Metal Reviews

Modern metal albums sometimes have that crisp quality that gives the impression that the band has streamlined everything be sonically pristine. Yet what do you think are the tradeoffs between a sound production job, and the power of the music which may or may not suffer or benefit indirectly from the streamlined sound. Two immediate cons come to mind of the newer Nevermore and Death Angel, do you prefer modern production to the weaker production of classic albums?

There are some pros indeed. Like, take Nile for example. That deep bassy sound of their guitars combined with thunderous drumming is what makes them awesome. In a bad production, hearing the bassy woody sound of the guitar can not be captured. Also, drums sound too weak and tinny. The same can be said for Behemoth and such death metal bands.

Thrash isn't too much affected by production in my opinion.

Black metal is a whole different story. I can not imagine Nattens Madrigal, Bergtatt, In the Nightside Eclipse, Transilvanian Hunger and such classics to be as effective if they were more clearly produced. The bad production ties all the instruments together, creating the atmosphere on its own. On the other hand Si Monvmentvm or The Work Which Transforms God would sound terrible with worse productions.

It's just a matter of what you're trying to create, I guess. It is not a good or bad thing on its own.

This is all very relative to the albums and who worked on them. So don't take these generalizations as rules. For example Boston's first album is the best sounding album ever in terms of both accuracy, fidelity, tonality, everything imaginable. The only way to improve that album is to go back in time and get the bass extension down to 10hz for the hammonds, which they could not reproduce at the time using what they did. (the records would have skipped and they most definitely used a high-pass on every record that was put on vinyl to stop the bass from making the needle skip. This is not something you can go back and "correct" in a remaster.

I'm just going to break it down to A. vs D. because there is no way to discern the differences otherwise in any real sense that has much meaning:

I'll point out some things though first:

CD technology was terrible before about 1986, but got phenomenal once they discovered that a lower peak value meant truncated bit-depth. Once they figured that out around 86/87 CD's were the ultimate source of accuracy until about 1993. At that time the loudness race began.


This post is going to get way too long, So i'll keep it simple:


The Old
Old Albums using tape have much better compression. Forcing the tape to compress works better than everything else every devised.

They are almost always accurate as they could get them and generally feature a flat f response. Those guys were purists, they believed in accuracy and presenting an album the proper way instead of jacking up the treble (or whatever) because it sounds better superficially, they knew better. These days, i'm not sure they do as much.

Old albums suffer from loss of HF information (which is extremely unimportant by the way except for drums and keyboards. Meaning you need all the f extension you can get, but the equipment does not have to be anywhere close to matching the sensitivity of the dominant f's. Digital will have a much easier time picking up a 16Khz signal. The analogue will pick it up a lot more naturally requiring less manipulation after the fact to sound like how our ears perceive it.


The New
Newer tech is cheaper and is accurate. That is the major problem, everyone thinks they can record their own albums. Nope. Hire a pro. Pros know those critical frequencies and how to make an album pleasing sounding. There are a thousand ways to make a record unpleasant sounding. Almost all of those are very unapparent and won't be noticed unless you really know how to critically listen to music. For example, if the bass is not eq'd correctly it is going to make the song seem slower and the bass will "hit" you late and totally fuck up the album. this is why a lot of "semi-pro" albums lack bass depth.

Another obvious con is that newer tech sacrifices using dedicated hardware to process audio because someone like myself is not going to supplement their almost free recording setup with a ten thousand dollar effects processor or other essential tools of the I/O console. Someone not unlike myself who knows how all the "tricks" are done manually, so sometimes this isn't all that much of an issue.

Newer albums can sound very very muddy is if the lows are not tamed.

Digital albums that are compressed suffer from WAY WAY WAY too much 3-6Khz influence. There is a simple reason why, because that is where our hearing is most sensitive and these f's jaked up sounds louder. Much should have a certain transparency.

Digital is sometimes very very aerodyne (lacking color) or way too colored. This is purely technique. As mentioned earlier, the old pros from the 70's and 80's knew how to Mix albums far better. They were mixing an album assuming you had 500 watts of 3-way speakers at home. Today, they assume you are using cheap junk that they can hide a mediocre mix behind. Back then, over half the audience was being critical of the sound, now it just isn't much of an issue unfortunately.

