Singled Out: Thermality's Stranger

Swedish melodic death metal band Thermality just released their brand new studio album, "The Final Hours", and to celebrate we asked Ludvig Sommar to tell us about one of the tracks, here is the story behind the song "Stranger":

I thought I could tell you a little about the writing process for the song "Stranger" For a while we wanted to do something different whilst still keeping it true to the sound. And when almost all of the songs for the album were written and we were a week from heading into the studio, we wrote this song. It started when I was playing around with a few bell sounds in Logic, and layer by layer the intro kind of came together. The guitars felt kind of natural in the way it all comes in as one "big explosion" and it also felt right to put emphasis on the lead guitar and synths. Creating something truly different for us with having the synth far forward and somehow still keeping it heavy.

The verse was also created right away keeping melodies in the centre and the others guitars plucking chords so that the song could slow down before picking up the pace again.

After the intro and verse were done I sent the song to one of our guitarists Noel who within the day had written a pre chorus, chorus and a solo! Hampus quickly wrote drums that served the song really well and he also made a few alterations to the guitars on the chorus, bridge and second verse. Ture as always wrote a killer bass which lifted the whole song to another level whilst "gluing" all the parts together.

In the studio we had a difficult time with second guessing ourselves and making alterations, but in the end we settled on the version we had written first. The vocal recording was tough as I had lost my voice earlier when recording just the second song for the album called "Thorns of Salem"

This was the toughest point for me because I felt as if I had ruined the whole recording for us. But the others were extremely supportive and helped me push through the rest of the songs on the album and in the end we managed to record something we were very proud and happy with.

And in the end Fredrik Nordstrom brought our vision to life with the mix and master making it better than we could have ever imagined!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

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