Chad Bowar: What can fans expect from your new CD The Infection?
Rob Arnold: We’re all super-proud of it. People that have heard it have had nothing but good things to say. With every record we do, it’s the best we could possibly do at the time. We’re hopeful and happy about it, and hope it’s going to take us to the stars. I really feel something special about it. There’s a different groove to it, a new style. We try to make our records as unique as possible from one another, and this one’s another step in the progression. It’s powerful and sounds amazing.
It’s also a very dynamic record with tempo and intensity changes.
We learned that by slowing things down you can really open up the recording. There’s more room for things to breathe, rather than cramming a million notes into a bar, which is cool too. All of us are fans of super-fast music, too. We got a bigger recording and a more mature sounding album by slowing it down, taking our time, and really developing a groove.
Last album you had a new label and there had been some doubts of the band’s future. Were things smoother going into the studio this time around?
It was smoother, for a lot of reasons. We were more confident with this one because we really had a good feeling about the songs. Not that we didn’t with Resurrection, but I’d say it was a better overall feeling. We were excited to record these songs. We knew something special was going to happen.
Another thing was, with Resurrection all these great things had happened like switching labels and getting Andy (drummer Andols Herrick) back in the band. There were a lot of things going on. This time it was just like, it’s time to make another record. Everything’s cool, everybody’s in a good spot, the band are friends, Resurrection went great. Now let’s just kick back and have fun with it. It was more laid back recording this one.
Most of the songwriting credits are you and Mark (Hunter, the band’s vocalist). How does that collaboration work?
We collaborate on the music, and he handles all the lyrics and vocal stuff. For the music, when we started writing The Infection it was in the back of the bus during the last tour of the Resurrection cycle. We knew it was going to be the last tour, and we decided to set up a little studio in the back and start putting down some ideas. We were just going to record some guitar stuff and see what it sounded like. The first riff played was the opening riff to “Try To Survive” on the new record. We dug it, kept writing, and finished the song that night.
That set the mood for the whole record. During the course of that tour Mark and I wrote six or seven more songs. Then those really set the tone for when we got back to the practice space with everybody after the tour was over and wrote the next batch of six or seven.
You had used Ben Schigel to produce some of your earlier records. How come you decided to bring him back for The Infection?
All of us have been working with Ben for years. He had a studio in our hometown of Strongsville, Ohio. He had great ears and is a fantastic musician. He helped make the metal scene huge in Strongsville, and that went into Cleveland. He’s been working with Chimaira since 1998, and even before that with our previous bands. He knows us inside and out.
The only reason we didn’t use him for Resurrection was with switching labels and all the changes, we decided to try a new producer and mix up the whole thing and see what happens. While that turned out great and we couldn’t be happier sonically with The Resurrection, we decided to stay at home. Ben’s right here, we know we’re going to get great results, he’s two or three years more talented than he was before and so were we. We couldn’t be happier with the decision.
You had Zeuss do the mixing for this album.
There are some guys who track and mix the record. We did that on our first record, and didn’t really like it. We want a second set of ears to take what we’ve created and put their spin on it. We’ve been doing that ever since, where we use a different engineer and mixer. The guy we wanted to use, Andy Sneap (who also mixed Resurrection) had prior obligations. That didn’t work out timingwise for us. Mark had been talking with Zeuss, and we decided to give him a try.
It worked out better than I thought. I was skeptical at first because I didn’t know him. What he does is take the tracks that already sound great and puts everything at the right level. His forte is mixing, and he has a lot of great post-tracking gear that smaller studios may not have. He puts all the candy on it, makes it sound sweet. He makes the bass sound deeper, the treble sound cleaner, the mid-range fitting in just right. He polishes the songs, then the last step is mastering, which gets it to the perfect CD level, so when it’s put in a CD player it will be loud, but not distorted.
There’s been a lot more attention paid to that process since Metallica’s Death Magnetic was released and criticized for being distorted and over-driven.
Because of all that Death Magnetic stuff, Mark said he didn’t want any compression on this record. There’s actually little to no compression on The Infection because of the Death Magnetic thing.
