Interviews About Albums: Chaos Before Gea - Coach House Sessions (2020)

On this new occasion, we have had the opportunity to interview the Metalcore band Chaos Before Gea, from Spain, about their latest release "Coach House Sessions". Check out the interview, discover everything about the album, and follow the band on their FACEBOOK PAGE.

1. Coach House Sessions is your new album, what would you like to share about it?

We recorded this album on November 2017, during the recordings of our third studio album, CHRONOS, we took a week off to travel to the north of France (Marconne, precisely) and record a live compilation of our three records so far. We also recorded many hours of “making of” material which we have condensed in a 25 minutes documentary and a full videoclip of each song as well.

2. What was your reaction after receiving the proposal of a (new) live album? 

It's something we'd never done before, but we were kinda thrilled about it because of a lot of bands that we like had been releasing similar material (whether it was just one song live in-studio with video or a full album recorded this way). Since David (our drummer) got the offer from his very good friend and musician Nicholas Page (Dub Colossus, Trans Global Underground) the rest of the band were into the idea of going abroad to record a live-in-the-studio album.

3. What made you want to release a new album?

As we said before, during the recording sessions for CHRONOS we were approached by Nick Page, who's known Paul Madden and has worked with him since the 1980s. They're both accomplished musicians and engineers, with many great works under their belts, so we weren't ́t really hesitating about doing it since we knew it was going to be something great.

4. What was the experience like recording with Paul Madden in France?

Paul Madden is a master at his craft. With thousands of studio hours on his back both as a session drummer and engineer, he knows how to work for a massive analog board and how to make a record sound as raw and real as possible. No tricks, no copy/paste, just straight analog recordings of one full take at a time. And he really knows how to exploit a band's potential, always trying to push the limits and encouraging you to do a better take. We also had the pleasure to stay there at his studio and we must say he acted like a great host, always telling us stories about his work and making us feel at home.

5. How hard was for you to choose which tracks would be in the album?

Since we already were recording CHRONOS, it was just a matter of choosing the songs we thought were going to be played the most during our tour. Anyway, as some of the songs were still in the making at our studio in Spain, we decided not to risk recording the ones that we had rehearsed the least by that time. And even some we decided to try ended up in the trash bin due to a bad drumtrack or whatever.

6. How long did it take to have this album fully ready to be released?

We come to the sad part here, hehehe. The original thought was to release this album by the end of 2018, the beginning of 2019, as that was the time when we were touring. But since the recording also involved a small contract with Paul's company at that time, we were waiting on them to settle for the release on Vinyl. Then the three partners that owned the label went into an internal fight that ended up with the dissolution of said label and the closing down of the Coach House Studios in France. After a couple of years, the contract we signed then became finally void, and thus we were able to finally release it on our own.

7. What would you like to share about the cover artwork of this album?

Once again we partnered with the almighty Antonio Bravo, creator of every CBG's T-shirt design, and the mind behind the artwork for CHRONOS. Being a compilation album, we didn't ́t really want to make an epic cover as we are used to, but rather something a bit more simplistic and raw, as the music inside the album. That's why he decided to do a texture variation on our anagram, and we really loved it!

8. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Well, in this hard times we're in, we're “kinda” glad it took so long to release the album because of that allowed us to create a lot of audiovisual content around it (we even added two songs off our show at Rock the Coast Festival 2019, accompanied with video as well), so now with the quarantine situation and all, it's a good time to have a comfortable seat and enjoy the comedic performance that is Chaos Before Gea in the studio, hahaha. Remember to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube, and download or listen to our music at Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Etc. Merchandising at www.chaosbeforegea.bigcartel.com