Next came the not-too-fun task of replacing Chad. This position would, of course, be filled by Paul Miles. Paul had been playing in local band around the St. Louis area for a number of years and we had actually seen him perform a couple of times. I think Chad may have actually recommended that we consider getting in touch with him. So, after contacting him and asking him to learn a couple of songs from "Manic", we had him over for an audition. After running through "Paint A Picture" and "Something Real" it was clear that Paul definitely had the musical ability we were looking for. One thing we liked about him was that besides possessing the musicianship needed to play the newer material, he also had more of the "looseness" and "rawness" that had been lacking since Mike Owen's departure. By the time Paul joined the band, practically all of the new material was already written, and with studio time already booked, he pretty much just learned the songs as they appeared on demos recorded using a drum machine and drum parts arranged by either Chad or myself. Although Paul added a few things here and there, I sure he was more than a little disappointed by his level of input. Regardless, he understood the amount of time we had put into making this album our strongest yet. So after rehearing with Paul for a couple of months we prepared to enter the studio again. The one thing that we were all in agreement about was that we felt it would be a more relaxed environment if we recorded in St. Louis this time. We figured this would make it more convenient for band members to continue working at their respective jobs while the album was being recorded. The other thing we agreed on was to hire Dave "Fuzzy" Dvirnak to engineer the recording. "Fuzzy" had been an engineer at Royal Recorders during the recording of "Manic" and although not officially an engineer on the album, he had lent much of his time to try and help salvage the album. During the time since then he had become a friend of the band and his easy-going personality made him enjoyable to work with. We decided to use a 24-track studio built in the basement of a sound engineer we had worked with a few times at earlier local shows. The studio seemed to have everything we would need to do the initial recording and the price was definitely right. For about the amount we paid for two weeks at Royal Recorders we were able to block out two months this time. Of course, the equipment was not of the same caliber, but we felt that much of what Royal had to offer was unnecessary for our purposes. We also wanted to take our time and make sure we could feel more relaxed during the recording. We began with the initial drum tracks, this time with John and me accompanying Paul. We thought this approach would give the songs more of a "loose" feel, as opposed to what many people had described as the "mechanical" feel of "Manic". In many ways, at the time, I think we knew that this album was what would either make or break the band. We new that if we didn't receive the much needed support of our label there might not be another ANACRUSIS album. With this in mind we set out to make an album that would fully define our sound by incorporating all of the elements used on our previous efforts along with the broadened sound of songs like "Grateful" and "Brotherhood?". It didn't take long to feel a degree of tension between our new drummer and the rest of the band. Kevin, John and myself had been together since the beginning of ANACRUSIS and felt a strong sense of family. We also felt as though ANACRUSIS was our creation and were very protective of it when it came to any outside input. In retrospect, Paul was in a very difficult position, whereas even though Chad had not been with us from the beginning, his relationship with me and the band was a long one. Paul, though familiar with ANACRUSIS when he joined, had never even heard our first two albums and didn't seem to have much appreciation or respect for what we had accomplished up to this point. Paul often felt like an outsider, which is very common for a new member in any band with a few years behind it. We had a lot of work ahead of us and the last thing we wanted to deal with at this point was personality problems. So, without too many problems we carried on with the recording. Another problem was the relatively short time Paul had to learn the material. There was one song in particular that we had written with Chad that featured several very intricate double bass drum patterns that Paul had a really tough time with. Before entering the studio we had expressed a concern that Paul may have some difficulty playing it and offered to change a few parts if it would make the song more comfortable for him. He insisted that he just needed to practice it and it would not be a problem. This is not to cut down Paul's ability but it was just one of those things that may feel natural to one player and extremely difficult to another player of equal ability. Another concern was the song contained many pieces contributed by Kevin and we didn't want the song to be cut from the finished album, thus greatly diminishing Kevin's input to the songwriting. Well, as things often go, when the time came to record it, and only a couple of attempts at the first few bars it was put on hold until later in the session and eventually dropped all together. The only other incident involved the song "Brotherhood?". As I said before the bulk of the instrumental sections were written months before and the heavier sections containing the verses were actually taken from an old song from our first demo called "Vultures Prey". This was another HEAVEN'S FLAME leftover that we had never recorded. I had always liked the melody and chord progression and since it had a similar tempo and feel as the other new pieces I had come up with, I decided to combine them into one song. I completely re-wrote the lyrics and recorded a demo of it for the guys to hear. I'm not sure how popular it was with Kevin and John but I insisted that it was important that it was included on the album in order to "round out" the new element of orchestral sounds on several of the songs. I decided to place it as the last song on the album, this way if it was hated by the listener it was easy to just stop at the track before it rather than having to skip over a seven-minute song featuring "stupid keyboards". For some reason Paul seemed to keep putting off learning this song, and in the studio, ended up playing along to the demo tape one section at a time, figuring out the parts as we went along.