This week, Orange Goblin frontman Ben Ward reveals that tracking for the band’s new album (no title revealed yet) is complete and that mixing has begun. As such, it’s sad to say, but the series of studio updates is coming to a close. One more next week, and then we’ll actually have to sit and wait for the record to come out next March, which suddenly feels a really long time away.

Thanks once again to Ward for sending in these updates and photos. If you’ve missed past installments, you can find them here. Orange Goblin is Ward, guitarist Joe Hoare, bassist Martyn Millard and drummer Chris Turner. The new album is being produced by Jaime Dodd at The Animal Farm studio in South London. Here’s the latest:

Orange Goblin – Album Recording – Week 5

OK, so these blogs are getting harder and harder to write as week by week we get less and less to do and there is more and more sitting around whilst Jamie [Dodd, engineer] starts setting up mixes. So this week I’m gonna take you back to last Tuesday when I sent the recorded files off to Craig Riggs from Roadsaw at his studio in Boston. We’d all been very keen to have Riggs involved in this album with some backing vocals so when he agreed, we couldn’t wait to hear what he’d done. By Friday evening he’d starting returning the files and I have to say we were all blown away by what he’d done. It sounds great! First thing Saturday morning and Jamie had uploaded all of Riggs’ work into the mix and everything was right with the world! It was just Joe and I at the studio again as Martyn has flown out to Egypt for a two week holiday with his girlfriend and Chris was at home looking after his boys.

Both Joe and I got to work and I finished the last vocal track (“Return to Mars”) and Joe put all the finishing touches to his guitar parts so we were all done tracking!! This led to a mini-celebration involving large amounts of cider, beer and that dreaded pizza again (which isn’t so bad after said amounts of cider!). As we started getting ready for mixing, there was much swearing and shouting at the TV as Liverpool crashed to their first defeat of the season in the football. I think this was all a little bit odd for the photographer that turned up to do some shots for a Terrorizer magazine studio report and the guy from Jagermeister who turned up to interview Joe and I about the recording process so far! Despite this we all went home happy and ready to start recording keyboards first thing on Sunday morning.

Chris was back today but Joe wasn’t around as he had to attend a Christening. We were expecting to get the keyboards down today but unfortunately, Matt, the keyboard player couldn’t make it (he’s coming in to do it next weekend now!), so Chris and I sat around very, very bored whilst Jamie went over and over the same song adjusting snare drums sounds, cymbals, kick drums and all that kind of stuff!! We didn’t hang around too long, preferring to leave it in Jamie’s capable hands. We have one more full weekend of mixing to do next week (and the keyboards) and then it will be complete. I think a week away from these songs will do us all good now as we are bordering on overkill at the moment. So, next week will be the last report and then the process of mastering and preparing the artwork and planning a marketing campaign begins, all leading up to the release of this album in March, 2012!

Ben Ward, 14th September, 2011

Looks like things are starting to wind down for our heroes The Goblins. As vocalist Ben Ward reports, the recording is almost finished for the band’s as-yet-untitled seventh studio album, and once that’s completed, it’s on to mixing and glory. It’s been great keeping up with Ward‘s reports, and this one’s no exception. In it, he details wrapping up the guitars, vocal recording, a pride-bursting photo shoot, and much more.

If you missed past installments, click here. Orange Goblin is Ward, guitarist Joe Hoare, bassist Martyn Millard and drummer Chris Turner. Please enjoy this latest update:

Orange Goblin — Album Recording – Week 4

We’d had another week to prepare for the recording again and we all arrived bright and early Saturday morning ready for a photo shoot. Our good friend Oran Tarjan turned up to take the shots and we spent a few hours around the studio complex doing shoots in various locations. As the day wore on a massive crowd of teenage girls had gathered at the studio gates and we were convinced they must all be there to catch a glimpse of their heroes Orange Goblin! It was only a bit later on that we found out that a young boy-band were shooting a video in the studio next door and they weren’t waiting for our autographs after all! With our egos in tatters, Joe set about getting a large chunk of his work done before I got down to some work, allowing the rest of the band to make suggestions for certain parts and we ended up with two more songs finished, both of which are very different from my normal vocal delivery. This album is really taking shape and it’s dawning on us all that there is some stuff that we have never really tried before but all agree that it works really well and I think the OG fans will like it too. Chris finished all his percussion parts (MORE COWBELL!!!) and we resisted the urge to order yet another nasty pizza from the only place in South East London willing to deliver to us, in favour of finishing early and going home for a decent meal! This seemed like a great idea until Joe, my son Max and I got stuck in massive traffic jams due to some rioters clashing with the police in Mile End and all the roads being closed. At least my son had fun counting the police riot vans rushing to the scene! We eventually got home and A LOT of ice cold beer soon helped me forget the traffic misery!

