THE ANGELIC PROCESS "There was a moment while working on our 3rd full length 'Weighing Souls With Sand' that I will never forget: I was looking at the big marker board we have in the studio that has all the songs titles and categories for guitar, bass, drums, vocals, atmospherics, etc [to show what has and hasn't been done] and I realized there were 15 songs and every category was checked. Another Angelic Process album was nearly complete." Formed in 1999, and hailing from the Athens Georgia realm, the husband-and-wife duo of K.Angylus and MDragynfly have been known to create some of the most mesmerizing and moving music within the ambient drone-metal musical realm... Garnering already a huge response with the 2006 re-issue of "Coma Waering" [Paradigms Recordings], a recording that is actually four years old, The Angelic Process now deliver said album's follow-up, namely "Weighing Souls With Sand." Centering around a concept that continues the story begun with "Coma Waering", "Weighing Souls..." is the inevitable aftermath as the band explain:"'Coma Waering' is a concept record about a man falling into a coma and eventually dying.'Weighing Souls With Sand' is the follow up to that concept, this time about the man's wife trying to deal with his death and failing, eventually committing suicide." Sound-wise picture the wall-of-sound through the fuzzy celestial grace of My Bloody Valentine, the tribal ritualistic pulsations of Neurosis, the emotional fervor and bloodletting of Swans, and the powerful grace of Jesu, and here you'll get a glimpse of what "Weighing Souls..." shall offer. And then some... Roadburn Records is proud to present "Weighing Souls..." on vinyl [a limited edition up to 500 copies: 300 black, 100 yellow, 100 red]. Words | K.Angylus Following up a record as loved by our fans and widely acclaimed as 'Coma Waering' was never gonna be easy. Every time I start a new Angelic Process record I always wonder if the songs are going to be there this time. I think a lot of musicians go through that, but for me, it had been 4 years since I wrote 'Coma Waering.' The flood of reissues [Coma, our debut '...And Your Blood Is Full of Honey', and the 'Sigh' EP) at the beginning of 2006 garnered us a lot of buzz and it was clear people were wanting to see if we could top ourselves. MDragynfly had just joined the band [who is the perfect sounding board and an amazing musician] and we were finally able to play live, so pretty much everything had changed from when 'Coma' was written. I think it was playing live that most influenced WSWS. With 'Coma', we had established our sound. Playing those songs live required use to alter some of the arrangements and strip the songs down. The new songs we were writing followed that line and had less repetition, more parts, and faster mouvement between those parts. We stripped away some of the ambient noise that 'Coma' used so heavily and increased the complexity of the melodies we wrote. But most of all, we were able to tighten up the arrangements by playing them live and seeing what worked and what didn't. Having our own studio is very important. While the initial arrangements are worked out beforehand, most of the texturing and ambient atmospherics have to be worked out while recording. We build our own FX pedals and modify our gear, so we have a large number of sounds and textures at our disposal. We very rarely use synths or electronics, preferring to use guitar, bass, drums, vocals, keeping everything as organic as possible. We also master our albums to tape and not just in the computer. We use computers to sequence tracks, but everything is run back out onto tape. Maybe this is how we keep so much warmth in our sound. Another thing I would like to mention: all the drums are live, mic'd drums. A lot of people seem to think we use a drum machine, but we don't, not since our 2001 debut. I had a custom kit build before I started recording 'Coma', the toms are bigger than normal, so we get a deeper resonance and bigger sound. Same with the crash cymbals...we just like big, deep drums. So, after 8 months of writing and recording, we had a finished album. A lot has already been written about the extremely personal nature of the concept that runs through both our 'Coma' and WSWS. I've decided not to address it here and talk more about how the songs came together and little stories that come to mind about them in this track by track account: The Promise of Snakes This was the last song written for the record and the only song where there was no bass on it until everything else [except vocals] was finished. M and I did the intro and the first two riffs and just continued to write new sections around permutations of those riffs. After everything was written, I recorded all the drums and guitars in one day, then we didn't touch it for a while. We were at the point of having to many songs to fit on the record anyway, so including a 9+ minute song meant we would definitely have to cut a song or two that we already liked. So it remained unfinished, until one day M grabbed her bass, came in, and nailed a quick take of the whole song. We went driving around and listened to the vocal less version and it just crushed! So I went back in, hammered out the vocals, and ended up with my favorite song on the album. Million Year Summer After we restarted the band and had been playing live, we realized we didn't really have any songs that were just full blast from start to end. We have a ton of 7+ minute mini-epics that take you