Recording When All Roads Lead to Hell: Part 1

After almost a year and a half since the release of Rites of the Pentagram (ROTP), the long road to Hell we have paved is finally reaching its destination. Gravehill entered John Haddad’s Trench Studios in Corona, CA for drum tracking on February 1, 2011 and already we can smell the fire and brimstone boiling underneath our cloven feet. At least my feet are cloven. Birth defects are a bitch. To all you pregnant moms out there, don’t do crack until AFTER your kid is born.

ROTP was officially released in the summer of 2009 and writing for When All Roads Lead to Hell (WAR) began soon after. But the Gravehill writing process is a slow beast at times. Many a day was spent staring at the walls, eating sticks of butter, or mumbling about why our hemorrhoids didn’t go away. Eventually we broke through our stupor and began writing but it was still slow progress. Recording was going to happen in early 2010 but by the time early 2010 arrived, we had maybe three complete songs and the skeleton of another. So recording was pushed back until the late summer but by the time we were off tour in July, perhaps only 3/4 of the album had been written. So recording was pushed to early December 2010. As December loomed and we still weren’t ready, recording was pushed back again to January of 2011.

But then inspiration hit Gravehill for once and the skies cracked open, the seas boiled over, and blood ran freely over the chests of young (female, 18+), nubile, dead hookers and suddenly we were writing. Shit was flowing free; songs we thought were done, were recast and chiseled down. One of the first songs we wrote in the beginning was completely thrown out but another, stronger one was written off the cuff and suddenly we had a complete album. What the hell happened?

Whatever happened, we’re back at it in the studio again. Drum tracking took two days and Thorgrimm was done. Guitar tracking started on February 8, and Bodybag and Hellfiend have been ripping it up. One of the major differences this time around probably is that most of us have been sober during recording! ROTP is a gritty fucking album. You can hear our drunken debauchery jump out and soak you in cheap Mexican beer. But WAR is turning out to be something different. Yes, the raw intensity is still there but it is more focused and a slight evolution to ROTP. The more I hear the raw guitar tracks thrashing over the “in your face and up your ass” drums, the more my taint tingles. We’re certainly not recreating the wheel here. There will be riffs and sections of songs that will have you thinking, “Oh shit, someone was thinking of Slayer when they wrote this.” Or just replace Slayer with Sodom, Celtic Frost, Autopsy, or Death. Hell, you may even hear some Darkthrone and Bathory as well. Whatever you hear, even if you don’t like it (or think ROTP was a superior album), WAR is coming from a pure place where posers are butchered before the hordes of the real Hessians! We will never compromise!! Unless we’re offered a bunch of money, then DUH!