Sunday was more of the same, really, so not a great deal to report, except that Chris wasn’t in as he was celebrating his seventh wedding anniversary by taking his wife out for the day and Martyn showed up before heading off to a party which was also being attended by Su Pollard of Hi-De-Hi fame (…don’t ask!) During Martyn’s brief stay he did crack us up with his tales of woe which involved ranting about inappropriate party attire, overpriced, deflated balloons and a very expensive melted birthday cake. Joe and I eventually managed to regain composure to get within a whisker of being finished with the aid of some cheap lager and Scotch whiskey! Producer Jamie [Dodd] burned us some CDs to take home and listen to and we arranged some rough mixes to be sent to a good friend of ours in Boston who will be supplying some guest vocals on a few tracks this week. I have to say at this stage that everything is sounding better than ever and apart from the odd verse here and there (which I plan to re-sing this weekend), the vocals sound great! By the end of this Saturday (10^th) we should have everything recorded and mixing will start first thing on Sunday!

So another weekend gone and we’re another few steps closer to having the album finished! A few important lessons have been learned this week, important things about recording techniques and ways we can improve our performance in the studio and on stage. But, I think the most important thing we learned is this – DO NOT get Martyn Millard to organise a surprise birthday party!

Ben Ward, 6th September, 2011

Things are starting to take shape in London as Orange Goblin continue working on their new album. This week, Ben Ward sends an update as the process of recording his vocals has begun. Drummer Chris Turner has finished his tracks, as has bassist Martyn Millard, so we join the process with just the vocals and some of Joe Hoare‘s guitar to go.

If you missed them or would like a refresher, the first studio update is here and the second is here. Thanks once again to Ben Ward and to Candlelight Records for making this happen.

Orange Goblin – Album Recording – Week 3

After two very productive weekends recently we wanted to keep the momentum going so Joe and I were at the studio first thing Saturday morning, eager to get started with more guitars and finally some vocals. I had every intention of being good and sticking to hot tea with lemon and honey to look after my throat but after an hour of twiddling my thumbs whilst Joe added guitar tracks I gave in and had to have some cider! I then convinced myself that I should have some red wine in order to warm the vocal chords up! It worked too as I was soon in the vocal booth (hotter than a sauna!) and was belting stuff out, all of which sounded pretty cool. By the end of the day I’d got three songs finished, including the album opener which I’d consider the hardest of all the vocal tracks. Martyn turned up in the afternoon and spent his time yelling at the TV, eating pizza and keeping me updated with the football scores as I was trapped in the sauna! Whilst I took breaks between songs (for more cider and pizza!), Joe carried on with more basic guitar and solos and at the end of the day the whole album was really starting to take shape.

Joe was already at the studio when I arrived on Sunday morning and continued to work whilst I tried (but failed) to finish writing all the lyrics! I still have a week for this so I’m not panicking just yet! Chris and Martyn showed up a bit later on and between sandwiches, microwave meals and more booze we managed to get another two vocal tracks recorded so by the end of Sunday, Joe was about 85 percent done with guitars and I was 50 percent done with the vocals. We also received some new artwork ideas and a new logo design from our friend James Isaac (Jimbob from the band Taint) who is handling the artwork for the album. I have to say we are all delighted with what we have seen so far and we’re really excited about what the final artwork will look like. All the songs finally have titles but we have yet to decide on a final title or running order. I can reveal that the 10 songs on the album are titled as follows: “Red Tide Rising,” “The Fog,” “Acid Trial,” “Stand for Something,” “The Filthy & The Few,” “Death of Aquarius,” “The Bishops Wolf,” “Return to Mars,” “A Eulogy for the Damned” and “Save Me From Myself.”

