CHIMAIRA Completes Songwriting Process For New Album

Cleveland, Ohio's CHIMAIRA is preparing to record its new album with producer Ben Schigel, who has previously worked with the band on the "This Present Darkness" (producer, engineer, mixer); "The Impossibility Of Reason" (producer, engineer); self-titled (producer, engineer); and "Resurrection" (drum tracking) CDs.

Commented vocalist Mark Hunter: "Well, friends, after four months of writing, we are finally done! We have 13 songs locked down and we will spend the rest of the month learning them, fine-tuning everything and practicing our asses off.

"We start pre-production with Ben Schigel on the 17th.

"For those of you that don't know much about the pre-production process, it's where 'Mr. Producer' comes in and listens to the songs, throws in some ideas here and there and says this part sucks or that part rules. Then we ingest it all, try it, etc… After that we set the templates for the recording session. This process sucks because it's a bunch of sitting around and listening to people count measures, bars, beats per minute and really awesome things like that. I really love sitting there for six hours listening to Andols [Herrick, drums] say things like, 'The next part is 175bpm with a sixteenth note triplet feel for 8 measures.'

"Exciting!!

"It may be 'boring' but this process is really important because it's like Ben's GPS device. Since he is unfamiliar with the songs he can say, 'OK, let's check out this verse' instead of 'that riff…'

"I listened to all of the songs on my way home tonight and love what we're onto so far. As much as I'd like to describe what it sounds like, I simply can't yet. It's like when you take a jigsaw puzzle out of your closet and dump the pieces onto the table. You know what the final image is going to look like but it's just going to take a while to get there."

Ferret Music has reportedly set an April 28, 2009 North American release date for the CHIMAIRA album. Mixing duties will be handled by Chris "Zeuss" Harris.

CHIMAIRA is looking for label to release the new albim in territories outside North America (the band is no longer signed to Nuclear Blast, which released "Resurrection" in Europe).