DETERIOR

Alrighty, economic experiment failed. I got even less exposure than normal. So Torchbearer is back to pay-what-you-want. Download away!

Torchbearer by Deterior I have to say, it feels pretty good to finally get this out there. Even discounting the "hiatus", this one took forever to make. As always, I hope you'll enjoy it. The album is free to stream at Bandcamp and YouTube . It's pay-what-you-want to download a high-quality digital cop. The Bandcamp download comes with an exclusive PDF booklet with artwork, lyrics, and credits. label: GarageMonkey Productions (GMP-030) format: digital file released: 23 April 2013 time: 46:58 recorded and engineered by Deterior in Studio 170 from January–March 2013 mixed and mastered by Deterior in Studio 170 from March–April 2013 cover photography: Keith Roper Now it's time to relax and crank out that Men Like Gods remaster.

It's about 99% done at this point, so I guess I feel pretty comfortable putting up a quick teaser video. Enjoy!

Okay, let's get this out of the way. Recording is totally finished (assuming I don't need to go back and re-record anything, which is possible but unlikely); all that's left is a bit of engineering, reworking the drums (which won't take long), mixing, and putting the art stuff together. I'm going to tentatively finalize an April 23 release date, which should give me plenty of time to finish all of that. The album is called Torchbearer , will have five tracks, and features a more black-metal tinged sound. It'll be on Bandcamp as usual, and I'll keep putting out updates when necessary.

Guitar is basically finished; I'm going to be working on the vocals this coming week and finishing up the artwork and stuff like that. There will be a formal announcement with more details on maybe Monday. Then a month or so of mixing and tweaking; I'm going to say late April or early May for release but I haven't nailed anything down yet. Also, I've converted all the tape/CD-R merch stuff to Bandcamp, so you can order them there if you like (not that anyone has been). At some point soon, I will probably put up lossless downloads of the noise releases there (finally) and I can put last.fm and Mediafire behind me.

Just a couple quick updates about what I've been up to lately with Deterior. Recording is still trucking along; the guitar work is about one-fourth finished. Since it's the most time-consuming part I expect it to be another few weeks before I move to vocals, so things are a bit behind schedule (which figures). Recording should be done by mid-March as long as real life doesn't get in the way too much. Hopefully by then I'll have ironed out the lyrics, track titles, and artwork. And the guitars actually don't sound like garbage this time! Which brings me to my second bit of news: I'm going to be working on an official remaster of Men Like Gods over the next few months, because it doesn't deserve to have such a horrible mix. I've learned a lot about more-professional mixing techniques over the past few months, so I hope to give that album the more dignified sound it should have had the first time around. (I partly blame that stupid distortion pedal.) That...

Hey look, it's 2013. Today I recorded all of the bass for the new album. Yes, all of it. That was the easy bit, though... I haven't even finalized lyrics yet, and I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to record guitar with the new setup I'm using (direct inject + monitor, it's sort of complicated). Now that I've got the ball rolling, though, I'm hoping to finish all recording by the end of February, spend March putting stuff together and mixing, and maybe put something out in April. But you know how it is with my release estimates.

Just a heads-up: The tapes and CD-Rs (you can get them at Bandcamp ) now just cost shipping: $3 to the USA, $5 to Canada, and $7 international. There are only a small handful of each. In other news, I'm still cranking through the rehearsal / revision stage for the new album. I plan on starting recording very soon after the new year. Yes, it's taking a lot longer than usual to get stuff done (if you haven't noticed by my posting frequency), which can partly be attributed to the fact that I want to try as hard as I can to not make it sound like garbage like the last one. It's also partly because it's significantly different in style from my other material and I'm getting used to this new style and doing a lot of revision to get it to sound good. I'll try to keep updating this blog more often, but no promises.

Slowly I've come to realize that I've more or less got the writing process all wrong. In the past, I've been writing songs and then trying to force those songs into an album and try to get it to fit what I had in mind, and it never really worked. Instead, this time, I have an overarching idea for the album and I'm breaking it down and figuring out what goes where, and then writing those parts. I think it's gone better so far. I have four songs, and I'm entering the revision stage about now, refining the flow and arrangements. That'll take another month or two, probably (I've been working very slowly). Maybe if I'm lucky I'll start recording before the end of the year.

I'm still here. I haven't been posting since March since, well, things have been going slowly. I've been focusing on some other things, but that doesn't mean that Deterior is gone—in fact, I'm writing stuff for another album right now. I'm taking a different approach so hopefully things go a bit faster and my writing is better; it seems to be working nicely so far. I have about 35 minutes' worth of songs written, so I'm making good progress, but don't ask when anything new will come out (though it probably won't be until next year). By the way, it looks like the only links Mediafire took down are the Spire remix single and Music for Nucleonics . They're still both on last.fm (for free) so I won't sweat re-uploading them anytime soon.

Deterior seems to be waking up a little earlier than I had planned. I won't bore you with details, but I am writing new music. What comes of it remains to be seen.