As you probably know by now, I have a thread running on my forums for folks to discuss the track “The Devil Cried”, which was released to radio last Friday night. There’s been a lot of speculation as to where the track came from, fans are saying it sounds like this, sounds like that. Much to my pleasant surprise, last night we had a special visitor on the forums, Mike Exeter is the guy who recorded and mixed the new tracks from the Dio Years compilation. Mike’s also worked with Tony before on “The 1996 DEP Sessions” (mixer, keyboards), as well as “Fused” (some engineering).
Mike spoke up about several issues regarding “The Devil Cried”, here’s what he had to say:
Hi All
Just wanted to dispel a couple of things before too much conjecture happens. I recorded and mixed the new stuff with Tony and the guys.
This song was conceived during last summer during writing sessions where Tony came up with riffs and I would build backing tracks around his guitar. We worked song arrangements into many ‘demos’ and a couple of these ideas triggered interest from Ronnie. He came over for the Tenacious D movie premiere and along with continuing work on Shadow of the Wind (Which had been pretty much written back in March) he suggested working on ‘Song 3’. During the few days he was around Ronnie, Tony and I worked the song into it’s current form and Ronnie went away with a ‘completed’ demo to write his lyrics. We also started on the Fast Song and had that pretty much nailed in the same writing session.
These are definitely not left over tracks from other projects.
Ronnie’s voice is in excellent form and he is a joy to work with :-)
Geezer was definitely very happy with the final outcome – he played some great stuff. The mixes are very dense, but the guys all love them and there was a lot of involvement from everyone to ensure that they were all happy.
It’s a very difficult thing to create a piece of work and put it out to be judged by some very passionate and loyal fans, but that’s what happens every time new music is created. Everyone is going to have a different perspective on it, but the important thing is that the people who created it went through mental torture at times to do their best to make it sound as they wanted and finally it has to be sent out to be heard!
It’s fantastic to hear everyones’ feelings over the last couple of days, I regard positive and negative as a way of improving what I do. I’m looking forward to seeing the band work live again cos if what they sounded like together in the studio is anything to go by – they’re gonne be brilliant.
All the best
Mike
If you’d like to participate, and respond to Mike, or just add your own thoughts on the song, you can do so in this thread on our forums. Don’t forget, there are free legal streaming versions of the song available from Rhino now! Further details available here.
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