Total BS1: unholy black metal with AshenCult; Goodbye, Cubase. Hello, Reaper.

In the studio today with AshenCult, a new Philadelphia black metal band. To say that I’m excited about this is kind of an understatement; I can count the number of black metal bands in the city on one hand so for a new one to appear out of nowhere is just awesome. For me to record their first release, even better. A lot of the area bands are very punky and AshenCult is no exception — they love putting punk beats over traditional melodic black metal riffs, like if Immortal had gone to Drexel. Still, even with the heavy punk influence, it’s 100% black metal, a good hybrid of Dissection-ish melody and early American ugliness.

Today marks my first session using Reaper instead of Cubase. I had been using Cubase 5 but it was just not playing well some of my plugins. Reaper, on the other hand, does everything perfectly, costs a praction of the price, is community-focused, and has so many features that Cubase didn’t… After years using Cubase, it’s going to take some time to get used to. I had to install Reaper 4 Alpha and then do a lot of hotkey changes just to get some really basic editing functionality going but now that that’s done, I’m feeling good. I’m sure I’ll have more to say as I get deeper into it.