TARJA TURUNEN (ex-NIGHTWISH) has issued the following new blog entry from Petrax Studios in Hollola, Finland:

"We said goodbye to Doug Wimbish in the morning. He finished all the bass parts last night with success.

Including a beautiful solo for “The Crying Moon”.

Alex was recording yesterday and today guitars for many songs. He is using three different amplifiers in recordings, so that we reach bigger and bombastic sound. Here you’ll see them in the back.

It has been absolutely important that Alex has been here with us during the whole project. He has been arranging killer guitar riffs for many of the songs and they are sounding now much more modern, heavy and rocking!

But there is also space in the album for some delicate sounds together with the raw ones.

There have been quite many people visiting the studio while we’ve been here and all of them have agreed that this album sounds very promising. I am, of course, very delighted about this. We have worked in the whole process 33 songs from which I decided to record 17. The remaining ones took another path because of the music, lyrics or both. I am sure that I will give them a rest, but I will revisit them for other projects or for a future album.

Tomorrow I will start rehearsing and adjusting the vocal parts and getting my body ready for the actual recordings. These are about to begin.

We have been working long days. Every night the time to go to sleep has been more or less at 03:00 in the morning or later. The lack of sleep starts to affect all of us, but the good mood around helps us to keep ourselves in the right track. We are here for one purpose and everybody is giving his or her very best for it.

I am very happy to see the musicians really putting their heart into my music. I am really grateful to them."

Tarja Turnen is detailing work on her new album, What Lies Beneath, on her official blog at Tarja-whatliesbeneath.com. Further updates to follow.