ANATOMY OF I - the brainchild of vocalist/guitarist Michael Dorrian, with long-time friends Dirk Verbeuren (SCARVE, SOILWORK) on drums and Steve DiGiorgio (SADUS, DEATH, TESTAMENT) on bass - have issued the following update from Michael:

"Here's the first part of our studio blog, dealing with the drum recordings which have been done several weeks ago. Having plowed his drums through many riffs throughout the years, Dirk Verbeuren needs no introduction in the world of extreme metal, but before I zoom in on Dirk's performance and the overall sound of it, I'd like to start out with how he got to be involved in Anatomy Of I.

Let's rewind a couple of decades here... as a kid, the turning point in my metal mania was the day my brother came home from school with a tape he got from this new kid in his class called Dirk. The tape in question had Master Of Puppets (minus a few songs) on side A and Reign In Blood on side B, and the rest is history : I was hooked for life!

Over the years, Dirk and I traded tapes and occasionally jammed on cover tunes and original songs while he was busy with Scarve,

and I was busy with my own bands. Two of those original songs actually ended up on the debut Anatomy Of Irecord, in a much reworked form.

In June 2009, when I was wrapping up writing the songs for Anatomy Of I's debut release and our drummer wasn't working out, it just made perfect sense to give Dirk a call.

When Dirk first suggested he'd record his parts in his home studio, I must admit I had my doubts. Even though I liked the idea of him having an endless amount of time to try many different things, while not dealing with any studio deadlines and the stress that comes with it, I was afraid the end result would sound too clinical as they'd be recorded on his Roland TD-20 V-drum.

Being a "part-time" drummer myself, and having owned a V-drum for about 10 years, I am perfectly aware of how great this instrument is, yet, having used it on recordings in the past, the drums would always end up sounding too much like a drum machine. As I have an extreme dislike for sterile, machine-like drums that seem to be the norm nowadays, I definitely wanted to avoid that.

The first rough tracks he sent me were enough to convince me though; Dirk used a set of samples that he recorded for Toontrack's The Metal Foundry, which ended up sounding as natural as a real kit : from the accents on the ride/hi-hats to the dynamics in tom and snare rolls, every bit of groove has been captured. We ended up with 31 tracks of drums: a mic on every tom and cymbal, overheads and a whole bunch of ambient mics... the end result will blow your minds!

Performance wise, I just gave Dirk the demos and let him come up with whatever he felt was right, basically just letting him go crazy. These demo songs were basically scratch guitars with programmed drums, giving him a basic idea of what I had in mind. Dirk suggested to speed up a couple of songs (surprisingly some of the faster ones), and went absolutely ballistic, displaying a rarely seen variety of styles ranging from funky grooves and ghost notes to hyperblasts at 320 bpm!!! He basically does it all and at such a high level that he's proved once more to be among the all-time best of the genre.

Alright, it's getting dark in here, so I guess it's time for me to pull my head out of Dirk's ass and lube it up for part 2 of this studio report...

Signing out, Mike."

More on Anatomy Of I at this location.