looking for critique on a death metal mix... my best so far!

[buhzie2]

Here's the latest mix of a song, with no vocals yet, for my friend's band. It's the best one I think I have done so far. No mastering, just brought up the final level a little bit.

http://soundcloud.com/steve-seid/cataclysm-november8-unmastered

Here's a quick rundown of what's going on:
Drums:
-Kick 100% replaced with kick samples from drummer's kit
-Snare 85% replaced with a blend of two samples, one of my own snares, one Slate snare. (Unfortunately, the tuning just wasn't working with the snare that he had.)
-Toms all natural.
-Overheads were a spaced pair
-One mono room mic about 8 feet away from kit
-Parallel compressing all drums (no cymbals) hard to make them smack
-Light, small room verb on snare, toms, overheads.

Guitars:
-Double tracked, one guitarist. Recorded DIs and reamped later.
-Mesa triple rec, CRANKED, with just a tube screamer in front, running into a marshall 1960 slant, miced with an sm7 off axis about an inch away from cone, and an i5 on axis, on edge of cone.
-Panned hard left, hard right, blended two miced tracks.
-Super light compression, just to catch some palm mutes
-High pass, low pass, a bit of surgical eq

Bass:
-Direct in, possible reamping in the future...
-Two duplicate tracks, one processed for lows, one for highs.
-Parallel compressed both tracks, slammed compression to keep it smooth.
-Rolled off lows up to 60hz, leaving room for the kick.
-A tiny bit of surgical eqing here and there.



I wanna hear what you guys have to say! I'm quite proud of this. It's not 100% there yet, but I think I have a pretty good start on it.

 

[jackbraglia]

sounds great! but the snare is a bit loud

 

[buhzie2]

sounds great! but the snare is a bit loud

I agree about the snare, listening to it now with fresh ears. I always mix my snares too loud... Probably because I'm a drummer and that's all I want to hear, haha.

Some things I wrote down as notes earlier...
"Increase the HPF and LPF on guitars a little bit, to leave more room for bass.
Something about kick drum muddyness and a tiny bit less high end clickyness?
Lower toms a tiny bit?
Where are my mids? lol"

Would you agree with what I noted?
Why does it seem like my mixes lack mids? Is this something that is slightly accounted for when mastering? Will a flat mastering eq curve pull up the mids, or is it something that I should account for in the mix by pulling up some mids (or conversely, dropping high and low end)?

 

[Manicompression]

I think this sounds pretty good for the style they are playing. Snare could maybe come down a pinch but i think you will find when the vocal is in there your gonna keep that snare pretty loud. Tom volume seems good, i might scoop a little more low mids out of them though. I wouldnt mess with the guitar filters too much or the kick, i think they sound cool for this style a touch on the muddy side. I would try brightening up the bass guitar via distortion maybe around 600-700hz just a touch. Also i like the verb on the snare, id automate it up louder on the parts of the song that groove. I would automate the overhead volume a bit too, some parts could be lower some louder.

 

[buhzie2]

anyone else??