With Carcass announcing last week that their new album is being delayed due to the crisis, it got me thinking about the effect brand new, not yet recorded music. I'm not talking about the physical part of pressing CDs and Vinyl and selling them in stores; I mean not being able to get together to write/rehearse/record.

Depending on how long this goes on for, is it safe to assume that bands won't be able to record new music for the foreseeable future? I suppose we will always have one-person projects releasing music, and some bands may be equipped to write and record their parts separately with home studios, but do you think there could come a time, say 3 or 4 months from now where new releases of all genres see a major drop off in quantity?

I think we are safe in the metal corner of the world. There are still hundreds of records and bands I've been meaning to check out for the two+ decades I've been a fan.

At least we got the new Testament and Conception before metal is ultimately cancelled.

I doubt most people wouldn't even be able to buy any music at all if the situation continues as it is right now in the foreseeable future...

The romantic image of four guys hunkering down in a studio and making a record together is increasingly out of date. Many bands just record stuff at home and share files by Dropbox, without even meeting in person. It's just the cheaper way to do things.

Even for big budget albums you often see album credits like "drums recorded at Crabcore Studio in Florida, guitars recorded at Djentland Records in Germany, vocals recorded at Steveterreberrysucks Audio in England, mixed and mastered by Whateverthefuck Sounds, additional cowbell overdubs recorded at Vargvikernesdidnothingwrong Sonics, etc, etc, etc." Even when you're rich enough to book studio time, you don't all have to be in the same place at the same time.

There's no reason for coronavirus to affect the recording of an album. It will affect the promotion cycle of an album, though: bands can't really tour or go places at the moment, so that'll probably delay (or even cancel) some albums. Record labels won't pay advances for albums that nobody's going to hear.

I don't think there's a answer to this question because every band does things differently. All I know is that Paysage d'Hiver album got delayed and I'm really pissed he just didn't release it on Bandcamp.

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More big releases from bands who can afford to delay things are going to be postponed. Hatebreed and Carcass are going to sell a lot in their first week either way, and as Hatebreed said, they have a lot of fans with an old-school mindset who still buy physical media and won't settle for digital, plus their tour was going to fall right in the middle of its release. Bands on that level have way more to gain from a delay under these circumstances - they're established, their fans aren't going anywhere and are patient, and, like with Hatebreed, a lot of their fans are physical media devotees. Smaller and emerging bands have less of a choice. They'll delay physical releases and just put it out digitally on the original street date because they have little to gain and a lot to lose from a complete delay.

Thanks but I know, I've had it since February. I'd just rather listen to it from a non 128kbps unsplit mp3 (CD/Bandcamp/whatever would be nice). I mean, hosting a listening party and the USB and all that is nice but you can't expect just a few people to have it for months and not eventually leak it. This whole thing is turning a bit idiotic if you ask me. Just do a pre-order on Bandcamp and say you'll send the albums when you have them like normal bands do.

I'm listening to it now for the first time and I'm not impressed, perhaps because my tinnitus is stronger. I don't know how much of a difference it makes, but mine is 320kbps.
I think that idea of listening to an album in a castle was very cool. Maybe it is good that he hasn't set a pre-order yet because the borders are closed now, which put the transfer of goods on a halt.

It will make no difference, the 320 is just a transcode of the 128kbps afaik. As for the album, I think it's among the best stuff he's ever made. I still need to listen to it a lot more though but I was waiting for a better version to be released.

He's just uploaded a message to Facebook complaining about the situation but ultimately it's all his fault. You can't give the album to some people and when trouble arises indefinetely postpone the album release. Of course it was going to leak, I'm surprised it wasn't uploaded to the Internet the day before. I was going to buy it blindly and now I'm not sending any money his way just because this whole mess. If he needed a ego boost there are definetely better ways to do it than this.

i thought most borders that are closed because of corona, do still allow goods through, just not people?

Yeah, I've been getting packages. Lots of delays but they still arrive and my country is in full lockdown right now.

Apparently, but my order was cancelled and I concluded that the transfer of goods is not permitted, so I'm going to guess that things are chaotic now when it comes to Serbia. Being outside of EU was horrible even before the pandemic.

