SHADOWS FALL Begins Recording New Album

Drummer Jason Bittner of Massachusetts metallers SHADOWS FALL has issued the following update:

"Drums have begun for the new SHAD album! However, it's too bad I can't even tell you what the name of it is going to be because we haven't figured that one out yet!!!

"Anyhow, I moved into our old stomping grounds Planet Z recording in Hadley, Massachusetts with our ever-present sixth member, Zeuss, patiently watching me load my menagerie of drums inside! 'Is your kit bigger this time??' he asked, I then laughed because technically it's smaller... I dropped off a few cymbals!! He just sighed, and proceeded to find every mike available in Massachusetts in order to capture every nuance of my Tama Starclassic BBE kit.

"This is the first time I'm not recording with my 'old faithful' blue sparkle Birch kit, but so far we are in amazement on how good the Birch/Bubinga hybrid kit sounds. AMAZING!!! Deep, resonant, and the tones are killer.

"I can't tell you how psyched I am over this record. The SHAD camp has been through a lot over the last year, and I think it shows in this record... the songs are a little more on the darker, angry side... lots of heaviness, lots of crazy guitar, and LOTS of room for me to have some fun. There is no doubt in my mind that this will be the best performance of my career, so far, and I owe that to my guys for bringing me incredible riffs to write killer drum parts to.

"Day One I banged out four songs, two of them being two of the hardest songs on the album. The first one being 'F&*K It All', which is the new tune we've been playing live... on this one, I think I do my best Charlie Benante (ANTHRAX) impersonation, lots of long double-bass kick lines. The latter tune being a raging fast song that we are just calling 'Thrashy' for now, but just imagine 'Angel Of Death' and 'War Ensemble' mixed together... I think this is about as close as I'll get to getting my 'inner Dave Lombardo' out on record.

"I'm very proud of these two songs... and the other two we did that day were 'Rocker' and '#6'. As I said, we don't really have all the titles for the songs yet because Brian's [Fair, vocals] still working on some of the lyrics... but he's got plenty of time, I only have half the record done, and we still have guitars and bass to do before he even has to worry about singing the lyrics!!

"On day two I ventured back in to go to work on 'My Demise', which will probably be the album opener... what a killer song, the chorus groove is ridiculous!! Followed by 'Number One', that's the title 'cause it's the first song we wrote for this album, and then I finished the day out with 'Morbid Angel'. I love these 'working titles,' this one being named after one of our fave death metal bands 'cause a few of the drum/guitar lines are reminiscent of that band!!

"At that point I was out of things to do since we hadn't done any scratch guitar tracks for the other remaining songs, partially due to the fact that we are still writing as we speak! Never fear though, yesterday we took a day and went out to our jam room and cleaned up two other 'works in progress,' and now tomorrow I will start tracking those two, followed by a few covers!!

"So we just want to let everyone know, that we are very hard at work on this record, and we hope that you guys and gals will think it's as killer as we do!!"

Video footage of SHADOWS FALL performing a brand new song, "Fuck It All", on December 28, 2008 at Pearl Street in Northampton, Massachusetts can be viewed below.

SHADOWS FALL recently lost its European record deal with Roadrunner Records, which released the band's latest effort, "Threads of Life". The group's U.S. deal with Atlantic Records is also said to be on shaky ground, with "Threads of Life" having only shifted less than 100,000 copies in the United States since its April 2007 release — a fraction of the 300,000-plus sales total achieved by its predecessor, 2004's "The War Within", which was released by Century Media.