“All the guys in the band got together, burned one, had a couple of drinks and listened to it; we almost had tears in our eyes,” admits Joe Harwood, vocalist for Canadian melodic death metal band Remain. The album in question is the band’s recently released, self-titled opus.
What sets this nine-song affair apart from Remain’s previous pair of releases is its producer and engineer – Soilwork guitarist Peter Wichers. Harwood explains how a band from Barrie, Ontario came to spend a month working with such a world-renowned Swedish talent. “Actually Gunz (guitar) and Blake (bass) are huge fans of Soilwork! About a year ago we heard that Peter would possibly be getting new acts to record and produce. We caught wind of that when we were in Indianapolis, so as soon as we got back, Gunz was right on it and started talking with Peter. He went to a Soilwork show in Toronto in the winter and hooked up with Peter outside, gave him one of our albums and said that we were all interested in working with him. It all came to and then it was just a money issue, ‘cause we were used to only spending about $5000 on an album, recording it here and us having all the say on it. Then all of a sudden it turned into going down to The States and spending three or four times that amount of money and pretty much letting Peter run the show. But it was a fucking kick ass time! One of the best times we’ve ever had in the band.”
The recording of Remain was split between Pennsylvania and North Carolina, a trip fresh in Harwood’s mind. “Peter had just finished recording with Nevermore down south and he told us there were some good places down there. So it was either, he came up to Canada and we’d have to fish around for places to record the album the way he wanted – he was very particular about the drum sound. It ended up that he knew some guys in Philadelphia and we did the drum tracks there in about a week or so. Then we all headed down to a studio in North Carolina where we all crashed for three or four weeks and finished up everything else on the album.”
A very different experience compared to sleeping in your own bed each night, waking up and driving to the local studio. “Oh big time,” laughs Joe. “It made it a lot better experience too. First time we’ve ever done anything like that. Before, it would all be recorded in Barrie. We just had a buddy of ours record it pretty much right off the floor. We wanted to progress, we knew the songs we were writing for this album were a lot better and they needed to be produced. We needed to take it one step forward. It didn’t matter how much it cost or what we had to do, it needed to be done. We couldn’t go in with these songs we knew were kick-ass and do them half-assed. It had to be done properly. With Peter, it was so dynamic. It was a bit of a change for everybody, learning to work the way he wanted to do things. (Remain guitarists) Gunz and J are fucking great on the strings. They were intimidated as shit to start off with, ‘cause they both looked up to Peter so much. Then they got down to it and learned so much. You watch them now and they’re completely different guitarists. They knew what they were doing but all of a sudden, Peter just showed them the next step. I’m pretty sure we’ll be working with him again if he’s got the time, ‘cause we were just blown away with everything he’s done!”
Peter’s guitar expertise is no surprise, but what did come as somewhat of a shock was his knowledge of lead vocals. “Actually he helped me out fuckin’ quite a bit,” recalls Harwood. “I guess from being with (Soilwork vocalist) Speed for so long and knowing him so well, he ended up giving me his secrets. I was the guy that drank heavy before I’d sing and he told me about all these throat keys. I did my natural warm ups and routines, but he led me onto little tips that I just wasn’t aware of yet, and pretty much gave me hell for pronunciation. I’d go in there and lay down a track, he’d say, ‘No, can’t hear what you’re saying. Do it lower. Now do it higher.’ I was going on ten-hour days doing vocals. He just pushed, pushed, pushed and that’s what I was hoping for. It’s my best vocal performance ever! I love the sound of it and it’s changed the way I do vocals as well. I’m pleased as fuck that he actually helped me out.”
Remain completed the process by getting the album mastered at Sterling Sound in New York City – the legendary facility that has provided the finishing touches to landmark albums including: Dio’s Holy Diver, Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, Metallica’s Master Of Puppets and Sepultura’s Roots to name but a very few. “We went this far, might as well go all the way. Peter had some friends there, so they helped us out. I couldn’t be happier; I love the fucking sound of this album! When I put it on my system, it almost blew the speakers. It was so fucking loud and crisp. It’s a jaw-dropper. It was worth the time and money!”
Hard to believe, but the new self-titled CD is Remain’s third album in less than four years. Preceded by Where Evil Lies and Died A Hero, this non-stop work ethic is reminiscent of ‘70s era KISS. “We’ve all been friends since elementary school,” reveals Harwood. “We’ve all had the same fuckin’ drive right from when we were young kids. It got to the point where this is what we were going to do. Gunz is a machine! That guy writes guitar riff after guitar riff after guitar riff. He’s already starting to work on new songs and we just put this album out. I guess we’re waiting for somebody to fucking notice. We’ll just keep firing ‘em out until that does happen and hopefully then we can keep going at that pace.”
Looking back at the making of Remain, somewhat surprisingly, Joe admits, “The hardest part was parking in Philadelphia. Somebody owned a loft in the Richie Rich part of Philadelphia. Us five bums went there and for an hour’s parking it was $25. We had to pull over ‘cause we didn’t know where the fuck we were? We couldn’t get a hold of anybody. We were dead lost in the city. I think for the first day, we must have spent $150 in parking ‘cause everything’s got different time limits. We ended up getting raped for about two days. Blake was getting up at four o’clock in the morning, just so he could move the vehicle from one parking lot to the other to save us $10. It wasn’t fun. We were there for a week [to record the drums] and it was expensive as fuck! I think we spent more in that one week in Philadelphia than we did in three or four weeks down in North Carolina – and we drank and ate like kings down south!”
A lot of bands in Remain’s position would have asked Peter to lay down a guest guitar solo on the album, but they didn’t. “Actually, I believe Peter was trying to show Gunz something, an idea that he had, and they worked together on some vibrato at the start of a song. I don’t know if Gunz wanted to ask him or if he was just too shy or nervous? The whole time he was on cloud nine, getting to sit there and record with one of his guitar heroes. Because we had no TV in Philadelphia, we ended up writing. Actually Gunz wrote some old glam ‘80s metal guitar riff and our drummer Judd sang on it; a dedication or tribute to Peter called ‘Super Sexy Sweden’. We’ve got recordings of it and it makes him cry. We all got hammered one night and played it for him. Our drummer’s just a jokester; it was fucking hilarious.”
Look for Remain to embark on a US tour beginning in mid-September. The band also plans on filming a video for ‘Here I Stand’ in October. Visit Remain.cc or MySpace.com/RemainCanada for further details.
