BIRDS OF PREY Erik Larson: "So here we were 2 weeks before tracking, and no drummer. I discussed this with Bo and we agreed that to bring someone else in would betray the fundamental character of the band. Birds of Prey is this group of guys, making these songs, and that's how it would stay. So I decided to play the drums on this record. Dave wasn't leaving the band, he just couldn't participate in this record." Birds of Prey features the creative collective of Alabama Thunder Pussy's Erik Larson on guitars, Bo Leslie [The last Van Zant] also on guitars, Summer Welch [Baroness] on bass, Dave Witte [Municipal Waste] on drums and Ben Hogg [Beaten Back To Pure] on vocals. The quintet recorded their sophomore album, called "Sulfer and Semen", the follow up to band's debut full-length, "Weight of the Wound." Bird of Prey's "Sulfur and Semen" is out on Relapse, and the band also begun planning for their first ever live performances in summer 2008. Words | Erik Larson Roadburn asked me to write a studio report on the new Birds of Prey record "Sulfur and Semen." Problem is I never really know what or how to write about these things, so I decided to just tell y'all how it came about happening. After our first record, "Weight of the Wound" was released, we got a lot of positive response to it and people often asked if there would be a follow up to it. I started to wonder about it myself, and frankly got a Jones for playing some heavy Death Metal influenced music and with these guys. So the first thing I did was to see if Relapse was into a second record from us. They were, so I wrote to the rest of the guys to see what everyone schedules would allow. We figured that there was a window of time in June that it could be done based on everyone touring / family schedules. So I set up time with Vince Burke to do it. No disrespect intended to Corey Smoot [engineer on "Weight of the Wound"], but I knew Vince would do a better job of capturing the heaviness and aggression of the new songs. There was just one problem, we hadn't written them yet. It may seem a little backward to some that we set up studio time without having a single song written yet, especially since every member in Birds of Prey lives in a different city or state except for me and Dave. It's just not how things are normally done. I know with every other band I've ever been in, we write the record first, then set up studio time. But Birds of Prey is a slightly different beast, so with studio time set, I called up Bo and we arranged a weekend for him to drive up to Richmond so we could write the record. Writing for Bo and I is a really organic and easy task. We're both pretty prolific and have a huge back catalog of riffs to use, so it's a rather quick process when we actually do sit down to write. If my memory serves me correctly, we wrote "Sulfur and Semen" in one day over some beers. We would write the song, then record it onto my Four Track. Once we had ten of those done that we liked, I burned them all plus the original version of the cover onto a CD for the other guys and sent them each a copy. Choosing the cover song was also relatively easy as both Bo and I are huge Iron and Wine fans. For those that don't know who Iron and Wine is, that is the moniker under which a good friend of mine, Sam Beam records and has released records for Sub Pop. Sam and I went to university together back in the early 1990's. He was a film student then that was messing about with his guitar writing songs casually for himself. There was even talk of him being in Alabama Thunderpussy in the beginning, but declined the offer to focus on his film making degree. A couple years after graduating, he had sent us a demo of songs he had recorded on his own on a four track. It was from this collection that Bo and I chose the song to cover. So when I called Sam and asked him for the lyrics, he was a bit stumped as to what song I was talking about. So I sent him the song and he sent me the lyrics adding that he would never have found that song in his tapes if he had to search for it. So with Mr. Beam’s blessing, Bo got to work figuring out an arrangement for the song. The idea was to take this beautiful delicate song Sam had written, and turn it into something darker and visceral. By May, everyone had the CD's and were busy writing their respective parts individually. Summer actually came to Richmond for a weekend and we went through the songs so he could bounce ideas off on me for the bass parts, a process he didn't have the ability to do on the first record. Dave was in Europe with Municipal Waste, but I would get emails from him describing his thoughts on the songs as he worked out his parts over there. Ben would send me ideas via txt messages and queries as to how far he should stretch the limits in the content. All I suggested was that he make it so that none of the lyrics could be considered hate crimes. Bo worked on solos and would email ideas. I got busy recording the Parasytic album with Vince. Two weeks prior to us tracking, I got an email from Dave from Europe. The long short of it was that he had some serious issues at home he had to deal with immediately upon returning home and asked if we could reschedule the recording. Unfortunately we couldn't because of my and Summer's touring schedules and Bo was having his second child in the fall as well. Not to mention I had already paid for the studio time. So here we were 2 weeks before tracking, and no drummer. I discussed this with Bo and we agreed that to bring someone else in would betray the fundamental character of the band. Birds of Prey is this group of guys, making these songs, and that's how it would stay. So I decided to play the drums on this record. Dave wasn't leaving the band, he just couldn't participate in this record. So I had two weeks to figure out what to play with no way to practice the drum parts. The day came to start. Bo and Summer made the drive up to Richmond the night before, so the three of us drove down to Vince’s Sniper Studio two hours away. Once we were set up and started checking levels, everyone's nerves settled a bit as to wether I was gonna be able to pull off the double duty. Tracking the music took 4 days, Friday to Monday. Ben had the better part of a week to do his vokills, and I made several trips down to help out in the production end of that with my infant son in tow. Quite a hilarious scene actually, as Ben was bellowing away in the iso-booth, my son was rolling around in the control room to the tunes. Once all the tracking was done, the real fun began. Not so much for Vince I assure you. Because of the distance between us, he would send me CD's to reference and tell him what I thought should change in the mix. It took us three weeks to get it right, but in the end, we all made something we're all really fucking proud of. I hope y all will dig on "Sulfur and Semen", we had a blast making it. Until next record, take care.