In August 2017 sometime, I started to relisten to Finality, an early 2017 remake cd containing old Rancid Abomination songs from 2001-2006 redone.. I noticed the sound differences compared to newer Rancid Abomination like staring into the eyes of madness and Immediately regretted doing that change on that cd. I didn't like the change suddenly, and I don't understand why... I wanted to bring back the OLD sound of Rancid Abomination. And that's when it hit me....
I never have actually done a cd that feels like a classic cd from 2001-2006 in 2016 or 2017!
Production changes ruined the atmosphere of these new cd's.. They didn't have they creepy vibe the old ones did... Not just that but the whole change thing on Staring really ruined the sound to me... It no longer sounded like what Rancid Abomination was supposed to sound like... The more influences you add from other bands, the more the uniqueness of your musical project destroys itself.. I had done that on staring. It may have been a great cd, and I still think it's the best ever, but I had to destroy the sound of Rancid Abomination to do it... Delayed harmonies were used less. That's the core of Rancid Abomination. But so is lots of blastbeats and thrash riffs. Blastbeats were used less on staring, and thrashy riffs were gone completely. It pissed me off.
I wanted something that sounded like something I would do in 2004-2005... I never have done that in these last 2 years of the band. I did a lot of albums that sounded like 2004-2005 mixed with 2001 (first 2 cd's in 2016), 2004 mixed with 2003 (the devouring) and improved technical black metal with Windir and other elements thrown in (last 2). I had yet to do something in the vein of Old Rancid Abomination... I needed to bad.
All the old 2004-2005 cd's have a lot of things in common. They don't have happy melodies much, they have bad production but they have eerie vocals and scary lyrics. They don't have super distorted guitars and they have no really epic symphonic elements thrown in. 2004-2005 stuff was not symphonic at all, it was aggressive and dark, without being creepy in a symphonic way like staring. it used lead guitars and sinister sounding chord structures to make the music sound scary. It never used epic keyboards, sognametal melodies much and never dabbled with (slight) elements of Oriental Black Metal... Instead it was brutal, filled with blast beats, and had evil sounding guitar harmonies everywhere... It was a completely different animal... It wasn't a big ripoff! What I had done on Staring sounded to me like a Ripoff! I wanted to throw that out the window and go back to what it used to be like!
I needed to do something completely different. Something eerie. Then it hit me... I needed to stop using distortion on the guitars. I needed to do Reverb instead to add the eerieness back in... I got this Epiphany from listening to Dissection one night, and noticed their reverberated production. It became an influence immediately... I also needed to write something fast, heavy, brutal and dark... Something with delayed harmonies and thrashy riffs, but used darker melodies that were more sinister sounding like 2004-2005 stuff, like in the old days. All of the newer Rancid Abomination were newer renditions of the old sound with changes to the sound that didn't sound oldschool enough. I needed to go back in time... And I just did that this month...
I started working on what I originally wanted to be a concept album based on the epic yet dark story of the video game "The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind".. I wrote music for the concept album that sounded eerie and fit the mood of the older 2004-2005 material perfectly. This album's creation is for the second to last chapter, Chapter 14...
