Recording History
Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance was recorded at different studios, one being Mixing Lab A & B. The album was produced by Bill Metoyer.
Musically, the album went for a more aggressive thrash metal direction. The songs are complicated and technical and feature experiments with styles such jazz and blues. The latter can be heard on the song "Phantom Limb". The band's characteristical style of incorpotaing classical music into its guitar riffs is especially reminiscent on the beginning of the title track. The album introduced more Slayer-esque shouting vocal patterns by Gary Lenaire as well as a darker atmosphere. Guy Ritter sang less on the album than on previous Tourniquet albums. It is often thought that the vocalist Guy Ritter left the band during the recording session. However, in a HM Magazine interview he clarified:
| “ | It was actually right after we finished . Otherwise I wouldn’t have had any vocals on that album. (laughter) We had just finished the album and it was not too long after it came out. | ” |
Ritter stated his reasons for leaving the band:
| “ | I am not being critical of the band or where the direction they went, but for me the band was always more of “this is a ministry and we just happen to play heavy metal.” I got into music for that reason. I was originally into pop music, but when I saw what Stryper was doing with music I went and tried to learn that style because it was a tool to reach people. Ted and Gary were always great metal players before I met them. They are just phenomenal musicians. I have never really been good at any instrument. I play a little of every instrument…drums, guitar or keyboard. I am not great at anything. But I learned a style of singing and tried to write the songs that I wrote for Tourniquet on guitar because I felt like it was a tool to reach people. By the time we finished Pathogenic I felt like we were more of a metal band, we were Christians in a band. That is the way I felt. It was my personal opinion. We weren’t praying as much as we were before and weren’t doing things like we used to like meeting with a musical pastor. Our focus was just different. Couple that with the music…I really just wasn’t into the thrash vocals as far as the yelling type shouting vocals. I wanted that to be a compliment to the singing. I just felt like there was too much yelling on the POD album and I sat down with Ted and Gary and I told them that if I was going to stay that I wanted to do less yelling and maybe do some more ballads or some more commercial stuff. I remember Ted saying if anything it was going to get heavier. | ” |
According to Ritter, there was also some disagreements concerning the label:
| “ | The label was not paying us for royalties at all. Almost nothing. Just enough to probably be legal about it. And I really wanted to audit the label. We got paid maybe $3000 in royalties the whole time I was in the band. Then we got a letter saying, “We paid you too much so we are going to have to take payments of a thousand or more back!” It was crazy. And I couldn’t get the band to agree with me that we needed to audit the label. So I had some disagreements there. It wasn’t like this big fight or anything. You never would have thought there would be the tension there was after I left the band. | ” |
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