“As The Romans Do” (EP) Track Listing:

1. Never Heard Of It (0:16)
2.The Cure For Insomnia (3:18)
3. Bollocks! (3:47)
4. The Mechanism (3:54)
5. Bloody Sea Men (5:56)

As The Romans Do released their self-titled debut April 4 at the Forest Lawn Community Centre in Calgary. In spite of a few technical difficulties during Stab-Twist.Pull’s opening set, which resulted in the lights being disconnected for the duration of the show, as a whole it went off with a marvelously metal yell.

Fellow Calgary metallers We Found The Body – who released their own full-length debut last month – and The Merciful were also in tow to warm up the enthusiastic all-ages crowd before the headliners set fire to the room.

“The entire recording process took about a year,” stated Josh Wallace, bassist for As the Romans Do. “We recorded here and there when we had a bit of time off from playing shows. There were a lot of false starts and experimentation going on before we finally buckled down and finished it.”

The band originally formed in the winter of 2005 as a high school hobby and, after countless member changes.

“We went through countless member changes until it ended up being the five of us who are still here today,” Wallace explained, adding that the quintet chose their name early on from the old proverb “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

“We just didn’t want a stereotypical metal band name and people sometimes use [that proverb] as an excuse to try new things, which is something that we’re all into.”

The band is also into exercising their recording options. They captured a track down at The Beach Advanced Audio not too long ago and, although they commended the studio for it’s great gear and casual atmosphere, they ultimately decided to go with the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach for their debut album.

Aside from the obvious money factors, what are some of the advantages of the do-it-yourself approach?

The best part about DIY recordings is that you’re not really under any time constraints, so we had the time to get the takes that we wanted.

How about the disadvantages?

We didn’t exactly have the best equipment at our disposal, so we were limited with what we were able to accomplish.

How were the instruments tracked?

All of the instruments were tracked individually, but I think it still sounds like more of a live setting at times because a good number of the takes we used were chosen because of their character, as opposed to how flawlessly they were played.

I heard drummer Ryan Kusz mixed and mastered the EP.

The entire EP was mixed and mastered in Ryan’s basement. He has all of the necessary equipment so it saved us quite a bit of money in the end.

Would you approach recording this way again next time?

We’ve already went through the whole trial and error process with the EP, so it will definitely be easier from now on, but I’m not really sure if we’ll ever use this method again for anything other than pre-production demos.

Four of the five EP songs are available on MySpace. Aside from the given that we should all be supporting local talent, why should people buy the disc?

Even though you can stream the songs online, physical copies of the disc only cost $5. Plus, you’ll be able to listen to us wherever you go, which is never a bad thing!

What’s next for the band?

We’re in the process of writing some new material and then we’re hoping to head out on tour this summer, after which we’ll probably retire a few of the older songs and focus on putting out a full-length.