PHARAOH - Alchemical Heaviness Blended Traditionally To Perfection! Page 2
by Martin Popoff

"I actually hadn't met "The Chrisses" until we got together to sign the contract for The Longest Night, and when we did meet, we had a blast. They are a lot of fun to be involved with as a band. We got to spend a little time together and party before we did the first photo shoot in October of '04, and then we saw each other intermittently again in the studio while we worked on it, and then Matt and I sat down together and tweaked out one tune before we went in the studio to lay down the vocals, so there was some extra personality on this record that was lacking on the first."

All told, would this have been an easier record to make than the first one?

"It was easier this time around because I wasn't hospitalized even once, but the traveling back and forth every weekend was brutal on me, especially since the price of gasoline nearly doubled during that time, and it was also during the hottest and worst part of the summer allergy season, so I would arrive on Friday nights already exhausted and needed to rehydrate and recuperate until mid-day to start recording, and still have to pray that my voice was going to be OK. It was very nerve-wracking. The vocal booth would run out of air about every 20 minutes and I'd have to stop and open the door for a couple minutes, and it got very hot inside. The first CD was tougher for me because I recorded in a virtual gas chamber, and mostly in the wee hours of the morning. There was a mechanic's garage attached to the studio room and it wasn't ventilated, so the fumes from his car engines leaked into the room and the sound as well at times, plus we had to use kerosene heaters to prevent frostbite, so I ended up with carbon monoxide poisoning, my oxygen level was down below 90% for about three days, and it took the good part of a year once I was away from the place for my nervous system to get back to normal. Considering all that, this album was easier. We need a bigger budget this time to record in a studio with an equal ratio of modern environmental control technology to audio gear, so I don't die trying to track next time."

"Matt, Chris and Chris will come up with the initial ideas," says Tim, on the workload and where it resides. "Chris K will usually start with a lyric and then build a melody and then write music around it and send it to Matt to arrange, and then I'll tweak out the vocal parts a little more. Chris B will write music and put words to it sometimes with and sometimes without melody and then I get to go crazy with it. Matt writes a slew of riffs and arranges them and then either writes melodies, lyrics or both, or sends me just the music and I again take my turn at creating parts customizing them."

PHARAOH - Alchemical Heaviness Blended Traditionally To Perfection! Page 3