Photoshoot

The photoshoot for the first album took place outside during winter, it was freezing cold. This time we were smart enough to choose the comfort of a nice warm photostudio

After adjusting the lighting and putting on some music we were ready to start posing
(Tip: white guy next to the lights and tanned guy in the dark ... doesn't work)

A lot of pictures were taken that evening, and we had a lot of fun (resulting in some bad pictures)

Our favorite one made it to the album booklet, the other pictures will be available on our website soon.

A big thank you goes to Rudy De Doncker for taking the pictures. You can see more of his work at www.rudysphotos.com.

Album Artwork

Of course the album can't be finished without the artwork and we must say that Sven "Svencho" (of Aborted fame) did a more then very nice job! (www.dirged.be)

For those who expect lots of blood and gore ... guess again

The artwork for our new album had to radiate what it stands for ...
"Sign Of Devotion" and Svencho absolutely translated that perfectly.

Studio Report - Mastering

For the Mastering part we turned to Raf Roesems (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Triggerfinger, .Calibre, Janez Detd ... ) at the Alamo Sound Services.

While Raf worked his magic, we had plenty of time to discover the different studio areas
From the big SSL console to the PlayStation ... although we only had a chance to play around with the last one

Raf did a fantastic job on this final step in the album process.
Check out their facility at www.alamo-sound.com

Studio Report, Vocals - Part 2

Maybe I can make a summary of the next few days:
vocal training, drinking lot’s of Rooibos tea with honey
(that’s a south african herbal tea, one of my favourites)
and singing till you drop

Nik was a great help during the recordings, he has a lot of patience and he came up with some pretty good ideas ... .

This studio experience was the best I’ve ever had.
This is the first time that I got the chance to record my vocals the way I wanted them to sound: no flat stuff but a clean, strong and dynamic voice.

Studio Report, Vocals - Part 1

The first day of the vocal recordings finally arrived ...

Unfortunately I was not allowed to go “shopping” like the rest of the band because the guys at the studio had already chosen everything I needed ...

I was blessed with the heavenly sound of a high quality Neumann microphone. He would become my only friend for the next five days in the recording room.

At the end of day one I already knew we were a great match !

We managed to record the lead vocals of three songs on the first day: an amazing result.

Studio Report, Keys - Day 3&4

The last two days went pretty well.

The rest of the songs came out smoothly.

We still had some time left to add a few extras here and there.
We hope you like it

Studio Report, Keys - Day 1&2

We started the day by re-arranging the control room a little bit.
A big couch had to make room for the keyboard stand.

When everybody had found a nice chair to sit on, we were ready

We started off with some of the more bombastic songs to get into it.

Thanks to a good preparation (*ahum* ) and the power of the homestudio we managed to get things recorded without losing too many hours in the studio. More time left to play with sounds and effects


We started the second day of recording by reviewing some recorded songs of the first day, and small improvements were made where possible.

After a little break we continued the recordings with a slow piano song, which also turned out nicely

Two days left for me, still on schedule right now

Studio Report, Guitar - Day 5 (Pieter)

Frédéric and I have recorded all rhythm guitar parts.
The only thing left to do was the lead guitar and some minor clean parts.

I chose my Hamer guitar to play the leads, once again with the WARP and Marshall combined.

Not a lot of shredding going on, just some plain melodies .

Here and there we tried some cool harmonie stuff, but we're not sure that will make it to the album. Time will tell .

Stay tuned for more studio news, Wim is on his way ...