Heavy metal legend Gene Hoglan, aka The Atomic Clock, looks back on recording one of Death's most legendary tracks, which is featured on his new drum DVD, The Clock Strikes Two.

“One fun thing I've thought about many times throughout the years when listening or playing this tune is the fact that I tracked this entire tune while staring at Donald Tardy from Obituary. He'd stopped by the studio that day, and the way the drum room was laid out had me facing the control room. He was chilling on the couch in the back of the room, right in the Zen spot I was staring off at when I tracked, so I just stared at him through the glass, and tracked away. He may not even remember any of this, nor would I even expect him to. Plus, that's when I was wearing glasses (which most people always assumed were just shades), so he probably was never even aware I stared at him the whole couple of takes.

“Tracking this tune for the DVD was real challenging for me because we didn't track the original to a click. So, like “Mechanism” on my first DVD, there are tempo changes and pushes and pulls all over it, and the 'stem' (playback track of Chuck's actual guitars from ITP) that I was provided with was tinny and barely audible, like an AM radio on volume level 2. We have since received good stems, and those are fortunately what you're hearing now. But let me tell ya, all excuses aside, 'wobbly', is the term I'd use to best describe this particular performance.

“In January '93, on the first day of tracking "Individual...", up on the computer monitor embedded in the wall above the control room window, I noticed all of the titles for the songs on the record, in listed form. Old school green writing on a black background, like on the movie, 'War Games', and since 'OA' had an over-abundance of letters, it could only fit, 'OVERACTIVE IMAGINA'. Well, it didn't take me long to figure out how to switch out the 'IM' with a 'V', and joke-title-that-stuck-forever-No.1 was born.”

The Atomic Clock: The Clock Strikes Two provides a glimpse into the philosophies, techniques, and history of one of metal's most influential musicians of all time. It is currently available in digital and physical formats through hoglanindustries.com, as well as Amazon, and on reversedrecords.com.