At the end of Sunday, we burned rough mixes of all 10 songs to CD and had a listen in the car going home and I have to say that it already sounds absolutely huge! I genuinely believe that this is the best Orange Goblin material ever and can’t wait for people to hear the finished product and get the chance to play some of this new material live! Next week we hope to finish all the vocals and guitars which will leave us to add all the bits and bobs like keyboards, etc. We also have a photo shoot and some press to deal with next weekend, so until then…………………………

Ben Ward, 30th August, 2011

I think when this series of updates on the recording of Orange Goblin‘s yet-untitled new album is over, I might have to ask frontman Ben Ward to continue filling us in on both his drunken misadventures and the English football league. In this second (and massively entertaining) installment of the studio diary, Mr. Ward details his preferred hangover-curing breakfast, progress on the guitar and bass tracks, and several well-celebrated victories.

Last week’s update is here. Orange Goblin is Ward, bassist Martyn Millard, guitarist Joe Hoare and drummer Chris Turner. More to come, and in the meantime, dig it:

Orange Goblin – Album Recording – Week 2

After a very successful first three days in the studio we all went away and had four whole days off to listen to what we had recorded and decide if any changes to the drum tracks needed to be made, but I think we were all 100 percent happy with the work that Chris had done and by Friday when we arrived back at the studio, Martyn continued laying down his bass tracks, quickly adding to the good stuff he’d done last weekend as well. The break in recording also gave me a good chance to go away and listen to the songs and make sure that the lyrics and vocal melodies are going to work when it finally comes to laying them down. I’ve now got finished lyrics for seven of the 10 tracks, which leaves me with two full weeks to write words and melodies for three songs! Even by my standards, this should be easy enough! Martyn concentrated long enough Friday to get all his parts done despite the rest of us trying to put him off with the temptation of beer, cider and pizza! We all left there Friday night confident that we were well ahead of schedule so Chris and I went back to mine and celebrated this with more beer and whiskey!

Saturday morning, I was up early (and hungover!) and went for a breakfast fit for a king (steak, poached eggs, fried potatoes, onions, mushrooms and tomatoes – Thanks Tom!). This was the perfect stomach lining for a day on the ale! I didn’t actually attend the studio on Saturday as the English football season has started now and I had a ticket to see Liverpool play at Arsenal at the Emirates stadium in London and Liverpool won 2-0!! I honestly had intended to go to the studio after the game but because Liverpool won, there was much celebrating to do and the rest of the band accepted that I wouldn’t drop by! Whilst I was away Joe began laying down his guitar tracks (I’m amazed he managed this, as Martyn was running around the studio celebrating the fact that his team, QPR, had also won that afternoon!) After a while of working on different tones and sounds Joe cracked on and made some very good progress. By the time I got to the studio on Sunday he was well over half way through his basic rhythm tracks and everything was sounding awesome!!

Martyn and I spent the whole day listening to Joe plough through his rhythm tracks and deciding where we needed to multi-layer the guitars and where to keep it simple. I think Joe has a very good sense of where he needs to do stuff and where to drop out and I feel it adds a lot to the overall sound of Orange Goblin albums. Chris never made it to the studio on Sunday as he had family business to attend to but he made a point of sending us messages that his team, Wolves, had won again and were in fact top of the league!! Before we left the studio we had to load all our drums and bass gear out of the studio as they are now done with! We’ll be back again next weekend for Joe to add his leads and for me to start doing vocals on all the songs that have finished lyrics, if this all goes to plan then the following weekend should be spent finishing vocals and guitars and adding the finishing touches (keyboards, percussion and any other little bits and pieces that may need doing!). Once that is done we start the mixing!!! All in all another very productive weekend and three much-needed points for Liverpool, QPR and Wolves. I don’t think all our teams have ever won on the same weekend before………..must be a good sign!!!

Ben Ward, 23rd August 2011

I could not be more stoked to bring you this — an exclusive studio update from vocalist Ben Ward himself on the recording process for Orange Goblin‘s first full-length album in four years! The plan is to have a couple installments over the next few weeks as the band lays down tracks at The Animal Farm in South London, so we’ll all be able to keep up with them as they finish the record. Fucking. Awesome.

