The recording went pretty well at first. Chad laid down all his parts alone, playing only to special 'click' tracks he had programmed for each song. One thing we were careful about this time was keeping the tempos consistent. Where as on the first two albums it was like, "O.K. let's hurry up and get these drums done so we can start putting down guitars"(which made most of the songs on these albums MUCH faster than originally intended), this time we wanted to avoid speeding things up too much. This had a lot to do with why many people felt the album had a very mechanical or cold feel to it. Another thing we learned later was that no matter how much planning goes into the finding the 'right' tempo, until the songs are performed live, you really don't get a feel for what the best tempo is. Almost everything on the first two albums was too fast, but after playing songs from Manic on tour, a couple of tunes like "Something Real" definitely could have used a little kick in the seat. It?s like when your writing a song your thinking of it from a certain point of view, but when you are performing it, you might be concentrating on it from a completely different angle and suddenly the 'groove' you thought you heard ain't so 'groovy' anymore. Dig? After the drum tracks were finished (about a day and a half, go Chad!), I recorded my rhythm parts, then Kevin, the John, all taking about a day each. Next came the 'clean' guitar parts, solos and vocals. One of our greatest fears as a band was that someone would come in from the outside and start telling us what to do or how we should sound, so when it came to the people we worked with, we had a tendency to stick with the familiar. In this case we decided to use the same engineer from the Reason album. We had become pretty close friends and had always blamed the sound of Reason on the lack of good 'stuff' we got to use while recording it. Even though his intentions were good, his lack of experience working in the digital format caused many problems. We recorded all the basic tracks over the first ten day period, the plan being we would take a week off to get away from the repetition of hearing the tapes over and over, and return a week later to finish over-dubs and mixing. It was at this time, while running off rough mixes to take home to listen to, that we started to notice some problems. There were very noticeable 'punch-ins' (where you 'punch into' record mode while playing along with the tape to fix mistakes.) Some sections of vocals sounded like they had been recorded one word at a time over a three month period. There was digital distortion. (digital tape does not compress the sounds that peak over 0db like analog tape, and distorts instead) and many things would have to be redone. Although I was acting "producer", I, and the rest of the band, had pretty much kept quiet while the basic tracks were being laid down, leaving this task to the engineer. This is when we learned the hard way how important it is to begin with good "sounds" rather than relying on effects and processing in the mixing to fix problems. So now we were faced with a big problem. We decided to return to the studio without our engineer to complete the album. In all fairness to him, I feel the problems we had were as much to due with a lack of communication on our part as with anyone's ability. One of the best things about Manic, is that even though I still did most of the writing and arranging, it was starting to become more of a group effort. John was beginning to contribute quite a bit lyrically, and musically, and Kevin was beginning to devote more time to his solos, and also contributed many great riffs. One of my all-time favorites is "Explained Away". This song was based around a piece of music Kevin had. Add John's lyrics, my melody, and great drumming, and what resulted was a nice combination of everyone's creativity. I feel this song (and later "Driven") best sums up what we were trying to accomplish musically. From mellow vocals to screams, from intricate syncopation to thrash, this song has a little of everything we did. Lyrically, we continued to journey further inward, digging deeply into the issues that we (and most everyone else) dealt with on a day-to-day basis. As Anacrusis continued to play a greater role in each of our lives, the lyrics began to reflect this, becoming an important outlet for much of the frustration we were dealing with at that time. So, we spent the next few days after returning to the studio sorting through the songs and fixing as many of the noticeable "glitches" as time would allow. Some were smoothed over, but many were not. At one point we had considered re-tracking all of the guitar parts, as I hated the sound of them (and still do) but we decided to use the time and money remaining to complete vocals and solos and to try and salvage a decent mix of what we had. In usual Anacrusis fashion, we ended up running out of time and finished with about three songs mixed. This led to us scrounging up enough money to buy another 12 hour block of studio time, and Chad and myself making the 10 hour drive back up to Wisconsin, mixing all night (literally falling asleep at the board a couple of times) and then turning right around and driving back to St. Louis all in one shot. This was not the best way to end a recording session, but at least we had completed the album. Well, almost. Actually we had also recorded "Tools of Separation" to be included on Manic, but when our mixing time was running out it came down to "Tools" or "Far Too Long". I felt that "Far Too Long" would add more depth to the album as a whole, so "Tools" was never mixed. We did, however, record this song again in 1993, this time for our last album. All in all, I feel this album was our most technical and experimental. I personally think the final mix is much too bright, but it is also very clean sounding, overall. This was an exciting time for us, as we began to mature, both personally and musically. This would definitely continue on our next and final album, "Screams And Whispers".