Digital clips and not always at the zero point either. If you make a pure sine wave at any low to center frequency and keep it at about -12db, it is still going to clip to hell even though it is no where near the threshold. This is rarely considered in my experience. It happens to me occassionally. None of the recordings were clipped at all then when you render two sounds together you get clipping, even if the meter never hits the red. It's delicate work



Ultimately the goal is that NOTHING in an album should be distracting. Everything should be virtually transparent like the sounds are being played in their own aural space where they are supposed to be. You should choose to listen to an element of the music and all of them should be audible (except what is supposed to be hidden, ie, a keyboard playing underneath the bass guitar to fatten the tone)

They achieved this better back then. But the tradeoff is that now we have a much more individual way of working to get a sound. Individuality at the expense of accuracy. The only problem with that is that the long term or even shorter term consequences may make an album hard to digest once the little mistakes get noticed.

I think the actual people working right now are as good as ever, but some of them try to have a unique sound which is dependent upon deliberately ignoring conventions to the detriment of the albums quality. (example, Mutt Lange's overcompressed, overhyped kick drum sounds and thin snare sounds)

I would disagree with that completely. It is not bad production that makes those albums, it is the timbre and spaces the instruments accompany. In other words, putting two mics wherever they put them in the room happened to create the tone they wanted. No moron would put a mic up and never move it because they don't care. I guarantee you a real pro can do a 48-track pristine recording and turn it into something even darker and more brutal sounding, if they do it right. But they wont. Remember when Akercocke did that with "summon the antichrist" everyone bitched and moaned endlessly about the quality of that track in particular when they were re-creating the low-fi sound. But a good, low-fi sounding mix takes more work than a more accurate mix would.

I disagree. Darkthrone's albums in particular have an extra layer of fuzzy noise that really adds to the atmosphere.

Filosofem would also not be the album it was if Varg had used a real amp instead of a stereo speaker, and a real mic instead of a shitty headset mic.

IMO black metal bands should always record in analogue, except if the music is highly technical/layered like DsO.

There's also a difference between a super crisp production and a clear but imperfect sound. Belus had a good production but didn't sound too 'clean', same as Drudkh's more recent albums and Enslaved's output.

Pros: clarity
Cons: not sounding anything like the band performing the songs

Also all my favourite lo-fi albums would sound a lot better with good recording as long as it still captured the energy of the music.

specifically who? Damn near every band I've heard live is pulling off what they do in the studio. Especially Vision Divine. I am in awe that Luppi was one-upping his studio performances easily. And Olaf and Fred's guitar work couldn't be more spot on.

Most bands were a lot sloppier in the past. Paul Stanley still claims you have to re-record most of the live tracks when doing a live record and that EVERYONE does so. Paul is wrong. Mistakes happen.

James LaBrie is a very obvious example of someone who can't translate his studio performance to the stage.

I agree with Adveser's posts though my knowledge is nowhere near as extensive as his.

Suffice to say the old analogue stuff has a lot more warmer and fuller sound than modern digital.

Modern digital is often very sterile and too perfect sounding. In essence they get rid of all the bumps and warts we actually like to hear.

I doubt we'd love bands like Venom, Bathory, Carcass, Bolt Thrower etc as much as we do if their classics were recorded using modern digitial recordings.

Exactly. Analogue is distorted, but it is very pleasant sounding. The inverse logic that digital is cold is not true. Digital is 99.9% accurate in it's frequency range, unfortunately, tape saturation and analogue circuits being able to be pushed past their Q value has made us think otherwise.

Kinda sad to see not a single recent band in the world bothered to do what you said. Can it be done? Yes. Does anyone do it? No.

Who cares then, may I ask?

I loved that Akercocke track, iirc. Very tasty and evil-sounding.

Singers recording a bunch of tracks to harmonize with themselves bugs me, at least when they overdo it. iirc Kamelot and Soilwork do this way too much. I know this was possible in the past (Queen) but I assume it was a bit harder to do because it definitely wasn't as common. Also a lot of death metal/metalcore/deathcore bands like to record their growling so that the last syllables of one phrase overlap with the first few of the next one which is dumb; Between the Buried and Me do this a lot on Colors and it bugs me. Stuff like those or noticeably triggered drums spoil the illusion, like constantly seeing reflections of the cameraman while watching a movie or something.

