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The idea for this album came around the time I was finishing up The Nightmare Battles. I knew I wanted there to be a sequel and hopefully eventually a series and I just knew that the next installment had to be The Championship Battles. That was all I knew going into it though. Originally I wanted to try and write/record this entire album in a week's time. I managed to get the storyline, and 10 songs finished in 6 days before I burnt out completely and couldn't write anything creative anymore for quite awhile. Some would call it a failure, but I'd say it was a learning experience and it showed me what my limitations are. I worked on the quality of my instruments before I started making this album. I knew I wanted it to sound a bit beyond the level that I managed to reach with The Nightmare Battles. The drums are the biggest improvement I think. Adding toms and more cymbals to the mix really helped to bring these songs to life. The guitar sound was changed moderately to be less distorted and "scratchy". The bass guitar is still pretty much the same and I tried to make the keyboard/organ sounds a bit brighter. Overall I think this is the best sounding album so far. The songs are done just like the first Battles album was; mostly improvised. A lot of them came out way better than I could ever have imagined. Daniel I, To Accomplish Hatred, Evil's Master... I'm quite proud of every song on this album. To Accomplish Hatred is probably my personal favorite out of all the songs I've written thus far. Something about the way it captures the emotion of that moment in the story is so much more than I could ever have hoped it would be. Initialize was modeled after the sound and style of my fake band Taking Out Anger. Some other songs were meant to've went on this album but due to last minute revisions in the storyline they ended up getting cut from the story or moved over (as was the case with Odds Against which became Superior Conflict Domination on the album Embracing Fate II). The storyline was originally meant to be longer but thanks to time constraints and a lack of enthusiasm for the excess songs, it got cut down a good bit. Honestly though I think the final version of this album is exactly what this album is meant to be. Any more or less would've really taken away from this album's potential I think. The three epic songs on this album (Daniel I, Evil's Master, and Daniel II) are some of the best songs I think I've written at this point. Each one has this quality to it that sets it apart from the other songs I've written before. I can't really explain it, but the way these three came together can really make them stand out above the rest of the pieces I've written previously. Overall this album had a lot of work go into it. I had a lot going on at the time (including work on two other albums and a time limit for all three) but I never took any liberties with cutting corners on this album. Every change and speculation was made because I thought it was the right decision at the time and the end result is an album I am beyond proud of. It's going to be hard to top this... |