It's good to know now that mp3 is worse than WAV, but I'm not going to start buying CDs. Yes, musicians need support, but I think the art should be free, and if someone makes a living from it, I'm sorry, they need to change the job. I sacrificed my life to science so that I don't end up begging on the street; I stopped believing in a dream that I could live from creative writing (selling books) as I grew up.
After the pandemic ends, more people will realise the benefits of working online, and musicians will focus on selling on platforms like bandcamp. I'm a horrible art recipient because I don't attend concerts neither... If everyone behaved like me, a lot of the artists would stop doing what they do, which is not that bad as it sounds, because only the people dedicated enough to their hobbies would continue doing it, so it would result in more lo-fi, non-elitist approach to art. World without pop millionaires sounds grate.

Studios are most likely closed in most places around the globe by the way. So I don't see how this applies to what you're saying. Even if the musicians did already record separetely very often before Covid-19, they still had to go to the studio, get a sound engineer and other staff there to record. So unless you're Metallic or the guys from Cynic, if you don't have the gear to record at home, you can't record your music.

Enslaved pushed their album to the fall.

I don't even think Metallica would have the capability of doing it. As far as I know, Kirk lives in Hawaii and doesn't have adequate recording equipment/space, as he used to fly in to HQ to record his parts for Hardwired. I truly don't think you'll see many releases outside of one-person projects being announced in the next few months.

I somehow find myself agreeing with you about the fact that bands who rely on sales and touring for income tend to be has-beens and should pack it in for the better part.

However, I can't stand most shoestring budget metal. Most metal musicians suck at studio work, visual arts and other skills needed to make a well rounded album and the current situation isn't helping in that regard.

Just look at Serbia - the quality of its musical output in metal definitely got a boost from talented musicians taking on bigger projects and working with competent studios, artists etc. I for one would like fewer, more polished releases (yes, that also includes attention towards physical packaging) than more lockdown Bandcamp fodder. Alas, the latter is the effect I'm expecting the COVID crisis to have on metal.

It looks like COVID-19 situation is good for songwriting, and I expect an increase in underground productivity - one-man projects will definitely come up with something recorded and completed, whereas those who need help with technicalities will have to wait a bit more. Creating good minimalist music is much more difficult than being helped by a dozen people who know how to make a package that sells. This is why DSBM is mostly horrible, and a lot of such acts try to copy early Burzum songs (hopefully the good ones).
As for the visual art, you can always put an old (un)edited painting or transform a photograph with only a few clicks in some software. Sometimes those artists they hire make silly pictures, so it's better to have pure amateurism than amateurism with high pretence.


I'm not familiar with metal scene in Serbia; black metal is poor and the rest escapes my radar.

Only Lars lives in San Fran today. I have no idea about America's quarantine laws at the moment, but if the cities are enforcing any then it would be impossible for Metallica to do anything. From what I can work out, Kirk is indeed in Hawaii, Rob is somewhere north of LA, and James is in Vail, Colorado.

Yeah, this is definitely going to delay some recordings for sure. The bands who have members who own studios or have the means to do good home recording jobs will be fine, but the bigger studios are going to have to close up shop for a bit. Plenty of bands are using the time to write or do preproduction, at least, so I think a lot of people are going to hit the ground running as soon as they can.

Do they? Even when you can make pro-sounding recordings at home with a laptop? Herman Li apparently recorded guitar solos for a recent DragonForce album on a yacht.

It really depends on how your band works. If you have good equipment and recording know-how, can comfortably write from a distance and just bounce ideas off of each other and critique them over Zoom or Skype or whatever you use, and are generally good at decentralized operation, sure, you can record your tracks on your own and then maybe ship it off to be mixed and mastered (though DIY drum recording is usually difficult and expensive when you factor in building a good room for them). Some bands can definitely pull that off. Not all bands can, however, and that's the problem - quite a few of them still do play around in the studio and benefit from having a producer who can help them flesh out ideas, think outside the box, or just tell them that something sucks or isn't going to work no matter what they do. There are some bands who can't or shouldn't plug-and-play from a distance, and those are the ones who going to see delays.

As per various social media sites, Wardruna's album has been postponed (was scheduled for June this year, I believe):
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-rl4kXjkxj/


Pretty bummed, was really looking forward to this one.