly fun and it seemed to fit into the song really well. A few beers later we had it and we were ready to head downtown for a wild night out!

- Jake Rattlesnake

Taking the Lead

2010-02-22T10:02:00.008+02:00

A lot has happened since the last update. We've been busy (read: too lazy) to update this blog every time something happens in the studio. Sorry bout that but better later than never, huh?

As I'm writing this, only few lead guitar licks are missing. We've played rest of the leads in several evenings during the this month. There's parts with four lead guitar tracks running at the same time (2 in unison but from different positions and 2 in harmony) so this pretty much more than triples the work. But hey, the effort can be heard from the end result. There's also some new stuff coming up we've never recorded before, eg. the double guitar solo (= two different solos simultaneously) in one song.

True posing

E lays down a lick of the century

John Huikka produces, E sweeps

Smile! You're on candid studio cam!

In addition, we've recorded already some keyboards played again by JR and John Huikka. We have also recorded demo vocals for all tracks in order to fine tune the vocal arrangements to the max. The vocal sessions will start this week so everything's proceeding and we're getting... to somewhere :)

We also did a "break-out-from-studio-type-of-a-gig". Here's some evidence of that... Thanks to Joelpeer, Tapio and Toni.
Metalscope's pics

Papa, I'm Coming Home

2010-01-22T07:27:00.002+02:00

Wednesday 20.1.2010

After a month break we're back at the studio. The first day after the break was an easy one. It lasted only 1h. The aim was to record a guest starring vocal thingie from Mr. Wilska and so we did.

It's always nice to see pro people at work. Wilska did his part in less than 30 minutes and he sounded as cool as always.

Next we'll continue with the rest of the lead guitars and vocals. Yea!

CLEANing out the closet

2009-12-21T08:36:00.008+02:00

Day 1 - Clean guitars Tuesday 15th of December

Alrighty then folks, we got a day spared for clean guitars that will be featured in couple of songs on the album. Usually we have done clean guitars in a haste when there's only few hours of studio time left. But this time we really wanted to focus on finding the best possible sound that will suit each song. After some heavy knob turning, we were ready to record and got what we wanted: cold sounding clean tone that will send shivers down to your spine :)

Tuomas was also present and we decided to goof around a bit by recording some sound effect like bass licks by plugging bass into guitar amp. The results can be heard from the album.

Setting the Sound

Adding the finishing touch to the sound

Cleaning the Tone

Huikka producing, Tuomas demolishing Cheeseballs

Listening to take

The Statement :)

Rap artist Kuivaliha from the ghetto of Salla

Hungarian Moussaka

2009-12-14T08:07:00.005+02:00

Day 4 - Bass Thursday 10th of December

Thursday was the last day for the bass recordings. Among the songs that were recorded is already previously mentioned Ilokaasu metal track. This one has much space for some groovy bass licks - thus Tuomas had much fun recording it. At least, judging by the swearing and banging that he did with head and bass on the wall.

After the day, the basses for FM's second album were done and it was time for some refreshing beer.

"This take sounds like a hungarian moussaka"

GRRR

It's easy to pose when the basses are on tape

Basisti - rumpalin ujo ystävä

2009-12-10T09:03:00.007+02:00

Day 3 - Bass Wednesday 9th of December

Day three for bass recordings and six songs to go. On Wednesday Tuomas nailed the remaining three of "Eemeli's songs". One of those is a song that can be labelled as honest testicles-in-your-face power metal. Usually bass players settle with these kinds of songs to back up the double bass drums but Tuomas is such an ambitious bassist that he came up with great lead like bass riff for the double bass drum parts. Like they would say on Myspace: "Mood: ecstatic"!

Bending it like Bender

H-Metal or no Romanian hobo metal at all!

Eemeli is starting to feel the combined studio and X-mas depression

Basso Kalinainen

2009-12-10T08:28:00.007+02:00

Day 2 - Bass Tuesday 8th of December

It's always a wonder what a decent sleep can do to you. One word comes to mind when descriping our feelings on Tuesday: "rebirth".

