Inside Death Knocks: Hoaxed discuss recording challenges

Portland, Oregon dark rockers Hoaxed have unveiled their sophomore full-length album, Death Knocks, out now via Relapse Records (order here). Marking a new chapter for the band, featuring Kat Keo, Kim Coffel, and new bassist/vocalist April Dimmick, the record arrives after three years of writing, touring, and refining their sound into something darker. To celebrate the album’s arrival, Hoaxed have teamed up with Metal Insider for a behind-the-scenes look, revealing the overall challenges they faced during the recording process.

Here are our “Challenges” while recording Death Knocks:

For Looking Glass, we knew we wanted the instrumental interlude to flow directly into Dead Ringer, so the melodies for Looking Glass needed to be based around the Dead Ringer melodies. Kat + Kim knocked ideas back and forth over text while Kim was overseas – but it was all abstract until Kim got back state-side and sat down to write it. Kim spent about a week putting thoughts to melodies, but was writing all the way up until we were in the studio.

Kim also had a brand new challenge during this recording: she was 5 months pregnant! It was a new, overwhelmingly positive experience – but it was also physically challenging and put a very real time restraint on the whole recording process. We wanted to make sure she was able to record before he arrived. Baby boy is here now and a regular listener of the album.

We were burdened with the challenge of choice for this recording session – we got very into the vocals, especially with April’s harsher vocals added to the mix. We just got too into it and had a lot of options. It became a challenge to review all the takes and pick which option we wanted to go with. Honestly, a great problem to have – but one we did not plan on. At one point, the vocals were extremely layered and we knew we had to pair them back a bit more. We still went with more options than we did on previous recordings, but we love the layers and new life it gives our sound.

April also had a common recording challenge – she waited until the morning of her bass recording session to change her strings. Not the end of the world, but also not the most ideal. But she made it work! In the end, it all worked out and we love the bass tone on the record.

Post recording, we had a mixer lined up that ended up not working out. His take on the album was vastly different from the ideas we had. After one test track, it was clear we wanted to find another mixer – and, miraculously, Arthur Rizk was available! He fully understood exactly what we were aiming for. Working with him was easy and we loved his suggestions and embellishments. We’re so thankful it worked out the way it did!

Overall: this recording session was pretty unchallenged. We got in, recorded our parts, and were really happy with the outcome. We booked 10-12 days in the studio and ended up only using 8, but didn’t feel rushed or that we missed anything. We had so long with these songs before we hit the studio, that we felt really comfortable with each one and had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to capture. In the end, we hit everything we wanted to and even had time to experiment with harmonies and synth parts.

Track List:

01) Where the Seas Fall Silent
02) Kill Switch
03) Promised to Me
04) The Fallen
05) Looking Glass
06) Dead Ringer
07) Wretched
08) The Family
09) Killing Stone