Steve Smyth, guitarist for reunited San Francisco Bay Area thrashers FORBIDDEN, checks in once again while tracking at Sonic Room/Audio Voyage Studios in Livermore, California recording the band’s as-yet-untitled fifth studio album. An excerpt is below:

“Day Two: We wrapped up my double [track] on ‘Overthrow’ within a few hours, and soon it was time for me to pick the next song to track. I had the next one in mind already... for a few reasons. As some of you may know already, ‘Adapt Or Die’ is one of two songs we demoed last year and released for everyone to hear while we were shopping for a new deal for the band. This was also the song we chose to debut live in August 2009 in a short string of concerts through the Pacific Northwest, from San Francisco to Vancouver BC. Those lucky fans got to hear where we were taking the song in a live format vs. the song demo. I really feel that as a result of getting out and playing this song live, the album version is strong as all hell, has grown a lot more, has a lot of power to it, and is absolutely unrelenting!

For my parts, I kept those thoughts of playing the song live in my head as I tracked, striving to deliver as much of that ‘live’ type of sound as we could get... [b]ut with this song, I am really trying to keep the strength of the song intact, not trying to harmonize it too much, just deliver the strongest points of the song and keep it heavy - that’s my mantra... One of my favorite parts in the song (besides the intro of course!), is the bridge. This is a section where we break into a half-time type of feel, and play through a slower-paced riff here - but this riff is heavy, and tricky as hell to play too! And [vocalist] Russ [Anderson]’s lines and delivery in this section are absolutely chilling. I remembered feeling that when we played it live in San Francisco the first night. Lots of intricate picking and arpeggios that appear in small places in this riff, which makes it a challenge, but also serves the song really well, animates it a lot!

All of this combined means that I usually won’t let anything be sub-standard or below my own quality control and hey, we’ve got two people co-producing this album as well, so I knew no one else would let anything slide either! I spent a little while in the morning going over the song... and we then proceeded to get right into it. Once we got through a pass of the song, we were almost 9 hours in on the day. Another long day, time to call it a day, come back tomorrow, and finish up with a double of this track... Onward!!!”

Working titles for songs on the new release are as follows:

'Intro'

'Swine'

Immortal Wounds'

'Omega Wave'

'Hopenosis'

'Adapt Or Die'

'Forsaken At The Gates'

'Inhuman Race'

'Beyond The Mask'

'Dragging My Casket'

'Overthrow'