I'll definitely check those LP records then. :)

These days, the Metal Machines gets a lot of usage here, though I'm not agonizing over drums just yet. I'm still not sure how it'll all work - we're likely to have all the drums re-recorded in L.A. or maybe back home - there's plenty of people who've expressed interest in contributing, but it'll all depend of where we want to take it next. 

I have another kit (BFD though) which I keep in the back pocket, in case we want to further develop the drums here - Joe Baressi's Evil Drum. In terms of sound, it's probably my personal favorite. 

I think a lot of metal these days sounds like crap. Especially the symphonic nonsense. You should try a mix of old school and new school. Like Janis Joplin meets Garbage type stuff for vocals. The newish bands I really like for clean, modern metal instrumentally are Necrophagist and Nile. Here are some links...

Necrophagist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9RJXWxth5g

Nile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZlR05X0m4

I really don't like the pukey vocals of both of these bands and they are probably WAY over the top as far as playing style but these are the BEST modern metal production values I can offer you. The quality is so much more real and in your face than a lot of crap that's getting put out now. 

Just some thoughts. Cheers.

oh and didn't you get a nice little tube amp? Mess with that even on bass then bend that bugger in your DAW. 

That's something I'd ideally like to do - bring my own, uh, artistic production values in the picture. But that's already a tall order, even in the genres I'm more familiar with.

I mentioned Cradle of Filth earlier - and since I was familiar w/ them back in the days, I thought I'd check their latest offerings. Man, even their old stuff didn't sound that bad.

Never been into the growling thing either. Anyway, there's no point. But there are some similarities in the moods, so to speak.

My wife has an incredible range and voice, so I have to make room for the vocals. But I still want it to sound as a whole, not a singer w/ a bunch of nameless guns for hire. It's a subtle balance.

I could mention Tool, though it's something entirely different, but I think they're too "organic" for what I'm after, guitar-wise at least. 

I'll check out those 2 bands. Thanks, man!

I was listening to Surfing With The Alien recently and noticed what a good, clear sounding mix it was. Can't hurt to reference it from time to time for its guitar/bass clarity. 

I kind of lost all references. Many albums I used to think sounded good or great as a fan back then don't sound half as good sitting in the mixer's chair.

The older stuff from the 70s sounds ok - I particularly like the balance on Deep Purple's Come Taste the Band (heresy, I know) but that's not what I'm after and can't really serve as a reference. The Bob Rock era Metallica used to sound great - or so I thought back then, but listening to it now... Well, it still beats their last few albums, but, you know...

I don't know. From the late 90's onward, I gravitated more towards NIN and Skinny Puppy and dark electro. Some of those albums still sound amazing by my standards (The Fragile and Things Falling Apart are still on my list of favorites), but they sound great for that specific genre. 

Did heavy metal ever sound really great? I remember head banging to Judas Priest's Freewheel Burning as a 12 years old and thinking it sounded so frickin' amazing. Well, it didn't age as well as The Dark Side of the Moon... lol

It still rocks though. :P

Try listening to some Nightwish.

Some albums held up but yeah... definitely a lot of laughable productions looking back.

A lot of the Slayer stuff still stands up as do many older Metallica albums after Kill 'Em All. Exodus surprisingly still sounds great... at least one album in particular does but I forget the name. The one with Toxic Waltz. It's pretty much all the guys that didn't get sucked into all the cruddy multi effects pedals/rackmounts, weird amps and cheesy 80's guitars. Just straight up Gibby's (or good Gibby clones), modded Marshalls and old Boss pedals. There was so much crappy hair gear flying around back then and it all sounded like crap. It's a shame really because a lot of good tunes are almost unlistenable nowadays because of that cash grab by the manufacturers. But what are you gonna do, aye? It was the start of all the fancy sim stuff we have nowadays though so at least there's that.

Might find some useful info here:

http://www.badmuckingfast.../sound/slipperman.html

Rain

Second - Bass. Besides the obvious distorted track that you can blend w/ the DI-clean one, in my dabbling w/ relatively flat sounding bass sounds, I'm quite perplexed to see that I usually find myself cutting quite a bit of low mids for the clean sound, from 200 on. I'm often tempted to scoop them out a bit even below that, from 120-ish on. And then usually adding a bit somewhere between, say, 600 and 900, wherever the guitars are scooped and leave a bit of room. 

FWIW - 


On most of The CHB songs I mixed, on bass I use a high passed (@ 80HZz) DI -> lightly compressed, EQ'd with UAD Helios, along with a parallel (via send) EZMix's Bass Chorus. 

The EQ has a boost @ 100Hz and clickiness boots at 2K or 2.5K (those are Helios' choices).

I have used Waves Bass Rider on occasion too.

Also, on drums, as Jeff says... don't let them get lost. More and more I'm using (enter McQ laughing) drumagog with the Invictus Metal Drums sound libraries on the Metal Drums. Originally I used EZDrummer's Metal Kits (which are stellar) on one CHB tune where I did the drums with my son but soon switched to Bluenoiseplugins Meatl1 kit. That was before I had drumagog.