Secret Rites evoked

So what is Secret Rites then? To some extent the concept dates back to 2013. That summer I worked on a project which I labelled Sub-Basement at the time, after the Pentagram album. I pre-produced one tune using Victor Griffin's drop-B tuning. It was a fast paced song, a pretty cool one. And a Vitus ifluenced song which was more rushed. Ultimately it remained unfinished due to practical circumstances, and Blight eventually taking all my focus. 

The idea has come back to me from time to time. The main concept is to play sinister doom metal with influences from black metal, death metal and soundtracks. Here are some main influences: 

- Black Sabbath (self titled track, Electric Funeral, Sabotage album) 

- Bedemon and Death Row era Pentagram 

- Joe Hasselvander (the two Pentagram albums he played guitars on and The Hounds of...) 

- Saint Vitus (debut and Walking Dead EP in particular) 

- Blood Farmers!!! 

- Electric Wizard 1995 - 2010

- Hellhammer and Celtic Frost

- Dream Death and early Penance

- Cathedral (In memoriam, Forest, Soul Sacrifice) 

- Newer doom acts such as Famyne (vocals especially), Serpent Venom, Rote Mare and Solemn Ceremony

- Norwegian black metal 1990 - 95 (Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone, Thorns) 

- Death metal 1989 - 91 (Death, Morbid Angel, Entombed, Soulside Journey/Goatlord) 

- John Carpenter

In march I reinstalled my sound card and started experimented with recording demos at home during quarantine. The first one I did was a doom rock tune inspired by Force (Al Morris III's old band). On this demo I used a bucket as a kick drum and a cake tray as a snare drum. Since I didn't have cymbals, I used a tambourine. The demo turned out surprisingly cool. I was supposed to add vocals and upload it to Soundcloud, but I couldn't come up with a lyric.

After that I recorded two test demos for Elder Ruins using click track and a drum machine. I've never been good at tracking myself to click. I guess I don't have the patience to get it tight enough. I also suspect there is some lag between my sound card and the recording program. Anyway, the bucket and cake tray demo actually turned out more complete than anything I've done with a click track. I also like the concept of recording drums while humming the song and then adding instruments on top of that, like Fenriz did with many of his projects and Varg did with Burzum. A friend of mine also did this with his great Sadhak project. While the drumming of Fenriz and Sadhak is very good, the drums in early Burzum is kind of shaky, yet there is a certain charm to it. And he did get better with each recording session. 

With that in mind I set myself the goal of recording a demo on my own using the drum kit in the rehearsal room once it opened again. I bought my own SM57 mic with money I saved up during the quarantine. At first I wanted to do preprod the new SH tune and played it on drums a few times. I realised however that the song will be straightforward to pass on to the other members without a demo in advance. Then I wanted to record an Elusive Dreams demo with me and Torbjørn as a duo and me performing the drums. I recorded drums for two tracks, but as I added guitars and bass I realised these demos were not tight enough to be released. Still, the drum practice was very useful. Most of the patterns I used were also usable in Secret Rites. 

Sub-basement was resurrected as Secret Rites after a "productive" day at work. The place where I've had my summer job these past years have recently banned any use of music at work. Thus, one often gets lost in thoughts. Sometimes for the worse, but this day I started to hum this John Carpenter style melody. I soon started to think where a song based on this melody would go. I took short breaks to the bathroom to hum ideas into my phone and before I knew it I had an outline for the entire song. 

After working a bit on it at home and at rehearsals, I set up my gear at the rehearsal place the entire last week of my holiday. I recorded a take of drums and actually managed to get through the whole thing without major fuckups on the first take. It's shaky and the BPM is not consistent, but it works. I spent the next days adding guitars, leads, some noises (fake tape hiss and a creaking chair), before adding vocals. I needed to experiment a bit with different layers and effects. I actually found that sitting down and using a setting with delay and slight distortion gave the best vocal results, and I think my performance on this demo track is better or at least cooler than on the SH album so far. With both the guitars and the vocals I went for a more sinister and "crazy" vibe, which was a lot of fun. The track turned out almost 13 minutes long. At the moment I am figuring out the bass which I will record at home right into the sound card. 

One problem I faced is that the recording program I use only allow 8 tracks, so practically speaking I am working with a digital 8 track recorder. Since I rarely tracked vocals before I never faced this problem. While it feels a bit old school to work with an 8 track philosophy, punching overdubs  into channels for leadguitars etc made the whole thing a bit chaotic. So when I continue making this demo, I'll probably buy a licence for a different program. 

I recorded one demo track that is almost complete for now, and one "jam" that I'm going to add some extra stuff to. So far very happy with this and it feels like this is a one man project that is actually doable. The vibe in the song became what I wanted. Going further I am reworking an old SH idea from 2010 and I am working on a new Blood Farmers influenced tune these days. I also want to use the drop-B tune from 2013, but that song will be more difficult to play on drums, so I will need to get better or use a session drummer for that one. It will not be on this release. 

I aim to release a rough version of the first demo track and the jam on bandcamp once the recordings are complete. And when the whole demo is done I'll want to get it properly mixed and mastered for a release on CD and/or tape. Not sure if I'll outsource this part or I will try to learn how to do basic mixing and mastering myself. Maybe mix myself and pay for mastering when the whole thing is done. 

Belief or disbelief rests with you!