Satanstoenail
My Larpstyle determines my Derpstyle
I remember hearing somewhere that the rhythm guitar on MoP was layered like 35 times for maximum thickness.
Best Guitar Tone on an album
- Thread starter Bruticus
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Kvelding
Nah, it's double tracked. The black album used 3 rhythm guitars and sounds massive.
heard that too about Master of Puppets. A bit charming how metal records from the 80's still had urban legends about them... nowadays every record comes with a full 3hr and a half making of documentary on YouTube.
Anyways I'll never really know what they did exactly step by step in that studio during 1986, but it was definitely very different from what they did from every other studio. One of those seminal, revolutionary jobs that change the course of its field. However you look at it, there's no way that album sounds like the mid 80's.
EchoForever
HAIL!
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CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
EchoForever
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if you hold this as a standard that you'd like to reach yourself in your recordings, I've got really, really good news for you.
no country for old wainds
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Kvelding
It's not that simple to achieve.
By today standards, the easiest guitar tone to get is the nu metal/metalcore one.
suck ma caaack no cunty for old wanks.
Uhm. That's any decent amp, treble on max, bit of reverb.
It's actually pretty cool, the song. I like it quite a bit. But it's not exactly the sound that studios and bands go on quests to find, is it. Personally, I actually like the production here. Whether it's intentionally super thin or not, not sure, I've heard Varg talk about the dire recording conditions for his albums... anyways this here lacks in body and depth tremendously compared to any metal release, even for black metal, and it's got its sonic charm.
no country for old wainds
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who gives a shit about 'the sound that studios and bands go on quests to find' though? most of the best production jobs are idiosyncratic and serve the specific spirit of the music therein rather than following some studio-driven blueprint of whatever metal is supposed to sound like.
Gorgeous gtr sound of the utmost purity. You could piss in it and drink out of it and it would taste like.
Still piss. But pleasant though.
How one track, a single track (multi-layered of course), can convey so much auditory information, how it fills the space with so much girth and nuance. It's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. It makes me weep tears of a profound sorrow that seems eternal, but really, lasts around eight to twelve seconds, tops.
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Kvelding
In technical terms, it's not easy to replicate Varg's tone, as much as it might seem to be. Take into consideration that Varg recorded with crap equipment, but the whole production on his albums (excepting the last one, I think) were done by Pytten, who is a pro. That means that Varg used a cheapo guitar with cheapo amp, but the mics weren't exactly garbage and the whole eq/filtering/mix was a very good job.
Despite the raw recordings, Burzum albums don't sound harsh or terrible, neither too trebly nor flat (compare it to the LLN shitty catalogue, for example). They sound quite balanced and your ears won't fatigue on repeated or long hearing sessions.
Hvis lyset tar oss doesn't sound thin at all, it actually sounds great for early 90's black metal standards. That album in particular sounds better than Darkthrone's albums up to TH, it sounds even better than ITNE and it was recorded earlier, with poorer equipment. Compare the drum sound for example. Varg's kit sounds actually better than Fenriz' and even Faust' on ITNE, despite not being quite the drummer himself.
That's what most Burzum and depressive/raw black metal imitators never got; Varg might have been minimalistic in songwriting and gear, but he actually cared enough to make those album sound good, at least good enough to deliver a quality product.
Fans might not give a shit about it, but musicians do for sure. There is a reason why there are respected and prolific producers out there; it's because the guys are good for what they offer and, like it or not, most scenes and innovations in music are also possible due a certain production trick or style.
Think about the 80's, Phil Collins' gated reverb shaped an entire generation, for the better or worse. In metal is the same thing. There were your Tägtgrens, Richardsons, Rasmussens, Burns and Sneaps that dominated certain periods of time in metal production. Today you have Bogren, Madsen and so many others.
Yeah yeah no it's def. not pushing record on a Nokia phone and throwing it near a 50 dollar amp.
But it's not exactly an ideal for many guitarists out there (for a REASON, mind you ! not just because of the majority).
Norwegian black metallers love a tone that is wild as to depict a certain natural identity/wildness about themselves, the free scandinavian pagan running naked in the forest all that good stuff.
Burzum aside, I never personally paid much attention to that black metal scene because it was obvious very early on that the emphasis was on sound, and not composition. The music is often barely rock level. Any style of music that puts the emphasis on sounding a certain way while discarding song-writing, not ma thing. Not all 90's blackm bands, but many.
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Kvelding
I guess you never heard Arcturus or Emperor, just to name a few.
Some of these riffs are not as clear on the records.
This is well written stuff
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Kvelding
I think one of the things were Norwegian black metal really excelled was the songwriting. From Ulver to Satyricon, from DHG to Thorns, from Kampfar to Windir, most of the "classic" stuff is well written black metal. Far better at songwriting than the Finns and French trends.
I-TEND-TO-DIE
leave this world behind
if you randomly were to run your hand in a basket of Norwegian black metal, and pulled one out and played it, it would likely (not ALWAYS... - likely) be music on the same level as rock music more or less. A few power chords for a verse, a main riff... Scandinavians as a people are very musical and good at their music so you can always come across in any genre good interesting bands. I don't however believe many would argue the Norwe black metal scene was not an example of how rich metal music is, to say the least. If you needed to show an educated but-non-metal musician some metal to demonstrate the musical wealth of our genre, that scene isn't the first one you'd think of picking from (unless it's a complete exception like mid/late Emperor). You'd pick prog metal, you'd pick perhaps death metal known for pushing the envelope as a whole...mathcore type material like Meshuggah or Periphery I instrumental with their polyrhythms...
that black metal scene was about achieving a sound, not so much writing memorable song. The emphasis was clearly on sound, not song-writing.
