poltergeist

Hello everyone! Just wanted to say a quick thank you - myself, Thom and Pete are unbelievably blown away by the response to A Fear So Cold - once again I never expected it do the rounds like it has I was fairly certain the last EP would be a one off but I had the itch to start writing more towards the end summer of last year, numbers don’t matter whatsoever but I really was expecting the <1000 thing on Spotify as I didn’t think anyone would probably care about a 2nd EP - turns out people do care! On a quick personal level I almost quit music altogether towards the end of 2023 through to late 2024. After a wave of ups and too many downs I’d just had enough, I was gonna sell all my stuff and move on. But it feels really good to be excited about music again and doing it purely for the enjoyment of doing it, rather than trying to “make it” or become “successful” yadayada which tbh is just awful for you mentally I said this before but worth mentioning, I started doing this because I wanted to hear more meshuggah riffs - and that still stands, I’m not trying to create some new sound or break boundaries I’m just writing music that I want to listen to in my car - and I know Thom and Pete feel the exact same way. That being said we’re so grateful to everyone who has listened to this music, and we’re excited to take this stuff live, cheers!

Hey everyone, I have some exciting news! for the past year I’ve been chipping away at writing, recording and mixing the first EP under the Poltergeist name. “Impressions Of The Bizarre And The Uncanny’ I’ve not sat down and written any music purely for me to enjoy in a loooong time, I did this purely for fun and I genuinely really love what I’ve created with this EP which is quite rare for me as I’m usually never sure if something is good or not. I made this purely as a passion project, and to push myself with my mixing, playing and songwriting. I also asked some of the best guitarists I’ve ever met to do guest solo’s on I and I’m so glad I did because fml they’re unreal! Massive thanks to @benwilshire @andersyeah @jakeunpeople I especially want to thank @karoshiproductions for being an utterly amazing human being and doing vocals on every song, he’s seriously outdone himself on these and I can’t wait for you to hear them all @destructionmanual with the sick as fuck artwork 1. Berzerk Feat. Ben Wilshire 2. The Snake, Coiled And Irate Feat. Drew Barnicoat 3. House Of Mirrors 4. Circadian Rhythm Feat. Jake Crawford 5. There Are Worse Things Below Feat. Drew Barnicoat

Quick (one take/no edits) Stengah cover with the Fortin meshuggah pedal. I've seen a fair bit of discourse about this pedal online, I think it's great! amazing for anyone who wants to minimise their rig The tone you're hearing is just the pedal into a cab IR in my axe fx and that's it Drums are M&M2 by @ggd.co

A brief look into the recording of “…Of An Insidious Nature” As always this song is made up of tracks recorded from beginning to end with no cuts or edits to the playing. This time we decided to do something different and record our parts at the same time. We recorded the song together a bunch of times and used the best take for Pete’s bass part, and the 4 most complimentary takes for the guitar parts. Recorded in my living room using my FTM33 and Pete’s Dingwall D-Roc

A look into the amps and gear used to record “…Of An Insidious Nature”. *THIS ISN’T AN AMP SHOOT OUT* As always, this track was recorded in one take, with no cuts or edits. Recorded using my FTM33 and Pete’s Dingwall D-Roc. Tone wise, it’s pretty much the same approach as last time: the guitars are quad-tracked with tracks 1 & 2 being panned hard left and right, reamped through a bunch of different amps and cabs. The Horizon Precision Drive was used as the main drive pedal The main amp is Fractal’s version of a Marshall JVM410H. I usually go with the Cameron, but we wanted a bit more bite on this one! especially for the chugs. Also… it just sounded nice to my ears at the time Aside from the Hiwatt, which was a deliberate choice to give the overall sound a bit of fuzzy low end, the rest of the amps were picked purely on what sounded cool at the time and everything was layered to taste (I’ve included the dB levels of each amp relative to the main tone) Guitar tracks 3 & 4 are panned mid-left and mid- right and exclusively use the “Thordendal modern” tone… because why not? They don’t sound particularly amazing by themselves but put together we’re just just so happy with how they sound The bass tone is something we’re especially proud of. It’s made entirely from stock Logic plugins because we just fancied trying something super basic and seeing if we could make it work. It took a fair bit of fiddling to get it sitting right, but we were aiming more for that Chaosphere sound rather than a super modern metal tone. I’ve included the exact settings if you want to steal it, although Pete’s playing is really what makes it sound as good as it does. After all of this I levelled all the amps and did subtle EQ moves and then bounced all guitars as a stereo track just to make @tgcory life easier when mixing.

