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Head Not Found Studio Report                                                   

By: Andrew C. Zinn

This week I am going to be self serving, mostly because I couldn’t find a band to interview. That and I couldn’t resist an opportunity to plug my own band. As some of you readers might know, I am in a metal band called Head Not Found. We have been kicking around for about two years and have had some great times. We have played many shows from Alabama to Tennessee. We have a fairly brutal sound that mixes elements of doom, death, and black metal. Head Not Found has somehow survived through many trials and I am sure we will fight through many more. We are currently trying to record our first full length album and first real studio release. It has been tough, but I think we will survive.
We had originally thought that we would be recording at our Drummer Josh’s house. He has some recording equipment that we had used in the past to make our demo. Josh laid down some drum tracks and told John, our Bass player, and I to come over and put down some bass tracks. I, of course, did nothing but offer advice. John tried to play with what Josh had done and couldn’t get it to work. We all shook our heads and realized that we weren’t going to be able to record this thing ourselves. We went outside for cigarettes and discussion. We deliberated for about an hour about who would record us. Finally Josh decided to call Jonathon, the Drummer for the band Bloodborn in the neighboring town of Gadsden Alabama. He told us his prices and where and when he could do it. We called Monster, our Guitar player, and as always he thought that would be a good idea.
A few weeks and practices later we met at John’s, on the Saturday before recording, for practice and to prepare to go to the studio. We all decided to meet at John’s that following day at about eight A.M. From there we would eat biscuits, bullshit, load up drum equipment, and travel about thirty miles to Gadsden. I remember that it was the day that we have our biyearly time change. I got really drunk that Saturday night, so I would be prepared. I laid down for bed at about two A.M. I had to get myself pumped up on heavy metal DVDs so I could calm down my nerves. Anyway, I laid down for bed and realized that I had forgotten to set my clock forward. Too drunk to trust my cell phone, I decided to call Josh to ask him what time it was, so I wouldn’t be late. Sufficed to say, Josh was pissed at me and told me the time and hung up quickly. The band has to baby sit me quite a bit. They are true brothers.
So that morning I woke up hung over and an hour behind on sleep. I left for Josh’s house to pick him up. I arrive and his girlfriend told me to take care of him. I told her that he needs to take care of me. We left for John’s house and got a biscuit from a gas station on the way. We arrived at John’s and he had been up for like three hours. His job has him up very early in the mornings and he says that he can’t sleep past his normal wake up time. Even on his off days. He had breakfast at his Dad’s house. He said they had bacon, eggs, sausage and all that good shit. He was the luckiest bastard amongst us. We bullshitted, one of our favorite pastimes, and then Monster arrived. He made our circle complete and we left for Gadsden.
The trip was fairly uneventful. I drove like an old woman, as I always do. Jonathon had wanted us to meet him at the Gadsden Mall and follow him to the studio. Josh called him about twenty minutes from arrival time. Jonathon answered the phone from his bed. He was sleeping, but said he would be there when we got there. We park at the Sears side of the mall to wait. Again there is much bullshitting and jokes about each other. One of us, who I will leave nameless, really had to take a shit. We joked that he should go out into the woods to free his bowels. We laughed, he considered it, and decided not to because he had no toilet paper. Thankfully, Jonathon arrived to free us of our boredom. He told us to follow him, but we all agreed to stop at a convenience store on the way. All of us bought really weird shit. BBQ Corn Nuts, packaged meats, and energy drinks. Now, I have to admit that these are all metal head foods, but goddamn it was nine o’clock in the morning. We must have very strong gullets.
We arrive at the studio and it wasn’t quite a studio. It was actually a tattoo shop. I thought that was metal as fuck and couldn’t have been happier about our decision to record there. Jonathon took us inside. In one of the backrooms he had his drums and recording equipment set up. He said that his band Bloodborn practices there as well. The place was really well set up. They even had a sort of lounge room that had a TV and DVD player in it. That would come in very handy in the future of our time spent there.
Because Josh is the drummer, he was first on deck for recording. He laid the tracks for one song. I can’t even recall which one it was. It was tough. We have all played many live shows, and yet we were terrified of a microphone. It seems laughable now, but we were all nervous as hell. He fought through it and we decided to do Monster’s tracks next, so John could listen to the guitar while he recorded his parts. John went third and he was the most solid of us all. He got through it in no time. Then, yours truly was up to bat. I felt fucking ridiculous screaming into a microphone while holding my lyric notebook. I was like a fish out of water and it showed. At last, we had recorded our first track that I now remember is titled ‘8.13’. We all looked at each other and wondered how the hell we could sound so good. Digital recording does wonders. We all dug it and decided to do two more tracks that day.
Now, the recording process is not all work. Allot of your time is spent listening to the same shit over and over and waiting for your turn. We even put that DVD player to work. I elected to kill time with Monster’s video camera. I got a great monologue from Monster. He had a beautifully scripted fictional story about all the other recording studios that we had recorded at. These fictitious studios had all come to a horrible demise after trying to capture the hellish fury that is Head Not Found. I hope his story will make it onto YouTube. It deserves to, I had to record him saying his speech twice because I am a shitty camera man.
The day was long and laborious, but again, we made it through. Monster and John left out early because they had early jobs to be to the next day. Josh and I were left behind to wait for burned CDs of the days recording. It took like, what felt like days, for those damn CD’s to burn. They finally got done burning and Josh and I were on our way. We wanted to listen to the disc on the way home, but my damn CD player wouldn’t play the disc. So we had to wait until we got home. We dropped John and Monster’s discs at Monster’s house and finally headed home ourselves.
We all listened to the disc for about a week. We decided to have a band meeting to discuss what we liked and didn’t like. All was decided and we went back to the studio the next week. We made a change to have Monster’s tracks recorded with a microphone and to lay down three tracks at once. That saved us a hell of allot of setup time and gave the guitar a way more brutal sound. We recorded three more tracks and have four more to go.
We should have the disc ready in about a month. As you have read, music ain’t all sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Bands work damn hard, especially metal bands. We practice, travel, and poor allot of money out of our pockets to bring music to people. I will let the whole world know when the new Head Not Found CD is available for purchase. I want all your crazy fuckers to buy a copy. Cheers from VBlazin magazine and Head Not Found!!!

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