In general I listen to something produced by Andy Sneap (who I'll use as an example of someone who consistently makes shiny modern metal albums) and I have a hard time imagining the band playing the music I'm hearing. It's not directly related to bands actually being able to pull the music off, since The Mars Volta can be a bit of a mess live but listening to their studio music I get a picture in my head of musicians playing.

I hear you on that noodles, the overharmization bugs me too. I've been avoiding Blind Guardian like the plague because from what I have heard from them (NOME) there is no particular vocal track dominating the mix, as it should be. A lot of the times though harmonizing isn't too much of an issue because a simple effects rack or pedal can harmonize fifths or fourths very easily once a little reverb or echo/delay is added, ou get what you hear on the record. Luppi did that on the SOC DVD from what Im hearing on it and it works perfectly.

Sneap's production style is not all that difficult to pull off live, it is just a band getting together rehearsing doesn't sound like that. You need a big venue and quiet amps mic'd and jacked up to do it live. It can be done, but most in house engineers don't have the skill to do so and most bands aren't miking up to the extent to do a quality mix live, unfortunately.

I get your point, the fact that it is not done as a rule makes it hard to believe a band COULD sound like that live.

It is time to get over the fact that bands can and will lie through their teeth about how they record albums. There are probably hundreds of albums mixed to sound low-fi when in fact they were recorded in pristine quality to begin with. It is not a hard trick to pull of either. Akercocke, to my ears had Neil Kernon downsampled some of the tracks on "summon" to create that crackling effect on that song. It does not sound like clipping, it sounds like artifacts. To answer the question, yeah, Akercocke do it all the time. I would suggest everyone stop believing the hype when it comes to recording. Bands want the absolute most flexibility possible when it is time to mix, not to be boxed into a corner that they can't get out of, this is why no one uses effects when recording. they are added later for the most part. Hell some bands record everything clean and send it through an effects chain, including distortion, later. I can't tell you for certain that is what the situation is, but no one is going to make their album sound worse for the hell of it, even if they want something raw sounding. Im talking about anyone with a record deal that sells over a thousand copies, not your basement dwellers that don't have the time nor resources to record anything of quality. Once any decent sound man or producer enters the picture the whole "recording it to sound as raw as possible" quickly exits the picture. Who wants to make a bet there are alternate mixes floating around on demo reels from the people involved in those albums that demonstrates how they achieved the low-fi effect?

I like a slick production but I don't like it too over the top. It can take away from a lot of albums that should be a bit more raw.

I mean there are plenty of good modern productions, though. Plenty that don't sound like they've had one too many coats of paint.

The only thing I dislike about modern production is the so-called "loudness war".

It is easily 90% of the problem. Using Audacity I can create a mix that reeks of the 70's, 80's, or whatever you want to create. Again, the problem is the massive overemphasis on 3000-6000hz range that sounds much louder to our ears than the pleasant and far more important 500-2000Hz range. In other words, the pleasant sounds are getting buried in the mix all due to hot mastering, compression and lack of dynamic range.

Generally, Vocals and Guitars especially are rolled off between 3-6K. So when they jack that up with compression you tend to get a very silibant and unnaturally bright vocal and guitar tone. I roll my vocals off past the "singers formant" of 2.2-2.8Khz about 12db per octave, but bring them back up past about 8Khz because there is nothing but "air" in those frequencies that has a huge influence on the clarity and realism of the track.

I myself made the mistake of trying to compensate for all this for years with more high end between 4-20Khz and a lot more bass boost from between 20-500hz. I notice they tend to accentuate bass to unnatural levels when mixing to try and cut through the high-mids that are peaked to hell during mastering. Of course after the entire signal has been brought down significantly, then you have more room for boost. These days I'd rather cut the offending frequencies and boost the mids to recreate that classic 70's warmth and presence. The bass and treble tend to be at very reasonable levels for the most part once this is done.

I might post an example later tonight of a good album that has been corrected to fix terrible mixing and mastering technique. Any suggestions are welcome. What has almost everyone heard up to this point that was originally mixed and mastered post-1995?

Ok. I am officially not understanding %85 of what Adveser is talking about.

Talk in Fruity Loops language man, not Pro Tools.

That's what I meant to say.

Erudition on parade.