Writing and Production
After the success of their major label debut, Siren Song of the Counter Culture, and its single, "Swing Life Away", Rise Against returned to the studio in January 2006 to record their fourth studio album. The band had been writing songs and ideas during the Siren Song of the Counter Culture tour and had completed five songs by early December 2005. Also in December, it was announced that Bill Stevenson would produce the upcoming album at the Blasting Room studio in Fort Collins, Colorado. Pre-production began in January 2006 in Chicago. The album was recorded at the Blasting Room with producers Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore for 12 weeks between January and April 2006. The band talked about the sound and release date of the album in April, saying, "We're pretty excited and can't wait for you to hear it. You won't find any acoustic guitar on this one, but perhaps a few other surprises and curveballs await your curious ears...look for an early summer release." The album's name was revealed in the same news release; it would be titled The Sufferer & the Witness. The album was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge in Los Angeles, and production was completed in April 2006.
In the album's liner notes, there is a recommended reading list, which includes Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
Read more about this topic: The Sufferer & The Witness
Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or production:
“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape, I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)