Sunday, August 31, 2008

The Making of Ruckus/Human Pollution Sessions Day 1 (Posted by Colin)

This is the Ruckus blog.
We're a band from all around Los Angeles. We haven't played a show. This is not a straight edge band. Yadda yadda yaddaa... This band started in early 2007 when my brother (Taylor Young) was on tour with Crematorium. He called me one day and told me about all of his ideas he had for the new band he really wanted to do... of course I just brushed them off at first, "Yeah ok Taylor, see you when you get home." But then he got home and showed me what had been inside of his head for a month, I heard what became my favorite Ruckus song, "Fools Die" and I lost my mind. I was in love and knew we had finally found OUR BAND. You know what I mean by OUR BAND. Well, I'm sure Scott Vogel really loved being in Slugfest at the time, and really loved being in Despair at the time, and really loved being in Buried Alive at the time, but during those times, he had no idea that his claim to fame would be coming soon. He had no idea he was going to start one of the top 20 most popular hardcore bands of all time. Now I'm not saying we are anything on the level of Terror, but that's just how comfortable I am with this band now. I LOVE IT. It's NO SHAME to love the band you're in.

Taylor wrote more songs and we decided to enlist fellow Fight Everyone member Will Morlan for Vocals, and we made a demo with him. It's great but it just didn't feel right and plus we knew when Will shipped off to the Navy we'd have to find another singer or sit on our asses for 6 months. So the hunt began, and it took several tries (and two more full demo recordings) until we found our man. Ex-Hammerfist singer Jacob Woodley, that guy who used to bust you for smoking weed inside of Chain Reaction. He fit right in and the demo songs NEVER sounded better. It only took a few weeks before we took a slight increase of notice among local kids (MIND YOU, WE'VE STILL NEVER PLAYED A SHOW) and ESPECIALLY a surge of European notice and love. It took a band called Cheap Thrills (BEST BAND EVER. LISTEN TO THEM. GO SEE THEM. www.myspace.com/cheapthrills) to really get our faith in this new demo and that we were doing the right thing and soon without warning we were contacted by a new-ish German label BDHW RECORDS. They wanted to release whatever we were planning on making. So we gave them the details and two weeks later we're INSIDE the studio prepped to record. Thus, the idea, possibility, and the means to make HUMAN POLLUTION is born. We began recording August 27th.

Day 1 - Drum Tracking
We started the day off as early as we possibly could because we knew it would be a long day. It took about two hours to set up and tune the drum kit I would be using and attach all of the microphones. The drum set is currently owned by First Blood skinsman Rhett Hornberger and previously owned by the man behind the shells in Strife.
HERE SHE IS:

Once everything was set up and the ball was rolling it was time to set up the click tracks and metronomes we used. Most of the time, the only necessary parts were beginnings or bridges without drums. So that didn't take long. Although some took longer than others (TASTE THE STEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLL) we finished in only one long days work. The guitars and bass were ready to be layed down.

MAD SHOUT OUTS TO CHRIS AND CHEAP THRILLS, TONI BDHW, OUT FOR THE COUNT, MEXI MIKE, NILS FWH, AND EVERYONE THAT'S ENJOYED THE DEMO THUS FAR... IT'S ABOUT TO BE A THING OF THE PAST.