Here’s the latest, straight from Mr. Ward:

Orange Goblin – Album Recording – Week 1

It’s fair to say that since we returned home from the US tour in mid-June we have been working very hard on piecing together the plethora of riffs and ideas that we’ve accumulated over the past four years since we recorded Healing Through Fire. Rehearsals have been intense and the only respite we had was a weekend performing at UK Sonisphere Festival alongside the likes of Metallica, Slayer, Motörhead, Slipknot, Mastodon and more…

Last Thursday, the evening before we started recording, we finally put the final touches to the 10th song in preparation for the next Orange Goblin record. This will be our seventh studio album and first for our new home, Candlelight Records. The label have shown great patience with us, waiting over two years for us to finally deliver an album, so I hope we can repay their faith! I’m pretty confident, as the material seems to be a real mix of everything people have come to appreciate about Orange Goblin. The material is heavier, darker and at the same time catchier and as psychedelic as anything we have written before. Whether that comes across during the recording… only time will tell. Lyrically, there is no real theme as there was with Healing Through Fire, and I am having fun writing some typical, fantasy-type heavy metal lyrics, kinda like Geezer Butler did for Sabbath!

We are working in a completely different way this time around. In the past we have locked ourselves away for two to three weeks at a time to record but due to work commitments that wasn’t ever a possibility this time around (none of us earn a living from doing this band so we all have to earn a crust doing other things to pay our rent and feed our families!). We had to find a studio that would be willing to let us work over a period of seven consecutive weekends, as well as let us leave our gear set up. Luckily we found one, almost on our doorstep. We recorded a Sabbath cover at The Animal Farm studio in South London last year for a Metal Hammer magazine compilation, so we knew that we would be OK going back there and working with a young producer/engineer called Jamie Dodd. Jamie is a fan of stuff like High on Fire, Mastodon, Monster Magnet, Metallica, etc., so he knows the sort of thing we are trying to achieve with this album.

Anyway, last Friday we started work at The Animal Farm and whilst I went out to stock up on the studio essentials (beer, wine, whiskey, vodka and crisps!), Chris [Turner] started setting up the drums as Jamie set about miking the kit up. By the time I got back with the booze, everyone was ready for a drink and Chris was ready to start getting some drum sounds which after a while were exactly what we were looking for… that huge John Bonham/Bill Ward-like kick and snare with plenty of fizz in the cymbals! In no time Joe [Hoare, guitar] and Martyn [Millard, bass] had set up too and we were ready to start recording. Chris is like a machine when he gets in the studio and before we knew it he had laid down four of the 10 drum tracks, alongside guide guitar and bass tracks and my vocal guide for good measure.

We arrived back at the studio on Saturday morning and Chris proceeded to lay down the final six drum tracks (even managing to record alternative takes of every song in case of a disaster!), meaning that he had finished all his basic parts by the end of play on Saturday evening. He will have some percussion parts to do later in the process but that will come at the ‘bells and whistles’ stage! We contemplated setting up the bass so Martyn could get started but Jamie decided we should call it a day there and resume first thing on Sunday. We didn’t need too much persuading on that and took it as a green light to go out to the Crobar (famous London rock bar) and spend the night getting wasted in celebration of Chris finishing his drum tracks — which we did in style!

Sunday morning hurt a little bit, but by the time we had all reconvened at the studio, Martyn was ready to start laying down his thunder! Using his massive Orange bass rig his sound is awesome! It can do everything you need, from the Steve Harris galloping basslines in Maiden to the smoother grooves of Geezer Butler’s bass on tracks like “Solitude.” During the course of the day he managed to get three or four tracks done before we decided that we were well ahead of schedule and spent the rest of the evening burning discs to go away and listen to until next weekend, when we will carry on. I fully expect Martyn to be done by the end of Saturday which will mean it’s Joe’s turn to start piling on the riffs and playing around with tones and whatever guitarists do!! I’ll let you know how we get on next week!

Ben Ward, 16th August 2011

At this point, Orange Goblin‘s holiday shows and tours are the stuff of legend. Like rehab in reverse. I’ve never been fortunate enough to attend one myself, but my understanding is they keep a cooler nearby with a few spare livers, just in case anyone’s should give out before the night is through.

