Merry Christmas From Theocracy! (MP3)

[Matt Smith]

Hey Guys--
Not to get too cheesy on ya here, but we've done a Christmas song each of the past few years. I'm in the finishing stages of our new album, so I didn't want to do a whole new song this year and take time away from that, so I decided to remix the big medley we did a few years ago. Originally it was tracked with programmed drums and the production sucked (it was before I had a band), so I decided to track real drums and remix it. It was shocking how bad some of the tracking was when I pulled up the masters, so (of course) I ended up re-recording a lot of it after all. I think it came out cool though, and I hope you enjoy it (WARNING: skip this if you hate Christmas music and/or actual singing, heh heh...)

Theocracy Christmas Medley 2006 Mix

 

[Ermz]

Sounds great, like every year Matt.

I know it's not really the spirit of the thread but.. would you mind if I asked what gear you used to get those kick and snare sounds?

 

[JeffTD]

As always, that's awesome! I love the Christmas stuff you guys did... Little Drummer Boy was a favorite of mine for a while, but I think this Christmas Eve Sarajevo part might take the cake.

Details on gear, though? Those drums sound awesome!

 

[stuh84]

Hope you don't mind me having this as on every Christmas playlist for the rest of my life

I love it, this is very VERY good

 

[Sinister Mephisto]

I've been wondering when it would come, cool stuff Matt!

 

[Wolfeman]

Sweet man. This is going on my playlist right after all my TSO stuff.

 

[Nebulous]

Haha! Fucking awsome
Loving the vocals too

 

[Nebulous]

Haha, I jsut remembered that South Park ep where Cartman and Kyle (or Stan?) try to out do each other with record sales and Cartman goes all christian rock and sells tons of CD's. I could see Theocracy doing that, just make all the heavy guitars acoustic and tone down some of the neocassical/ prog elements.
When metal isn't making you rich......

 

[GeertSamuel]

Awesome stuff man!
Let's crank this up @ church the 24th

 

[KeithRT99]

those drums sound really good.

 

[Massili]

very nice! drums are really great!

 

[cobhc]

Matt, as always you provide something that's fucking awesome!

 

[Garfo]

Really cool.

 

[Nitronium Blood]

Very nice. Thank you.

 

[Matt Smith]

Thanks, guys.

Well, for starters we used an awesome snare drum. I borrowed my buddy’s old 50s Ludwig snare (and his drum room, haha), which records great. Ugliest snare you’ve ever seen, but it sounds FAT. I think I used a D1 on the top and a D2 on the bottom. I used the natural sound for the body, and mixed in a sample for cut.

The kick was a sample I made of Shawn’s kick from the session (miked with a D6) mixed with a kick sample I took from my keyboard. Lots of Waves SSL compression on the drums, along with a real hardware 384 on the 2-buss.
The acoustic section in “O Holy Night” (before the heavy guitars kick back in) is 100% natural drums, no samples. For that part, I basically duplicated the room mics, crushed them with an 1176, and keyed from the snare to add some more depth and sizzle on the snare hits. It worked pretty well.

 

[FULLMETALSPEEDO]

Thanks Matt! Just what I needed to start getting into the spirit! Sounds really great. Please share what amp and cab were used for that track.

 

[Matt Smith]

That was my 6505+ head into Mesa Recto cab, Vintage 30s, miked with an SM-57 into an Amek 9098 pre/EQ.
Other than the "Carol of the Bells" harmonies, the leads were from the original session, and I don't remember what I had when I did that. Probably Mesa Triaxis into Recto cab.

 

[doc_backmask]

Absolutely epic. Its funny, I was just thinking on my way into work this morning that I wanted to listen to some metal X-mas stuff.

 

[Noumenon]

this is the reason I like this season

 

[kaomao]

That savatage passage from 0:34 to 2:02 is great eheheh