on a roller coaster ride, but nothing we could throw into a set to shake things up. It was the third song M and I wrote together and was put immediately into our live set. It has been played as either the first or second song at every show we've done since. At under 4 minutes, it's the shortest 'song' we've ever done and one of the best. It also sound great on just acoustic guitar... The Resonance of Goodbye The second song M and I wrote together, 'The Resonance of Goodbye' is one of those songs where the title and music fit together perfectly. Such an incredibly emotional and just plain heavy song, we played it live for a while, but had to stop because of how difficult the vocals are to perform. For whatever reason, certain notes in it just shred my vocal cords. But I really love this song. The little shimmery melody that follows the bowed guitar in the intro, then leads to the feedback fade in of the massed guitars never fails to get me right in the gut. One of the most powerful songs we've written by far. We All Die Laughing One of our most popular songs and one that almost wasn't a song at all! We were in the middle of writing for the album and I had demoed the first 3 minutes or so and hated it. It just wasn't coming together at all for me, but I played it for M and she loved it and made me promise not to trash it. Everyday, she would come in and listen to that first 3 minutes and make notes about what could follow it. We then took those notes and continued to write until we reached the version that is on the record. Definitely a song that would not have been at all if M hadn't worked so hard to make it come together. Dying In A-Minor The second to last song written for the record. By that point in the writing, we had established the concept for the album and had a basic running order, so we knew we needed a song to bridge the first half of the record to the second half. I had written the middle section in rehearsal one day and kept coming back to it. Something about the movement of the chords really struck me. M and I worked on it without drums, just guitar and bass, and wrote the end section. I then mixed some heavily filtered guitars with a washy synth for the intro. When I put down the first layer of vocals, you could just hear the backing vocals in there, so I put those instead of layering guitar melodies like I did on most of the other songs. In the end, it's the least complex song on the album, but it's all the more powerful for that simplicity. Weighing Souls With Sand One of those songs that comes together quickly and is done. I did a lot of weird vocal layering on this one that most people don't pick up one. I really like the flow and forward momentum this song has. It really gives the album that push into the end. After about 2 weeks of talking it out, we decided this would be the album title. It just has that certain something. That right combination of words that envokes images and emotions, especially within the context of the album. Mouvement - World Deafening Eclipse Since the flow of our albums is EXTREMELY important, we use shorter tracks to bridge the gap between certain songs. I knew in the beginning that I wanted to do this, but also wanted to make sure that listeners knew these weren't suppose to be viewed the same as the actual songs. So, since I am a fan of classical music and the transitional structures we use are based off of the way classical music is sometimes arranged, I called these tracks "mouvements". We wrote several that didn't make it onto the record. Being bridge tracks, they have to be just right and really highlight the songs their between. It has some great flitered guitar atmospherics and nice chord changes in the middle. M really loves this one and we plan to play it live. Burning In The Undertow of God I love the dissonant notes during the first loud section and the ever shifting chord patterns throughout. The more open chord voicings allowed me to use a different approach to the vocals and use more circular guitar melodies underneath. We did a lot of guitar arranging in the studio, after the drums and some bass were tracked. A lot of little subtle things are going on in the guitars, lots of harmonic elements that create little melodic things that weren't intended, but sound great. As soon as we wrote it, we knew it would end the record. A great song, this was featured on Terrorizer Magazine's cover CD. Mouvement - The Smoke of Her Burning This was actually written and recorded as the original ending to 'Burning In The Undertow of God', but we decided to split it into a separate mouvement to help give the album a more defined ending. In the original version, it was much longer and had a vocal section, but it seemed to slow the pace of the album down to much. When we cut out those sections and added the more ambient outro, everything just fell into place. How To Build A Time Machine [Hidden Track] We left tracks 10-16 blank to give a little separation between this song and the last mouvement. To me, this song feels like the summation of the record. It was originally intended to be somewhere in the middle of the album, but ultimately just sounded to out of place. But still, a great song that I am really proud of. It's always nice to include some kind of little hidden/bonus thing at the end of a record, but we wanted to make sure that the hidden track we chose wasn't just some throwaway track and still related to the record. The Angelic Process - "Mouvement - Every City Is A Prison" Back to Homepage