Hey man, I don't mean to sound harsh, but I just heard some of your new album, "The Puppet Master" and it's really compelling me to make you aware of what I feel the problem with all your albums from "The Graveyard" on have been (Voodoo was pretty darn good, but it still suffered from what I'm about to mention):
See, the main thing is not the fact that the drumming on any of these releases doesn't add anything to the music, even though that is a big part of it. The writing is weaker than it has been in the past as well, but really I feel all these things could possibly be overlooked if you would just use a different production style. All the album since "The Graveyard" have sounded the same in terms of production and the particular sound of it is damaging. Your vocals are too dry, they need to have oodles of delay like in the old days of KD. One of the biggest things that kept Abigail 2 from sounding like the old days (even though you claimed it did) was the vocal production. USE DELAY! Also your midrange is really boring and nasal. It doesn't have the ferocity it did in the past, as does your falsetto. You can mask this with delay. I'm thinking that maybe you don't notice a problem because you ALWAYS sang this way, but the listeners didn't know, because you used a lot of delay on your voice. Also, the drum sound in them is imperative. Even though technology claims to have made advances in recording, these 'advances' are really detrimental to your music and really kill the horror vibe. The lo-fi, atticky quality of Abigail and THEM really made them sound chilling. Finally, back to your midrage vocal - the meodies you're choosing are really uncreative. Please stay out of your midrange.
So in short, I'm not saying you need to go so far as to change your compositional style, just please use a (drastically) different producer/engineer.
See, the main thing is not the fact that the drumming on any of these releases doesn't add anything to the music, even though that is a big part of it. The writing is weaker than it has been in the past as well, but really I feel all these things could possibly be overlooked if you would just use a different production style. All the album since "The Graveyard" have sounded the same in terms of production and the particular sound of it is damaging. Your vocals are too dry, they need to have oodles of delay like in the old days of KD. One of the biggest things that kept Abigail 2 from sounding like the old days (even though you claimed it did) was the vocal production. USE DELAY! Also your midrange is really boring and nasal. It doesn't have the ferocity it did in the past, as does your falsetto. You can mask this with delay. I'm thinking that maybe you don't notice a problem because you ALWAYS sang this way, but the listeners didn't know, because you used a lot of delay on your voice. Also, the drum sound in them is imperative. Even though technology claims to have made advances in recording, these 'advances' are really detrimental to your music and really kill the horror vibe. The lo-fi, atticky quality of Abigail and THEM really made them sound chilling. Finally, back to your midrage vocal - the meodies you're choosing are really uncreative. Please stay out of your midrange.
So in short, I'm not saying you need to go so far as to change your compositional style, just please use a (drastically) different producer/engineer.
