Finnish Helsinki based metal band Fearout released their debut album Bleedthrough on November 5th 2021 via Inverse Records. To celebrate the album, the band also released their fourth music video Bring Me Down and it’s available here: https://youtu.be/I9sgmWFFwCs
The band tells about birth process of Bleedthrough album:
“After years of let’s just have fun and see where it leads to, Fearout figured out that it would be great to taste some good old blood, sweat and tears. So, let the red-light anxiety of the recording the debut album begin.
Back in autumn 2019, we had 25 or something songs ready that we had written and trained to perfection (yeah, right) and live-proofed ready-to-go. We booked 2 days studio time for the drum recordings, and we really didn’t know how many songs we’d be able to record there, so we voted and had our songs in the order in which we’d start to record them. We started the recording in January 2020 in the studio with Ville Pystynen (Plutonium-74) working as a recording engineer. Two days later Topi had completed drums for twelve songs, and we felt that we had a good dozen for the debut album.
So, we continued to record Minttu’s bass tracks in our rehearsal space in the spring 2020, this time with Justus working as a recording engineer, and actually had them all recorded, but then there was this little thing called global pandemic which derailed the process a bit. After a couple of months waiting, we figured that we could continue, but then Topi wanted to quantize the drums. Which turned out to be the right decision, the only problem being that none of us knew exactly how to do it. But that hasn’t stopped us before, so after a couple of YouTube learning videos and backup files Topi & Justus started to put drum hits and misses to the grid. Once that was finished, obviously we learned, that bass tracks were unusable because we wanted the rhythm tracks to be tight, so we apologetically asked Minttu to come back our rehearsal space and re-record all bass tracks. Which she did and luckily so, because that little time off between the first set of recording had done good because she had come up with even better bass lines.
Next stop: guitars. Justus and Arg agreed that they’d split the guitar duties in this album for the practical reasons: Arg had moved from Helsinki to Kuopio and had his own little recording “studio” in his closet. Also, in this way both could better concentrate more on the songs they had written and knew the best what they wanted to hear. Slowly but surely during the autumn of 2020 the guitar parts started to materialize and then Justus started to focus on the vocals. Justus had a one-day vocal coaching session in December 2020 with his vocal coach Sara Strömmer (Shereign) and in that session for example Point Blank Range finally after 5 years got its vocal melodies set to stone. The target for the lead and backing vocal recordings was set to May day 2021 when the band would meet in the remote cabin in Mikkeli. Before that Justus and Minttu wrote and pre-recorded all vocals and backing vocals so the actual recording would go smoothly. In Mikkeli all vocals were recorded in 2-day session, and everything was ready for the mixing. Or so we thought.
In Mikkeli the band also agreed (while drunk) that since Topi knew Haken drummer Ray Hearne he would ask if Ray would agree to provide us spoken vocals for ‘What’s in the Box’ because we wanted to use native English speaker. To our surprise Ray said yes, so we sent him the text and raw mix of the song and waited for his delivery.
Meanwhile we sent a one song, ‘Point Blank Range’, to our mixer candidate Seppo Nummela (Dead Shape Figure) and waited for the results. Sepi provided us his opinion: everything else was sounding great but he couldn’t work with the guitar sound due to an error made with the mics in the recording. So back to the drawing board and to re-record all those tracks Justus had recorded. After a couple of hits and misses the sound was finally there. Sepi provided us the first mix and the band was very pleased with the end result. While we were still living with Covid situation we knew that the band couldn’t participate physically to the mixing, so we provided as precise instructions as possible beforehand to Sepi, then he’d mix a v1 and we’d comment what needed to be fixed. Within a month we had all our 12 songs mixed and ready for the mastering which was done by Joni Borodavkin (End Of You) who was recommended by Sepi. When everything was ready, Arg contacted Inverse Records and asked if they’d be interested to release the album and after Joni Kantoniemi from Inverse heard the record it was done deal.
Oh yeah, and that name of the album? Well, like mentioned in the beginning we had 25 songs, one of which is called ‘Bleedthrough’. Even though that song didn’t make it to the debut album, Arg figured that it is cool name and describes that blood, sweat and tears band had to bleed during the whole process.”
Listen to the album on:
Bandcamp: https://fearout.bandcamp.com
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3wle2Bg
Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/album/251711382
Tidal: https://listen.tidal.com/album/194562199
Apple Music: https://apple.co/3CLOijS
Watch earlier released music videos:
The End of the Beginning: https://youtu.be/7M2LepMb_QQ
Point Blank Range: https://youtu.be/vwkXq1uTkHk
Nevermore: https://youtu.be/5olDhg0g6NM
Fearout – Bleedthrough
01: That Was the Day I Decided to Start Using Hard Drugs
02: The End of the Beginning
03: Point Blank Range
04: Obsession
05: Nevermore
06: Which One of You
07: Smokescreen
08: Fist. Dreams. Insanity.
09: Half-Empty Man
10: What’s in the Box
11: Betrayal
12: Bring Me Down
Album cover by Markku Minkkinen & Minttu Minkkinen
Fearout are:
Justus Latvala – Vocals
Arg Kinnunen – Guitars, Backing Vocals
Topi Lajunen – Drums, Backing Vocals
Minttu Minkkinen – Bass, Backing Vocals
Links:
https://fearout.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/fearou7
https://www.instagram.com/fearoutband
https://twitter.com/Fearou7
