“It’s really inspiring what a lot of the home studio guys are doing with cheap gear, and not a real studio set up. If you put the work in, and you have a little bit of knowledge, you can make some killer shit. That inspired me,” said Sacha Laskow, one of the guitarists in Calgary’s Divinity, and the recording mastermind behind their latest tracking endeavours.

“I wanted to document our recording process since we’re doing things the [do-it-yourself] DIY route, and I thought it might be useful to other bands to have some of that kind of info,” he explained of Broke Bands, a blog he started a few months back when the death metal thrashers first started laying down the tracks for their follow-up to Allegory [Nuclear Blast, 2008].

“I’d like to get other people to contribute as well. I know a lot of these home studio guys that I’ve been in touch with over the years, and some bigger producers as well, so hopefully I can get them to contribute and give little tidbits that will help people out,” he added.

When you’re done recording, you plan on keeping it going?

I’d like to. If people find it useful, then I’d like to keep it going and put stuff up there as I think of it, like gear reviews or links to other resourceful sites. I’m always finding new stuff, so hopefully I can keep it going.

I’m guessing the band is recording in someone’s home?

For the most part, everything will be done at my home in my basement. Vocals and re-amping will be done at our friend’s studio. We worked with Grant [Howarth] with The Outhouse Recording Studio on Allegory vocals. We’ll be doing the vocals with him again, as we can’t be screaming full out in my basement, unfortunately.

Might scare the neighbours?

Exactly. And last time we did the drums in a real studio, but this time we did them all on an electronic kit. They were really quiet, so we did them here, too.

How do they sound?

It sounds pretty damn awesome, I think. The electronic part is just capturing the performance. It captures everything [Brett Duncan] plays, the timing of it, how hard he hits it, where he hits the drum, which drum he hits. Then that information is used to trigger samples of a real drum kit, which were recorded at a big expensive studio. It sounds really real. It’s pretty much his playing triggering someone else’s recorded drums.

When did you first start planning for this latest album, The Singularity?

We’d been writing for a while, but because we released Allegory ourselves independently before we got signed, and it got re-released and all that, it’s been out to us a long time. We’d been writing the whole time, and we had a whole album’s worth of material. Three or four months ago, we said, “Okay, we’ve got enough songs, we should lay them down.”

And did the songs change at all once you started recording?

We work on the arrangements a lot, so they’re already polished by the time we do the final recording. Because we’ve already done a demo process, we’ve already recorded them once, and everybody’s already had their say on the arrangements and their parts and everything, so they’re pretty solid, But stuff still does change on the fly, and that’s the good thing about doing it ourselves too, because we’re not watching the clock for how much it’s costing our wallet. It’s our own time; it’s our own control.

Are you going to have Tue Madsen master it again, or do you have someone else in mind?

This time we can’t afford Tue Madsen’s kind of price, unfortunately. He was awesome to work with, but that kind of experience comes with a cost, so we’re just going to do it ourselves this time. I’m going to the mix. We’ll probably get someone else to master it, because that’s not as pricey and it’s nice to have a last kind of another set of ears at the end for a final quality check. They check for digital errors and make sure it’s going to translate on all systems and stuff like that, and they have all sorts of crazy gear for that, so it’s a nice step to get someone else to do.

How has the band’s sound evolved since Allegory?

There’s still a similar vibe, but in terms of just song writing maturity and our technical skills, everything has evolved a whole lot because the songs on “Allegory” are old, old, old. We wrote those over a couple of years span, and the album’s been out for a couple more years. These songs are a lot fresher.

Do you think the change will be obvious to the average listener?

It’s obvious right away. It’s just taking the elements we had, but everything is going to another level. It’s more technical, but it’s more catchy, and it’s a lot more dynamic. Everyone’s playing has stepped way up. The concepts are a lot stronger. The song writing and the flow is a lot more mature.

Are you going to have guest musicians again?

Nothing has been planned yet, but I definitely want to. [Autobody's] Jerrod [Maxwell-Lyster] and [Exit Strategy's] Greg [Musgrave] were awesome last time.

What inspired that decision in the first place?

It was just a spur of the moment thing, really. Vocals were the last thing on the album. I was doing backups. Brett did some backups – he does the vulture scream. Everyone was doing their backups and I said, “We should call up a couple of people.” Jerrod is an amazing vocalist. I used to play in a band with him, and we’re still really good friends and working on my solo project as well, so I called him up, because he’s just so creative and comes up with the coolest complimentary harmonies on the fly; and Greg just has the thickest growls and such versatility and just an amazing throat, so we called him up and had him come down, and it worked out great.

How do you balance having full-time jobs and trying to be in a professional full-time band?

It just is what you think it is. I get home and I work on the band until I go to bed. My vacations are tours, and my weekends are shows and jams. I get pretty burnt out sometimes, but it’s what I want to do, and I’ve got to make money and pay the bills too, so that’s the way it goes. It’s tough to balance everything, but if you know what you want to do in life, not everybody has that. Not everybody has found their passion, so if you know that much, then you’ve at least got to indulge it and try and make the most out of it, even if it doesn’t pay the bills. That’s the dream.

Does having to keep your day jobs affect what you’re trying to create?

I keep it pretty separate. I have a career in web software, so it’s a pretty serious job; but, when I go home, then that’s it. I don’t sit on the Blackberry all night or any shit like that. I work 9-5, and that’s that. And sometimes you’re mentally drained from having a long day at work, but you crank up the amp and scream into a mic and it feels pretty damn good. It’s very cathartic.

What kinds of benefits do you see in the province for metal bands?

I think the scene has grown since I’ve been here. It’s so much stronger now and there’s so many more bands now. Metal has kind of made a resurgence again. And I think the Canadian vibe in general is really conducive to being creative. Bands from Alberta, B.C., Montreal are known the world over for being different and having a little twist to them that’s not the same old thing, so there’s definitely something about living here that gives us a unique twist. I don’t know if it’s the wide open space or the isolation maybe or the weather craziness that we have to deal with, but there’s something that makes Canadian metal bands stand out on the world scene. Strapping Young Lad, they don’t sound like anybody else. Voidvod doesn’t sound like anybody else. All the bands that are well-known from Canada have that. They have their own little twist on metal and they bring their own progression to it. We’re doing our own thing and blazing a trail.