Cycles

'Cycles' is the second release of modern hard rock band 'Exit 2 Enter'. When we entered the studio we decided to do this album on our own time and keep it low stress and take our time. This album took nearly a year and a half to complete and now that it's out, we're extrememly exited about it! It all starts with preproduction which had been done months before we entered the studio because we actually had multiple new songs already written when we released our first album 'What Lies Behind'. We started out with drums and simple single guitar tracks for the drums to play along to. The drums and bass are the main structure of each song so we made sure that we got both to sound the best they could. After drums came bass which we really experimented with. We put a microphone in front of a bass cab as well as using the output of the amp, we put the bass straight into the mixing board using no amp, and we put the bass through a pre amp and then into the mixing board. We used all of these different techniques on different songs. We used different basses, different bass amplifiers, and different ways of recording the bass. We also used multiple drum kits for the drums tracks. After drums and bass came guitars. This is the fun part for both Eric and I. We experiment with many different sounds by changing guitars, amplifiers, cabs, and mics. Overall, we ended up getting a very nice guitar sound on this album and we're proud of that! On this album we usually recorded the overdriven or distorted guitars in one session, then I would have Eric come back in a different session for the clean guitar parts. After all the clean and dirty parts are done we then move on to the extra little guitar parts. These can be either an octave part, or a build up part of some sort. The octave part in the bridge of 'Vampire', the lightly distorted part in the second verse of 'Too Close for Comfort', or any guitar solo you hear on the album are all examples of this. They're just extra guitar parts that layer on top of the ones that are already recorded. After all the guitars are done, the vocal tracks begin. Most of the vocal tracks were engineered by Ben or Eric because I wasn't able to be in the vocal booth and the control room at the same time. The vocal tracks are always very fun for us because we can experiment with a lot of different harmonies, shout choruses, or speaking parts. At one point in 'Animals', I had been go in the booth and just make random noises. After adding a little reverb and keeping it deep in the mix it ended up sounding pretty cool. We pretty much just love recording in general. All of the parts are fun! This album is our first one that actually has production. Our last album was all recorded live in the studio where we just all piled in there and recorded each song live. So, we really had a lot of fun mixing this one as well as recording it. Filled with a lot of weird sounds, effects, and cool parts. We hope you enjoy listening to this album as much as we enjoyed recording it!