KevytOlo pretty much sums it all up in this pic

Among the three songs that Tuomas nailed on Tuesday was the 10min+ epic of the album. Oh boy, how the rattling sound of bass strings sounded good in this one. We also did some experimental effect stuff by doubling some bass riffs and then reversing them. Pretty basic stuff but it sounds really cool. This one's gonna be epic :D

Tuomas playing the lead bass. Rhythm basses will be recorded later ;)

Da Beis is always in perfect tune

Bass Hard - Lupa länkyttää

2009-12-10T07:45:00.005+02:00

Day 1 - Bass Monday 7th of December

Allrighty then, time for the bass recordings which started on Monday 7th of December. Since Sunday the 6th was the Independence day in Finland - everybody had been celebrating it thoroughly - we allowed us to take a smooth start for the bass sessions.

The desired sound was found pretty easily. Tuomas plugged the bass in and that's pretty much it. Okay, some knobs were turned just a little because Tuomas decided that this time we'd go with cleaner bass sound with just a hint of distortion to add some
flavour.

After 1 and half songs it was time to go home and hit the sack to start the next day with fresh minds, unshaky fingers and clean underwear.

Tuomas posing unintentionally DiMaioishly

For some reason, we were thirsty

Coffee, Vodka and Tabasco

2009-11-30T10:30:00.007+02:00

Day 5 - rhythm guitars Friday 27th of November

The last day for rhythm guitars and two songs and a shorter, intro like song to be recorded. We decided to open with the fastest & heaviest song on the album and the end result was stunning. This one's gonna kill!

On the whole the guitars sound cool and we can't wait to continue with bass recordings next week.

Haisuli (Stinky) acted as producer

Jynkkä got the blues

Tuomas dropped in to show how it should done

After the guitars were done, Eemeli went to the corner to shame and is there still! :)

Weights, boobs & heavy metal

2009-11-30T10:01:00.004+02:00

Day 4 - rhythm guitars Thursday 26th of November

On Thursday there were more guitars to be done. We did rhythm guitars to three tracks and everything went smoothly. After a rather long day full of hours just downpicking the riffs it was nice to grap a cold beer with numb hands and sore muscles.

Special event for thursday was some production work that we did for the chorus melodies in two songs. It's never too late to change things :)

After a short brainstorming session the album cover and name was created

Heavy Metal Doctors analyzing the guitar flapboard

Studio wanking, pt2

Ison koiran haukahdus

2009-11-28T23:43:00.005+02:00

Day 3 - rhythm guitars Wednesday 25th of November

The third day for rhythm guitars and we noticed that we are a bit late on schedule. How to fix it? The answer is to start the recording of additional song at 23.58 and nail the 10+ min song with few takes. Tiredness makes you play faster.

Eemeli prays to goddess of coffee to keep us alive

Jynkkä with his lightning fast fingers

Kings of nordic Lohnotus

2009-11-28T22:50:00.008+02:00

Day 2 - rhythm guitars Tuesday 24th of November

Tuesday was the second day of rhythm guitars. Huikka our co-producer and studio engineer invented a new word "lohnotus" which is a good ambiguous phrase for almost everything in guitar playing. This word became an instant hit so it's time to spread the word. Literally. For those about to Lohno - We salute you!

On tuesday we nailed two songs. Other one was the slowest song on the album which makes you desire a good Iskender kebab. And with the help of Iskender the mighty, all the flavours blended into perfect song of Sish Metal.

Thanks to our friend Mr. T.Talvikunnas who visited us on Tuesday to take some studio shots. Some of the results of this session, can be seen in this diary.

Jussi aka Jynkkä Malmsteen

Eemeli aka Pet Strutsi

Heavy metal, man!

Paksut vinkuu tykimmin

2009-11-23T23:21:00.004+02:00

Day 1 -rhythm guitars Monday 23th of November

Hello there folks! It's time to update the studio diary because rhythm guitar sessions started today. As always, first day is for the sound - to make it right. This time we had dragged Marshall and Krank cabinets (those interested in more specific models, see pics that are coming up later) to studio. Marshall JMV410H, Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier and Peavey 6505 were the alternatives for amps.

The winner combination this time was Peavey 6505 with Krank cabinet. The rhythm guitar sound is clear but crunchy, tasty yet delicious (and so on...). It took some time to test all the amps with two cabinets but it was worth it. Clean guitars will propably be done with Marshall amp and cabinet.

After the sound was approved to be diamond hard, it was time to start the guitaring. We decided to take it easy and nail only one song which went down without problems. We're on right tracks!

Special thanks to following:

Sakke from Coredust for lending your precious Krank, thanks man!
Mr. Lahti for checking and fixing Jussi's and Eemeli's guitar, the tune is perfect!

