I've been working on the last couple of songs for about 3 days now and I have to admit that I underestimated how much work is left only on structures, chords and so on. So it will take me another 2 days I guess for completing everything in terms of music.

Georg will be here the upcoming weekend to finish his guide vocals. I think we can handle that in 1-2 days due to most vocallines being written already.

Some words on the songs I am working on:

Song 7: Some kind of midtempo track with a modern pop feel meeting Serenity metal. It's got a headbanging pop touch chorus, a dreamy verse, badass instrumental parts and an awesome acoustic part. Georg and I defenitely like this song - some kind of unexplored terrain for us. Music finished so far...

Song 8: This is already the 3rd version after overworking some chords, vocallines, structure,... by Georg. I felt that the song got a little bit too soft after we dismissed some harder parts due to a "that's not good enough"-feeling. So I added some new parts, changed structure again, raised the pitch,... Now Georg and I feel the right "vibe" in this song. So an overlook... Choir intro, modern (slightly oriental) riffing, Serenity style verse, one of the best bridges we've ever written, a perfect singalong mid tempo chorus, and much much more. We look forward to this song with all the orchestration!!! Music finished so far...

Song 9: A song that is based on Georg's ideas (meaning vocallines specificly). After programming all drums I did'nt really know how this song could turn out catchy but not too cheesy. I think after giving this song a different pitch and quite hard guitar and drumwork this will turn out great in the end. I am still up on this one and will hopefully finish this one tomorrow. Still Solopart and some instrumentals,... missing. I also want to change some things on the current vocals as I have some cool ideas in my mind that will give the song even more appeal. You can think of a true metal hymn with punchy stuff in it.

Song 10: Today I wanted to check out some ideas on the computer and started working on a completely new song. Something quite fast with eary melodies. I realized that some parts from a dismissed idea would fit perfectly (dismissed because of missing parts to complete those ideas). I integrated thouse parts in my new song and added new stuff to it. It has a lot of different parts - vocal parts as well as instrumentals. I already love hearing this song with all orchestrations and Georgs guide vocals (most of them already in my mind). Think of... well -- I can't think of any song like this. Maybe some kind of a mix between some of our favourites - being Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius, Iced Earth, Allen vs. Lande,.... Music finished so far...

Song 11: Causes me most trouble right now. It's an oriental touched song by Mario. I added new drums to it and already tried some guitar work that could fix the melodies. So far no success... I think I have to do a new instrumental riffing part and change the bridge completely. That's beside some other new parts that need to be added. Verse and Chorus are stunning - at least I think that it will turn out great. But there's a lot of work to put into this song. Maybe I have a good flow tomorrow. I'll see...

Song 12: A ballad by Georg - the way I know him this will be another "Fairytales" kind of song. Haven't heard it right now - but I think there won't be much work to put into this one. Ballads are Georg's speciality!! Hope to receive the material within this week to finish the music, reprogram drums,...

So here are my final words for today: I will finish the music for probably 2 songs tomorrow. So only the ballad remains untouched. And by the end of the upcoming weekend I will transfer all missing songs to our producer Oliver for his final work on orchestrations.

It's not been fixed whether the album will include 8, 9,10 or more songs. But the way it is right now I guess we will have at least 10 songs ready for it. Playtime wise it would not be much of a problem with only 9 songs -- most of our songs are very long...

Out for today, tom