Andy La Rocque

As well as playing with some of the biggest names in the field, Andy La Rocque has turned his Sonic Train Studios into a metal Mecca.

Across a music career spanning 40 years, King Diamond’s Andy La Rocque has become not only a metal guitar icon, but also one of the genre’s leading producers and engineers. The list of acts he’s worked with is near endless, and includes Shining, At The Gates, Tsjuder, HammerFall, King Of Asgard, Lord Belial, Evergrey, Falconer, Einherjer, Tulus and In Flames, as well as his historic instrumental contributions to Death’s groundbreaking 1993 album Individual Thought Patterns.

When embarking upon his career as a performer, La Rocque didn’t envision himself in the parallel role that he now occupies. “In the beginning, I thought it was really boring to listen to Mikkey Dee soundchecking the drums in the studio. When you’re like 22 years old, you just want to play, have a good time, and write songs. But at the same time, I picked up a lot of really good stuff from the engineers and producers that I later used. I didn’t realise that then. Later on, when I started up myself, it was like: ‘Wow, I understand now why the producer did this, and he did that, and he used that microphone for that thing, and all that.’ So, I learned quite a lot from being a musician and then transferring that to the other side of the studio window.”

Documentation

La Rocque’s journey to becoming a producer began by recording his own music out of necessity. “Back in the late ’80s, I didn’t really have anything to use to document my ideas, my riffs, songs and things, except for the microphone in my Walkman. And then, after living in the US for a couple of years, we moved back to Scandinavia. I thought: ‘I really need to do something about the situation with recording.’ So, I bought my first four‑track machine and a sequencer, so that I could start writing songs with a drum machine demo. And then I got an eight‑track machine and a little mixing console, because I wanted to do something more than just the simple four‑track things. I started to record my own stuff. People began saying: ‘Wow, that sounds pretty cool! Maybe you can record our band?’ It was like a basic demo thing, and that’s how it started in the early ’90s. I just got a lot of jobs because the results sounded good, and I did get paid for it, so I got some better recording machines, better and bigger mixing consoles, and some good microphones as well.”

Eventually, in 1995, La Rocque founded his first professional studio: Los Angered Recordings in, yes, Angered, Sweden. “At that time, there weren’t too many metal studios in Sweden, and instantly tons of bands just came to my place to record.”

Twelve years later, La Rocque relocated, opening Sonic Train Studios in the idyllic Varberg, which is just under an hour south of Gothenburg. The building contains two separate studios with control rooms. The first is bigger, while studio two is especially suitable for doing overdubs and editing, for musicians who want to continue working on their records while the main studio is occupied. It’s a residential studio, giving clients the option to spend as much or as little time as they like. “I have everything you need here to be able to stay for a week or two if you need that, and people seem to appreciate that.”

As a musician, La Rocque understands that the overall experience of visiting a studio is important: “It’s not only what paint you have on the walls or whatever. It’s also, of course, who runs the studio, whether the engineer or producer you work with is a cool guy. It’s not that I try to be someone else. I’m just the way that I am, and if people like that, that’s awesome. But I think people say mostly that the environment here is really laid‑back and cosy, and that I’m easy to work with. I have some assistants, younger guys, who are keen on working in this environment, and they help me out quite a lot with things when it’s too busy.”

Gear Train

Sonic Train Studios has an enviable collection of equipment, and La Rocque emphasises that it is particularly important to him to have a nice range of mic preamps. “I’ve got some SSLs, which I just love. And I have some old Neve and Siemens stuff, which is also great for certain things. I have some BAE stuff and also some CAPI [Classic Audio Products of Illinois] — they make API clones. They’re amazing for drums and a lot of other things. So, that’s the first thing, a range of really good mic pres. Some really good microphones are essential too.

“I know that some engineers and producers have like 20 microphones in front of the speaker cabinet and stuff like that, of course, to try out what...