Session Recall: No Longer Room For Us by Katahdin

29 May, 2025

NLRFU - Cover

Face-smashing breakdowns. Grimy riffs. Chainsaw bass. Pissed-off vocals. What more could you want?

Background

Production for No Longer Room For Us began in January 2021. We tracked the whole EP in the basement of my old apartment in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. I lived in a strip of condos with neighbors directly on both sides. We were originally supposed to track drums at a studio a couple towns over, but the plan fell through last minute—so we just said screw it and did it at my place. Thankfully no one complained because those walls were paper thin. Day one of recording happened to fall on January 6th—yeah, that one. We didn’t even know what had happened until we wrapped that night.

The Band

Working with Katahdin was a blast. The stuff they wrote was heavy, tight, and dense as all hell. They came in with a clear vision, but were also super down to experiment—cinematic FX, guitar dives, arrangement stuff. The Juice voice clip was Max’s idea and fit perfectly. All four of them individually rip on their instruments, so tracking was a breeze. They also went on to make an insane music video for the entire EP with Ian Urquhart. It’s seriously worth the watch. Start to finish, these dudes created an impressively cohesive final product.

Allow me to bum you out by saying that Katahdin has broken up—but at the time of recording, the lineup was Max Calkins on vocals, Brandon Embelton on guitars and backup vocals, Lukas Gill on bass, and Nick McGoldrick on drums.

The Session

Looking back, we tracked and mixed all three songs in one session file, which made sense with how the songs flowed into each other. I was certainly in a phase of overcommitting—printing final guitar tones and locking in edits to save CPU and keep myself moving forward. It’s a practice that’s helped me in a lot of ways, but in this case it also meant I had no DIs or raw takes to fall back on. Not ideal. We nailed the tones, so it wasn’t a problem, but I do wish I still had the raws, just out of curiosity and nostalgia. This was also deep into my “tracks are lowercase, busses are ALL CAPS” phase. The automation was crucial for this project too—you can tell from the screenshots that I got real nitty-gritty with tweaking levels and parameters. I mixed the drums from an audience perspective, which I’ve gone back and forth on over the years. These days I stick to drummer’s perspective because it just makes more sense to me as a drummer. Audience perspective has its charm, but it always felt like I was fighting muscle memory a bit.

The Gear

This was one of the first sessions where I really got to break in my new outboard gear. I had just picked up a Warm Audio Bus Comp and a pair of Klark Teknik EQP-KT’s, which I was running as a hybrid mix bus chain. Bus comp into the EQs. You can see the recall settings in the screenshot below—and yes, I know it says “bandwith”. The EQPs felt like a steal at $250 each. They never sounded cheap to me. They’re not exactly Pultecs, but they nailed their own vibe—super usable and surprisingly flattering. I eventually sold them to fund other gear upgrades, but I plan on picking up another pair again someday. I’m also a big fan of the Warm Audio stuff in general. The SSL 4K bus comp was the first compressor I truly learned how to use effectively—mainly through the Waves and IK Multimedia plugin versions. The Warm Audio Bus Comp absolutely nails it for me. On drums or on the whole mix, it’s clutch as fuck. The transformer button adds this crunchy, cushiony smoothness that I love.

Wrap-Up

I’m really proud of how these songs came out. From tones to drum sounds, arrangement, mix, and post-production—we locked in the vision and followed it all the way through. It was also really cool seeing the EP get such a strong reaction online when it dropped.

Huge shoutout to Max, Brandon, Lukas, and Nick. Shoutout to Kevin Billingslea for killing it on the master as always, and to Ian Urquhart for absolutely smashing the video.

LONG LIVE KATAHDIN.