Autopsy (band) Sound

[FF666]

Do you know what gear did they use on their first albums (severed survival, mental funeral) , tips of dirty mixing... and, of course, how to get a similar guitar and bass tone with plugins and impulses?
I'm looking for an old and fat tone like that.
Thanks!

 

[Youpimatin]

To have a sound like that, give your mix to a deaf man with mitten !!
And don't cut any frequencies, record your gear with some cheap mics very off axis and try to put it together...
No other ideas for the moment.

 

[mondocane]

lol, but AUTOPSY is death metal history no matter of the "raw" [ahem..] production.

I am curious to read more replies. always been a fan of that shit too.

A.

 

[chaosmonger]

I don't know, it may have something to do with my absolute LOVE for those albums, but I find the muddy-lo-fi character of the production perfect for the music. I mean, those are songs about corpses, zombies, guts, excrements and brutal stuff, so it HAS to sound rotten and caveman-ish.

That's exactly what I don't like about bands such as necrophagist... I mean ... for me gore and brutality have nothing to do with virtuoso performance and clinically clean production.

Bottom line, I LOVE those cardboard sounding drums and the raw, unpolished guitars. For me those albums are perfect the way they are. I wouldn't change anything. In fact I'd love to record something in that vein, just to experiment.

I guess for production it's just a matter of doing far less processing on the tracks ... but what do I know?

 

[mondocane]

...Bottom line, I LOVE those cardboard sounding drums and the raw, unpolished guitars. For me those albums are perfect the way they are. I wouldn't change anything.)

precisely. |m|

A.

 

[FF666]

some more ideas?

 

[FF666]

Come on!

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

I'm pretty sure a lot of that sound doesn't come from technique, but rather the lack of it.

A lot of the early death metal stuff was recorded by people who didn't' really know what they were doing, so the awful guitar tones, badly tuned drums and terrible vocal tracks come simply come from not knowing better - which makes it really hard to deliberately recreate.

One way to get a similar vibe is to record everything live in the same room - drums, amps, people and singer (behind a board or something). The sound still depends on how you set things up, but having guitar bleed in the drum mics, a kick drum making the cab mics wobble, and a singer struggling to hear himself over a band (and screaming into what is essentially a room mic) definitely give you the feel. Don't worry about tuning the guitars perfectly, or making sure everyone can hear everything else perfectly, etc.

Honestly, if you record the average band rehearsal you're not all that far away.

Steve

 

[Fox Mulder]

the muddy-lo-fi character of the production perfect for the music. I mean, those are songs about corpses, zombies, guts, excrements and brutal stuff, so it HAS to sound rotten and caveman-ish.

+1

Edit:

One way to get a similar vibe is to record everything live in the same room - drums, amps, people and singer (behind a board or something). The sound still depends on how you set things up, but having guitar bleed in the drum mics, a kick drum making the cab mics wobble, and a singer struggling to hear himself over a band (and screaming into what is essentially a room mic) definitely give you the feel. Don't worry about tuning the guitars perfectly, or making sure everyone can hear everything else perfectly, etc.

Honestly, if you record the average band rehearsal you're not all that far away.

Steve

Funny, but that's a bit too biased and exaggerated. Try listening to more OSDM stuff if you want to get a clearer picture. There's a difference between 'raw' and 'cheap'.

----------------------------
As per the main question, use a marshall jcm 800 (no ts!) and a marshall av cab with a 421. Dual track, and keep it off-axis. No need to mic the bass amp. Let your vocalist hold a shure sm7b, and of course, use tube preamps for EVERYTHING.

Make good use of the Room mics. Stereo miking if fucking important here. For the snare you'd be better off using an audix i5. SM58 for the bottom (yes, sm58).

 

[FF666]

Thank you Maamar!

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

Ah, it's a spam account.. please ban the asshat..

 

[MEGA DAVE]

I've worked with a lot of the oldschool death metal guys (guys from morbid angel, monstrosity, cryptopsy, etc..) and know all too well how to get this production. A lot of the guys record with other guys in the scene who just do it at their house in untreated rooms, tracked onto low level mixing boards into a daw/recorder/adat/tape. Things were done with whatever you could get a hold of, meaning most drums/guitars/amps/mics were just whatever you could find the best of and just tracked straight up, not a ton of mixing involved, just throw up some mics and play. No click tracks, all feel, all tracked as is, no re-amping and such. There's not much to it, just guys with little experience and very little gear just hitting the record button and panning

 

[ProjectHamsterdam]

Does anybody know anything about the production on 'Acts of the Unspeakable'?

The lead guitar sound on this album is amazing! I'm guessing it's the neck pickup of a Les Paul Studio through some Marshall or something, but anyway all the solos sound so great.