Equipment Used.

Mixing Desks -Tascam M-2516 and Yamaha O3D

Sequencing - Atari 1040ST, 1 meg ram.
Software - Steinberg's Cubase 1.01

Recording - Pentium 450 PC. / 128 meg ram, 13 gig hard drive. Event, Darla audio card, 2 in, 8 out.
Software - Emagic's Logic Platinum 3.5.
Wave Native Power Pack 1 & 2 Audio Plug-ins.
PAS Spectrum Analyzer.
Steinberg's WaveLab.

Outboard Equipment - Akai S2000 Sampler, 32 meg ram, onboard fx, expanded outputs and 2nd filter board, Emu, Emax 1 Sampler, 1 meg ram 12 bit.
Roland Alpha Juno 1.
Behringer - Ultragain Pro Mic pre amp, Ultrafex II enhancer, Virtualizer effects processor, Composer compressor/limiter.
Alesis - Midiverb 3 & 4 effects processor's, Monitor One studio reference monitors.
Dbx. 166A compressor/limiter.

The entire recording process was done in the The Berzerker's own home project studio.

A lot of money was spent in professional studios in Vancouver, Canada searching for the correct elements for the recording process. As it turned out Devin Townsend was not the right man for the job of recording and mixing The Berzerker album. The other players that were involved in Canada also to my disappointment fell short of my high expectations. After using all but A$3,500 I returned back home. This was not a sufficient amount of money to record the album with in a professional studio, and as Earache were not interested in advancing any more money for the recordings, I set about purchasing the equipment that was needed to record an album with the remaining money e.g.. Computer, audio card, attaining a good quality mixing desk (O3D) and building a vocal booth. With no prior knowledge of computers (except the Atari) this was a very steep learning curve for myself that had to be over come, and very quickly as the album was already over due.

The recording process:

First the drums midi files were transferred from the Atari to the PC. ( I originally intended to use Cuebase on the PC but had a lot of problems with the audio side of things) Logic 3.5 was chosen as the program to use. As it is so widely used in studios across the planet. The drums were laid down without any problems. Next we had the guitars. I had never even mic'd a single guitar amp before so I made lots of calls to find the correct way for this to done. We used a Marshall 2000 Head with a 400 watt 1960 cabinet. (It gave a great me a great sound for me to work with) I used a Shure SM 57 and a Audio Technica AT4033a microphone. The mics were in close proximity (Not knowing about the 3 to 1 rule of mic placement then.) Which caused some phasing problems. I quad tracked the guitars for both the left and right sides. This gave me an enormous wall of sound. I then spent 3 days with a guitarist laying the initial guitar tacks down. The guitarist played to a click track for timing.

Shortly after the guitars were complete we commenced on the vocals. This would seem quite straight forward. I had to try to get the best sound with the equipment I had available. I did not have a mic pre amp (as I had never recorded vocals properly before) so I borrowed an Ultragain mic pre it is quite low budget A$600 but that was all I could get my hands on for free so I worked with it. The first few vocal sessions for each vocalist were recorded before we built the vocal booth. I set up some blankets in the corner of the room to deaden the reflections. Some of the vocal takes for the first half of 'Cannibal Rights' were done outside of the booth and the second half was done inside the booth. 'Burnt' was recorded in a similar fashion. (I was well behind schedule and had to record as fast as possible)

After the vocals were finished I went back and re-recorded the guitars with a second guitarist using a Marshal JCM 800 and 1960 cabinet. This was done to try to give the guitar sound more depth, and to get a different playing style for the right hand side of the mix. Again 3 days (on and off) were spent recording these guitar parts. Lastly we recorded the bass (5 string) through a Ampeg head and a black widow cabinet. (The amp volume was so low you could barely hear it standing in the same room). It was mic'd with a SM 58 approx 1 foot away from the speaker, but it sounded huge and guttural.

Finally I was to the mixing stage. But not before having to reformat the computer at least 5 times and reinstall windows 98 a dozen or more times. During the course of recording the album I would loose various parts due to the formatting. People would be called back to re-record a vocal line, guitar part or bass line. After what I thought was all the hard work finally done I moved on to mixing the record. Weeks and weeks went by with upto 10 mixes of each song being created. I had major problems with the guitar sound and vocals having the same characteristics, they were both recorded through the same mics/compressor/pre amp/soundcard combination and had a distinct digital sound to them. (Which I dislike immensely) A lot of time was spent trying to get rid of the digital fizz that was present in the guitar tracks. (I would have liked to dump all the guitars to 2 inch tape but by this stage i had already spent several thousand dollars of my own money and was flat broke.) My sanity was being questioned by those around me and by myself, the stress I had endured in trying to complete the recording process had fully taken it's toll. At one stage it looked as if the album was going to be mixed in the UK. I prepared and cleaned all the individual tracks and wrote detailed information about various aspects of what I required from the final mix and sent everything I had to Earache. The studio and engineer was booked and I had been in contact with the engineer in the UK. (Finaly I get to have a well deserved break). Well that was what I thought. I was contacted by Earache and told that no more money was going to be put towards the mixing for my album, and that I should mix it myself. I mixed and mastered the entire album in 2 days.

The Berzerker album (Mosh 222) comenced recording in February 1999 and was completed in January 2000.

"And that's why the album is sounds as it does. Generally over compressed, digital fizzy guitars, not enough de-essing of the vocals, bass guitar buried in the mix etc..."

The Berzerker. May 2000