It’s a little bittersweet this year, though, since as a semi-proud Jersey Boy, I’m used to seeing Solace taking part in the debauchery. Nonetheless, the show must go on, and joining Orange Goblin at the Underworld in Camden, are Gentlemans Pistols and Sigiriya, who’ve also confirmed a September release for their recently-reviewed album, Return to Earth. More to come on that, but in the meantime, here’s the flier for the show:

Of course, if you read either the Ben Hogg interview or the Q&A with Sourvein‘s own T-Roy Medlin, you already knew the band was hitting the road in July starting at the Kung Fu Necktie in Philly on the sixth, but hey, I guess it’s nice to see all the dates in one place too. Here’s the PR wire info:

North Carolina sludge-slingers Sourvein will celebrate the release of their long-anticipated new full-length, Black Fangs, with a near-three-week US tour this July! The chaos will commence in Philadelphia with Jucifer on July 6 and steamroll its way through 16 more cities before coming to a close at Ground Zero in Spartanburg on July 23. The trek includes three shows with psychedelic black metal enigmas, Nachtmystium.

Comments vocalist T-Roy: “I’m so ready to unleash Black Fangs on the public in a live setting… it’s gonna be awesome! I’ve been waiting for this for a while; it’s gonna crush! King James, Kong Moen and I will be joined by The Misanthrope Project bassist Ahmasi O’Daniel, who also laid down the low-end on the album, for the tour. Sourvein from Cape Fear… dates coming all year!”

Sourvein July tour dates:
07/06 Kung Fu Necktie Philadelphia, PA w/ Jucifer
07/07 Heirloom Arts Danbury, CT w/ Jucifer
07/08 St. Vitus Brooklyn, NY
07/09 Popeye’s Peekskill, NY
07/10 Big Jar Rochester, NY
07/11 Sidebar Baltimore, MD
07/12 Now That’s Class Cleveland, OH w/ Nachtmystium
07/13 Mac’s Lansing, MI w/ Nachtmystium
07/14 31st St Pub Pittsburgh, PA
07/15 Ravari Room Columbus, OH
07/16 Volrath Indianapolis, IN
07/17 Pyramid Grand Rapids, MI
07/18 Frank’s Power Plant Milwaukee, WI
07/19 The Empty Bottle Chicago, IL w/ Nachtmystium
07/20 Fubar St. Louis, MO
07/21 TBA
07/22 The Hideaway Johnson City, TN
07/23 Ground Zero Spartanburg, SC

Crude, crusty and eternally sludged, 18 years into the band’s existence, Sourvein have rightfully amassed a reputation for bullshit-free heaviness the likes of which almost no one else could even begin to think about matching. Frontman, vocalist, founder and lone original member T-Roy Medlin offers a look at life that’s as intense as it is intimate, casting off the “songs about monsters” ethic in favor of a brutal honesty that’s won Sourvein loyal fans the world over. Raw expression is barred by neither language nor culture, and Sourvein‘s primal take is about as close to “real” as it gets when human beings are involved.

The North Carolinian outfit’s new full-length, Black Fangs (Candlelight), is their first long player since the beginning of the Bush era. In 2002, they released their sophomore outing, Will to Mangle, on Southern Lord and began to cement a legacy they’ve since backed by nearly a decade of constant touring and solid EP and split releases with the likes of Japanese mayhem bringers Church of Misery (twice) and now-defunct Israeli crushers Rabies Caste. Their trio of Sourvein-only EPs, Emerald Vulture (2005), Ghetto Angel (2008) and Imperial Bastard (also 2008), allowed them to keep on the road without taking too much time off to record, while still also maintaining a momentum of offerings going into the eventual next album.

And as that album emerges in 2011 in the form of Black Fangs, Sourvein find themselves with perhaps their most potent, gritty batch of songs yet. Medlin — joined in the band by guitarist “King” James Haun (Ol’ Scratch), bassist Ahmasi O’Daniel (Earthride’s Dave Sherman filled in on recent tours) and drummer Jeffrie “Kong” Moen — is scathing in his throat-ripping assertions, seeming to inflict physical and emotional pain in equal measure on himself and audience alike. That feeling comes straight out of Sourvein‘s live show, and captured on Black Fangs by Vince Burke of Beaten Back to Pure, it’s balanced perfectly with clarity of sound.

To be blunt, there was a lot to discuss with Medlin. From the time between albums to the origins of the material on Black Fangs itself, Roadburn, other upcoming tours and his appreciation of tragic Hollywood starlets (Theda Bara graces the cover of the latest record, and the band have had a years-long love affair with the memory of Sharon Tate), he was no less honest over the phone than he ever is in Sourvein, and it was exciting to hear him talk about taking the lessons he’s gleaned from his years in the band and using them to move forward into their next record and beyond.

Please find the complete 3,300-word Q&A after the jump, and please enjoy.

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