PS. Those of you who know Finnish may wonder about the title of this post. It's about thick guitar strings and how pinch harmonics are easier to play with thicker strings :D

Studio wanking

Guitar stuff

Peavey 6505 as amp and Marshall as a stand :)

Those whom the gods digest

2009-11-13T23:04:00.013+02:00

Day 6 - Drums Tuesday 10th of November

Tuesday was the last day for drum recordings and drums for two songs were undone at the beginning of the day.

Jake "Mr. Riddlemachine" Nylund nailed the first track and the second epic of the album was saved to be the last song to be recorded. Despite the fact that we we're in a small hurry to get the song done, we decided to do some last minute arranging in form of tempo changes to the middle sections of the song. Classic!

Now the drums are done and we have ca. 60 minutes of new Force drumming on tape. SSwweet!

Check out the video diarrhea here:

Coming up next - the rhythm guitars

Tuomas with the axes

Bon Johnham

2009-11-13T23:02:00.004+02:00

Day 5 - Drums Monday 9th of November

Monday was pretty much alike than other studio days. Jake nailed two of the hardest songs on the album, other is the fastest and heaviest track and other is fast and pretty technical.

Some problems were caused by the bass drum trigger that we are using for Jake to hear the bass drum while playing. The trigger failed us for the second time and this time we hadn't spare parts. To F-Musiikki and fast. New trigger and we were good to continue.

Jake posing

Jake posing igen

Rytmiryhmä

The producers

Weasels ripped my flesh

2009-11-13T23:00:00.003+02:00

Day 4 - Drums Sunday 8th of November

Sunday was dedicated for the drums of the first of the two epic tracks that will be on the album. With a length of three “normal” songs, there was a lot of drums to play but Jake nailed this track amazingly. Everybody’s pretty excited to get to play their instruments to this one. It’s gonna be epic, let me tell ya!

Krapula art

Backseat view

Take analysis

The world's most thoroughly researched bacteria

2009-11-13T22:58:00.004+02:00

Day 3 - Drums Saturday 7th of November

With fresh energy, Jake started the recording of a song tentatively titled as Disco Hit (which basically describes what this song is about). Recordings went smoothly but after the second song there was a minor setback – Jake had beaten the crap out of his snare's brand new skin and we had no spare. Then the only decision was to continue tomorrow. Everybody was just happy because then it was time to raise the difficulty level by acquiring a decent hangover for the next day.

Günther Thomann in action

Laminated Huikka

Doku-mentalist Tuomas

Sweating like a Rapist

2009-11-13T22:54:00.005+02:00

Day 2 - DrumsFriday 6th of November

On Friday Jake started the recording sessions with a song tentatively titled as OMG. This song includes pretty fast drumming but Jake nailed it easily. Two more songs were also recorded in Friday. The other will make FM a household name in Ilokaasu Metal genre. Be alerted!

The last song for Friday was the song with the slowest tempo in the album. This song also contains some traditional eastern riffs – it’s gonna be classic in Kebab houses all over the world!

After the day filled with hard work we were all sweating like rapists. Sweating Ballets!

Jake the Rattlesnake in action

Pose!

Thru the looking glass

Kahdeksan banaanin Terttu

2009-11-13T22:47:00.006+02:00

Day 1 - Drums Thursday 5th of November

Thursday was the first actual studio day – the d-day when the action was about to start. On Thursday evening Jake started setting up the drums and Huikka, our recording engineer and co-producer, put up the drum recording gear.

Mikko “Junior” Pietinen from Happiness came to tune Jake's drums into perfect shape. Great work, many thanks to him! Since we started late in the evening, the first studio day was for getting the sound in place. Close to midnight, everything was perfect for the actual recording to start on Friday.

Check out the first part of video diarrhea here:

For all you equipment freaks out there

For all you freaks, pt2

Studio wanking

The Farmi Pro Experience

2009-11-13T22:45:00.002+02:00

Wednesday 4th of November

The kick off for the recording sessions of the second album by Force Majeure happened on Wednesday evening when we shipped Jake's massive drum gear from our rehearsal lair to the Scandal Recording studio, located in Helsinki, Finland.

Since we've been concentrating on rehearsing new songs lately (i.e. no gigs), so everybody had missed some “Farmi Pro Action” what Wednesday evening provided for us. How nice!

Eemeli likes the Meininki!