Finally, Red Ankh gets a new release! Click here to get yer hands on the new 2 hour long compilation of re-recordings, a remix, and covers!
In 2013 we released the gothic/symphonic/black metal double album Shadow, and we were satisfied with that being the latest from the project for a good while, what with it being the first to feature a newly developed outward harsh vox style, leaning in to noisier, old-school (for us) metal guitar tones, and boasting a more complex mix than previous works. It only took a few years for us to wonder if those harsh vocal recordings might’ve benefited from having been done through a different kind of microphone, and around 2017 we were thinking about mixdowns differently due to work on [Feind] and hoped to one day remix and remaster Shadow. In 2014 we teased the folk metal project we’d been working on with an EP, but the album(s) never got finished and we’ve taken them in a very different direction at this point (still not done), so even that EP could use some kind of revision. In 2015 the instrumental prog rock/metal UNIVERSE finally got the much needed rework treatment, but at this point we’d enjoy remixing and remastering that too–even rerecording a handful of the instruments.
We do listen to a lot of really tropey metal, to overproduced metal, moreso than we listen to hardcore prog and avant garde projects, even. Despite preferring weird, eclectic music with a balanced yet raw-ish mix, We’re suckers for catchy melodies and harmonies, for epic fanfares, for power ballads, and most experimental or experimental-ish projects won’t do both. That’s kinda why Red Ankh exists, not to be full-on experimental but to break down sub-genre barriers (and see where big distorted gabber kicks fit). The color-themed albums each have a loose genre focus, like the example of Shadow given above, and the Classics Comp samples from Shadow, Bronze, and Blue (no Gray, since the songs we wanted to feature from it probably wouldn’t end up sounding that different). The focus is more of a theme, though, something to tie the songs together in to a coherent album. Many songs from the Bronze, Blue, Gray, Green, White, etcetera albums were being composed during the same period, but they had to be split up in to albums somehow. Well, they didn’t, but we wanted some way to decide when a block of songs was ready for release.
The purpose of the compilation was to fine-tune the new techniques and familiarize with the new equipment that shall mark the start of a new period of the project, one of including mixing and mastering in the aesthetic process, of colorful, multi-singer choruses and vocalist variety in general, and of no more barriers between our imagination and what the project is capable of. We were excited to rework a few songs in particular, and couldn’t wait to rework all of, say, Bronze and Bronze Two, just to get a new version of Tahztey Greaggor. We were confident we finally had what it took to finish our cover of The Birthday Massacre’s Nothing and Nowhere, which was started in 2017, but we’d been kickin’ around the idea for it since years before, and then one cover wasn’t enough, and wasn’t there plenty to learn from the challenges of converting a handful of old, underground synthpop/industrial favorites?
So we prioritized working on the Classics Comp over finishing the deep reworking/finally finishing of albums Red and Black, which we’d spun up in April of 2023, due to the excitement of finally having our own dedicated sound studio. We’re taking a break from production now but are still really excited to get back to working on Red and Black, those being what we consider to be the core Red Ankh albums, as orchestral and neofolk styles are bound to wind up on any Red Ankh release, and red and black are our colors. Lyrically, Red and Black tie in to our storytelling more than any previous release, so it’s helping us prep for future novels as well, which at the end of the day will always be more important to us than either of our music projects. The Classics Comp, though fully mixed and mastered, feels like kind of a demo for people to sample while we build the hype for Red and Black.
So why shy away from overproduction? Why not just perfect one vocalist’s unique style, and brand with something easily memorable? Why not do what works for most projects? Well, aside from a personal special appreciation for the vibes of projects like Ayreon (vocal and style variety), Anaal Nathrakh (arrangement variety and balanced harshness), and old Fear Factory (noisy, loud rhythm guitar in particular), we’ve listened to and studied enough metal at this point to confidently say that the spirit of metal is about difference and intensity, not commodity appeal and polish. Every genre falls prey to the temptation of commodification, and metal has been no different with the rise of “indie” labels that refuse to stop growing. Cookie cutter commodity music (which we distinguish mainly from artistic music) isn’t necessarily bad–or rather, a cookie cutter commodity song isn’t necessarily bad–but becoming pop is necessarily algorithmic and necessitates homogenization and repetition. Of course terms like “intensity” are relative and this generation’s harsh noise may be next generation’s easy listening, but then we’re just faced with the exciting problem of “how do we become more metal?” There’s also a political advantage to looking at metal this way, as humanity is necessarily full of beautiful difference and intensity, and we were never striving toward some marketing algorithm’s perfection, no neurotic Platonic purity, but instead simply… more. In other words, perfection is for narcissists and purity is for fascists, two camps of people who are never satisfied, always afraid, and just plain non-non-non-non-non-non-heinous.
So yeah, this marks 20 fucking years of Red Ankh, with 13 albums and 4 EPs, and here’s to the next 20! In addition to rerecording on new equipment and with more voices, we added new instruments/layers to some songs on the comp, and tweaked the lyrics to weed out some vestigial ideological conservatism. We were tempted to revise the lyrics to Moment in Life, because they are very old, but they were directly inspired by an old dream and set in Shyfted Dreaming, so we figured it’d be better to let them alone for historical and record-keeping reasons. For those curious, Battle with the Four Immortal Lords, Union, Gotomix, and Grandfe Taka are the other story-related songs on the comp. Battle with the Four is from the “O” OST, and was meant to capture the mood of the penultimate battle for that book’s heroes, heavily inspired by old JRPG boss music. Union celebrates the fictional version of Red Ankh that exists within the stories. Gotomix expresses a protagonist’s new angst in having to come out of a delicately balanced paradise to defend that paradise, and Grandfe Taka is a love letter from that same protagonist to another. You really have to read the texts to grasp who “O”, the four Lords of the Walls, Aufaust, and Alizia are, or at least discussing them here would be much of a tangent. We’ve never thought to ask anyone else what they think of “re-recording” albums until now, but have carried a vague curiosity about how they are received from other projects, as they typically aren’t, you know, strikingly updated. It often sounds to us like the artists just wanted a cleaner or brighter sound, but a simple remaster wasn’t enough. In any case, all of our reworks aside that of Her Dark Square have made significant changes in character and quality (HDS being that in the case of two songs, but otherwise a mere cleaning-up), so the new comp is just following in that tradition. Have we said, “This is as good as it gets” before? Maybe. But that’s always been the point of these projects, to keep trying new things, to keep standards fluid, and to please-for-the-love-of-fuck never get too bored. So yes. Twenty years! New music! Hooray, art!
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