The year was 1991 e.v. I was sixteen at the time. My stereo was constantly possessed by records like "Pleasure To Kill", "Agent Orange", "Persecution Mania"  and many more. Those were the days when I formed my first band Betrayer. One of the thoughts in my head at the time was that if only I could get the guy who did those records to do my own album, things will be perfect. Well, it took a long 11 years until that dream came true - BIG TIME! 
Betrayer broke up in 2000 e.v. and a year later I joined forces with former Azazel members Alex Schuster, 'Evil' Haim and Matan Cohen to bring Nail Within into the light of day (o.k. that was the "nostalgic" part of the article...). 
For an Israeli Metal band, to record an album abroad is not an easy task (to say the least). We went through an intensive year of songwriting, rehearsals and some local gigs, during which, we transformed from an unknown project to a recognizable force in the Israeli scene and of course we kept progressing in all musical as well as personal aspects. We have decided to go to Germany for the recording of our debut album and work with the man who made the albums mentioned above, who made countless 80's classics and thus, gained a "super producer" status in Metal history. The man's name is of course - Harris Johns and the name of his studio Spiderhouse. 
The studio is located in a small, old, former Eastern German villiage called Lutte (you can hardly find it on the map...). At least 50% of the houses have not being populated ever since the war and as an Israeli it makes you think sometimes...  
We went to Germany armed with two great men - the 1st is Ze'ev Tananboim (Salem's singer) who helped us since the begining of the band and came to co-produce the album with Harris, the 2nd was Salem's drummer Nir Nakav who did the session drumwork on the album. One hot July morning, after a mindblowing gig with Salem in the Barbie club (800 Metal maniacs!), there we were, 6 tired Israeli Metalheads going to the German unknown for a full month of recordings and of course fulfilling a dream. 
Spiderhouse itself is an old house turned by Harris to studio. In the first floor was the studio with the HUGE recording room (very high ceiling, vast space), while the scond floor consist of 4 bedrooms, toilets, showers etc. The place is packed with Metal magazines in any language you can think of, beer bottles (of course!), old Tharsh photos from the 80's and Sodom gold records on the studio walls.  
Harris himself turned out to be a nice guy, native American in origin, a real oldschool Metaller who, at 50 lives with a 23 old woman and lives Thrash like there's no tomorrow...  
The village himself and the feeling of the 50's around the place were a great source of inspiration, but I must admit that after a few days, the countryside limited partying options became too boring and the train trips to Berlin became more and more frequent...  
The recording of the drums was supposed to take 5 days... I say "supposed" because Nir Nakav a.k.a The Human Drum Machine finishied all his duties in 2 days and got all of us wide smiles. Evil Haim went next and shook the studio with an amplified distorted bass playing that made the bass sound on the album both heavy & massive. He also finished his part faster than planned (all these intensive rehersals in Israel definitely payed off!) and step by step we were moving along as the days went by. We continued by doing the guitar parts. Alex and Matan used a "Mesa Boogie Rectifier" amplifier in order to design a heavy strong sound which conbines pure Thrash tendencies with the more 'modern' sound. Slowly but surely, we started to see the way the album will finally sound, the final vision formed with every passing studio hour. The direction was exactly what we had in mind - Thrash-esque but modern and heavy. 3 days later we started doing the vocals. Things were going great and then, after 2 days we had 2 important visitors in the studio, actually there were 3 visitors but we didn't knew the 3rd guy and were not expecting him, but more on that nice surprise later. The first man was the legendary Tomas Lindberg who needs no introduction. I know Tomas personally ever since he came to Israel to sing with Betrayer in a gig at the Barbie club 3 years ago. Tomas came with his wife and 2 kids and pretty fast he was in deep conversation about Punk bands with Evil Haim while the kids were running around the grass with viking plastic swords... the mood was great and Tomas fit in right away. A day later we were greeted by the presence of none other than Mille Petroza of Kreator who came with another friend named Robert Gonnella. Of course, meeting and getting to know Metal gods of this rank made the motivation go to unknown levells. Mille and Tomas sang 'Dirty Colourd Knife' with me as well as Ze'ev doing some vocal parts. One after the other they came in to do their parts, it's hard to describe what it feels like standing next to Kreator's vocalist and telling him how to sing and where to scream, if 10 years ago someone would have told me that I'd be in this situation I would have sent him to the closest shrink... Mille, on his side was a total professional and did a pure exellent Thrash screaming. Tomas was also screaming his guts out and all we could do was to stand there amazed,"drooling"... It was such a great experience and a huge compliment for us, as an unknown band from Israel who gets the respect of  some of the greatest men in Metal, men we grew up on their songs, in short, words alone cannot describe this feeling. As I mentioned above, Mille brought a friend along who turned out to be a super cool guy. We talked for hours and at one point he told us that he used to be the singer of German Thrashers Assassin. Me and Ze'ev "jumped" from our chairs smiling with amazement, while Robert was no less amazed by the fact that 2 Israelis know Assassin's songs by heart... A few hours later Robert found himself in the recording room with us, making his first studio preformance in 13 years. He sang on 'Bleed Forever' and it felt like the 80's all again. It was also a great moment for Harris, since he was the one who produced both Assassin's albums as well as working with Mille when he was 18 in Kreator's early days, so the circle was closed for everybody and we had a great time. Tomas and his family stayed with us for 5 days-we drank, ate, travelled and played with the kids, it was fantastic! One day the idea came up that Tomas would sing on another song on the album which led to him and me doing vocals for 'Under The Spell' in which Tomas scream the most 'personal' part of the song and tore our hearts out like in the never forgotten At The Gates days. Also, Alex the guitar player took part in the singing and in the last song on the album 'Last Nail' you can hear our voices mixed together and the result being an almost psycothic singing which ends this emotionally charged album. The mixing procees started, but now we were much more confident and relaxed. Guitar player Matan spent endless hours in the studio with Ze'ev and Harris and even when the rest of us were dead tired and dead drunk they were always there, with swollen eyes and that "we're working and you're sleeping" look on their face... The final mix brings out Nir's exellent drumwork, the right balance between my vocals and the other singers and of course the gutiar sound which took a lot of work to achive. One morning, Ze'ev and Harris surprised us by playing us a version of 'King Obscenity' (the only "quiet" song on the album) with Harris' voice over the melodic guitar line. His voice, very melodic with a progressive 70's touch is very different than mine so the mix between us sounded great and we decided that this will be the final version of the song, thus raising the number of guest / backing vocalists to seven! The mixing process was near the end, small last minute changes were added and after digital mastering was done the album was finally ready.
We went back to Israel in early August, full of great memories as well as hopes for the future. A month later the band was signed by French label Listenable Rec. We did a promo video for 'Dirty Coloured Knife' combining live footage, studio time with Mille & Tomas and other crazy sick shit which you will get with the CD. The s/t debut album came out In March. A couple of weeks later, the band did a big release party at the Barbie club where both Ze'ev and Tomas joined us on stage. So once again, the circle that started 3 years ago on the same stage, or actually started 11 years ago when I fantasized that Kreator's & Sodom's producer will produce my band-is closed. Yes, back then it was just a youthful fantasy that seemed far and unreacheable, but today, after expierencing this "fantasy" I can only say one thing to everyone in the Metal scene (old & young): BELIVE IN WHAT YOU DO, NEVER GIVE UP, GO WITH YOUR WILL UNTIL THE END TO GET WHAT YOU WANT AND IF YOU WILL IT HARD ENOUGH - YOU'LL GET IT! 

NAIL WITHIN website: www.nailwithin.com

Article: Yishai Sweartz
Translation / Editing: Gil Blouin