I know, I know, you’re already about to faint. But check this out too: the artwork is ALSO complete! How is all this possible? Well, I guess it’s what happens when you take five years to make an album.

Here’s the final cover, which is almost identical to the original sketch:

The release date is set for August 16, 2011. That means from start to finish the album took just over eight months to complete. Way better than “Revelations,” which my calculations put at about 36 hectares to complete. I know I had originally guess six onths, but you know what they say…

But it’s not important, because the music is complete. That leaves what I’m hoping is the far, far easier task of vocals and then only the terrible, terrible task of mixdown. I can say this: it’s shaping up to be an excellent album, and several times when listening back, I wonder how I ever wrote some of this material, it just plain sounds too good.

Talk to you soon!

Something seems amiss about this

Apparently you need cables to record. And although I had a teeming bounty of them, none of them were the correct instrument cables. But no fear, a quick trip to Zzounds.com fixed that. So all keyboards, drums, and bass parts are recorded at this time. Virtually all the rhythm guitar parts are done as well. That just leaves solos and vocals.

My original guess of 6 months may be slightly inaccurate, but it would seem this album is coming together much faster than “Revelations” did. I’d say August at the latest, possibly before that.

Oh, and what the hell – I suppose this wouldn’t be much of an update without ranting and raving about how good it’s sounding. It’s definitely a rockin’ one. I hope it’s not too much of a departure.

Timetables are a dangerous thing as they are almost invariably wrong, but we’d like to think the album should be complete within 6 months, provided that no unforeseen obstacles (having to stop to take a nice, midday nap for instance) stand in the way of production.

As with “Revelations,” a really, really horrible album cover has already been sketched out really, really horribly.

But you can’t wait to get your hands on THAT one!

We’ll keep you posted, thanks!

There are also threaded comments available, so all eight of you who ever check this site out can post messages that I may or may not ever read.

Thanks and enjoy.

In any event, it’s complete. So you can see its evolution, here’s the original pencil and, yes, crayon sketch:

And the finished product:

I’ve always preferred gatefold album covers, so keep in mind that this one extends to the back cover as well. Here’s the full image: