I thought I'd use this space to talk about about the ups and downs of taking on a big project like making an entire heavy metal album, and collaborating with singers from around the world to get it done. Consider this more the first of many public diary entries, a mix of thoughts and information.

Here are some demos so you know if it's worth reading about or not! http://soundcloud.com/metalrenard/only-shadows-t ouch-more-recent
;)

Some of you may know that I'd been working on a full length independent album release when I decided I needed to get some vocals on there. So a year ago I got in touch with a few people and now we're in the last 2 months of production! Needless to say, I've learnt a lot and changed a lot since this project started, but it's been a real journey.

I had originally hoped to release in March of this year but we smashed that date and now we're aiming for 20th December. Mostly this is due to not having ideal conditions for recording vocals - all of us are busy people, I was a full time student, one of the other singers is too, and the other guys have jobs and families. I learnt that you can't sacrifice quality for speed - if you want to get the best out of everyone you work with you can't put them under pressure.

Well that's enough rambling for now, more on the subject later!