Hello all! Just a quick message to say thank you so much for the overwhelming response to “…Of An Insidious Nature.” As you might have noticed there's a new new addition to the band, officially making us a full lineup! We’re incredibly proud and excited to welcome @lewisrichardsdrums to the squad. Lewis is an amazing drummer and an even better person and we're all buzzing to have him on board Plenty more on the way from us, see ya soon!

“…Of An Insidious Nature” is now streaming everywhere Relentless by design, written with no space to breathe Mixed & Mastered by @tgcory

Thanks for all the love on Annihilation, everyone! Here's some BTS footage from when me and @oldmangraves were tracking our guitar and bass parts I've also added the solo’d guitar tracks that I layer up to create one sound, as a few peeps were asking me to break them down recently. 1. My go-to amp in the Axe Fx 3 is the Cameron CCV 2D. If I'm not mistaken, the Cameron amps are kind of like supercharged JCM800's. Over the years I've found this one to be super reliable and it barely needs any tweaking 2. An Engl Savage ("Angle Severe”) I find myself going back to this a lot for that super high gain sound. Although, to be fair, the amp sound is really shaped by the secret sauce I've got going on! 3. I stole this trick from the VSOR mix walkthrough by @antfarm_producer , and I've been doing it ever since we released the second EP. It's a Hiwatt absolutely cranked to get that really warm, fuzzy tone, with a rat pedal at the front for good measure. I find it adds so much weight to guitars. Probably sounds minging on a phone speaker, but it works in a mix! 4. I’m always processing bass differently per release, but for this we settled on a Mesa 400+ for the low end and a JCM800 for the grit. I do like the sound of it, but I wish we’d tinkered with it a bit more 5. All of the reamps (and quads) layered up to create the final sound. I think this is something I'll be doing forever now, as I love the way it feels and it gives more of a unique vibe - to my ears anyway! Thanks again everyone!

A fresh dosage of rhythmic chaos for you to enjoy - ‘Annihilation’ just went live! Very excited to start rolling some new tunes out since the release of the last EP! I finally got sick of mixing our own music so we handed the burden over to @tgcory who did a great job on the mix and master This song was recorded in 1 take (as always) and quad tracked at @musicboxstudios in Cardiff using my Ibanez iceman and Pete’s Dingwall D-Roc bass I also want to mention that Spotify is a bit of a wasteland, and ideally we’d love Bandcamp to become the main place to listen to our stuff. Obviously Spotify is really convenient, which I totally get, but the bloke who owns it is a lizard We’ll be uploading demos, instrumentals, stems and loads of other random bits to Bandcamp, so if you’re into that kind of thing, there’ll be a lot more fun stuff over there!

It’s no secret that Meshuggah are, without a doubt, the main influence behind this project. Myself, Thom & Pete thought it was about time we paid homage to the greats! We went back and forth on which song to cover, but ultimately decided to take it back to the early days with a track that rarely sees the light of day anymore. So, please enjoy our version of New Millennium Cyanide Christ! Lower and slower, of course.

@solarguitars are the best riffing 'The Snake, Coiled & Irate' on the v1.8svart (solo'd guitars included at the end)

“A Fear So Cold So Raw So True” is now available everywhere - The Mutation (Feat. Drew Barnicoat) - Hind Legs - Tentacles - Boltzmann Brain (Nasser ‘pixelona’ Hajiah) - To Climb These Stairs Again Hello all! So It’s been just over 2 years since I released the last EP, and the reception It received was completely unexpected and really blew me away. I want to say a genuine huge thank you to those that listened/shared it I’ve been working on this new one for a while now and I’m very happy and proud to get it out to you all I’d like to welcome @xembracethepainx & @oldmangraves to the lineup as we’ll now be taking poltergeist from a quiet online thing into a real, living project together Enjoy!