Thursday evening on July 6 1995 two enthusiastic 15 and 16 year old teenage dudes had travelled 230 km from Espoo to knock on the door of a basement of a church. These young metalheads were guitarist/vocalist Alexi Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen. They’d arrived in Astia-studio’s first location in Lappeenranta to make the second […]
Children of Bodom’s Hate Me! single was released 25 years ago on May 5th 2025. This powerful metal song that came out in the spring of 2000 sold platinum, spent two weeks on the official Finnish singles chart and stayed in TOP20 for the total of 15 weeks. I asked the band members to comment […]
Do we need to play everything live on one take? Can a wrong note be re-recorded? What if our skills are not enough and it all turns out way too difficult? These are some of the questions that many musicians have before the first tape session. And oh the joy when during the recording they […]
January 6th 2021 marks 18 years since the release of Children Of Bodom‘s acclaimed Hate Crew Deathroll album. I’m writing this introduction with a heavy heart as just a few days ago Alexi Laiho, the guitar playing lead vocalist of the group, had passed away. I was blessed to produce and record three Bodom albums and […]
Children Of Bodom arrived at Astia-studio around late 1998 to record a successor to their highly gold-selling debut album Something Wild. The working title for the album was Towards Dead End that later changed to Hatebreeder. It consists of songs such as Warheart, Silent Night Bodom Night and the there-was-no-show-without-it single chart #1 Downfall. By reading […]
Let’s continue with my most favorite topic; drum sound and this time drum monitoring to be exact. By reading you’ll learn how you can improve the drum recording with a simple drum monitoring tip. Drummer! Avoid this common drum monitoring mistake when recording. This blog post delivers useful insight for both drummers and recording engineers. […]
How far are you willing to travel to make the album of your dreams? Why do bands fly up to thousands of kilometres to Astia-studio to record their music on magnetic tape? “We travelled to the other side of the world to make our dreams come true!” – Case study Aeternal Requiem. By reading this post […]
On a Sunday evening in February a group of Finnish top musicians arrived at Astia-studio. The plan was to record five songs in a day on tape with me. This time you’ll get to join us and prepare to get surprised about their tape-praising comments. So let’s hear it from Masa Maijanen, Harri Ala-Kojola, Patrik […]
Do you still remember the time when movies made you feel? How terrifying the horror movies were and how difficult it was to sleep after watching one. Or how an emotional movie made you cry. Yet, why your old favorites don’t have that effect anymore? And why must you turn up the volume when watching […]
As a guitarist you surely must know how hard tuning a guitar can get. Sometimes you may press the strings too hard it can cause annoying detune. With this series I hope to help you with tuning-related issues, as I share my studio and live experience from the past quarter of a century. So let’s […]
