Metal - on the sound limit?

[ThomasT]

Hi alltogether,

after a stressful time (designing and building a new studio, recording the album of my band) I have now some time for forums etc.

And first I want to ask a fundamental question regarding mixing and mastering these days.
Let me say first, that I think andy sneap is one of the best producers for metal (without keys and orchestra). His productions sound always great, punchy, aggressive, clear and so on. But I read some bad comments about these production (e.g. on youtube), too. Some are complaining about over-producing, quantising, steril sound etc.
I must say in a certain way they are right!
It does not concern only Andy productions, but nearly all modern productions, but Andy is a good example and since he has this nice forum it would be great to hear his opinion as well.

Most productions today have punchy guitars with crispy highs, well defined higher mid range, controlled lower midrange (multi /bandpass compressed). The bassdrums are like canon shots with lots of highs but not that much lows, snares similar like gun shots, not too deep (like Black Album of Metallca), more aggressive.
Bass guitars are not dominant. Sometimes good hearable only because of the added distortion. Sometimes even with a high pass filter. (I remember a prodcution - not from Andy Sneap I think - where there are no frequencies below 100Hz or 80 Hz.
I hope you know what I mean.

Hence all instruments have a frequency range where they sound lound without needing to much energy. The trigger sound as well. Loud and able to penetrate through the wall of guitars without needing to be very loud in level.
You don't find muddy bassy heavy sounds like older Paradise Lost or Autopsy anymore. There are seldom dominant or even markant basses (except Typo O Negative - RIP) anymore. Even Lemmys Motörhead bass is slightly less dominant when the guitar plays loud. I did not listen to modern AC/DC productions, but the older had a very deep (and "muffled") bass drum. But it was dominant in the sound, it produces a strong beat. It don't need to have "click" to be hearable and punchy and "big". Same with toms.

Compare Andy Sneaps Mixes of Testament and Kreator. They are different, of course. But not that much as Testaments "Legacy" and Kreator "Pleasure to kill" or "terrible certainty" differs.

So my question is:
Do modern loudness driven production methods and mixing styles limit the variety of metal sounds?

I noticed this lately during the mixing of my own band. I had a dirty natural sounding sound in mind. But the band mates said the mix (with dummy L2 liming) was too quite. The record company didn't liked the first mixes with natural drums etc. So I ended up in the direction I descripted: samples, precise Eqing ... more or less. I did not reach Andys Quality of course ... ... but I think I achieved a good compromise. But this lead me to this question.

Thomas

 

[ahjteam]

No. But brickwalling sucks.

 

[Morgan C]

Maybe a little bit. But honestly, apart from the snare drum, everything needs to be so compressed to be heard that they end up having no dynamics anyway. Take away the snare drum and you'd probably reach like -11db RMS on many metal mixes. As for natural drums, there are quite a few loud albums with natural drums. The drums have to be really good and punchy, though, you can't just take shitty sounding drums recorded in a garage and expect them to cut through like Slate samples recorded in one of the best studios in the world. But you should still be able to get it as loud.

 

[ThomasT]

Puh ... I feel that my english is not the best to explain such subtable things. I don't mean compression or even brickwall limiting here primarily, but sound. Frequency cutting. Sound choice that lets no space for a different sound left. For me most good produced bands sound more and more equal. Every band or producer that chooses a more different sound cannot make it loud, since that maximal possible loudness is already used. I don't talk about the fact that garage recordings will not sound as good or loud an such problems. I mean that there is little space left to variate the sound without loosing the loudness war.
The best produced metal album I heared in the last years was Therion "gothic kabbala". Clear. superb stereo image and "3D-dimension". Even with an RMS of -12 ... -11dB not as loud as other modern production and not "straight in the face", though.

 

[Vinny]

Yes and No.

 

[ThomasT]

???

 

[Cryo114]

I have to agree, I don't live by example though. Alot of Devin townsend stuff I like musically I end up hating because it sound so horribly flat all the time. But it's all opinion, if your favourite album is something full of dynamic charicter like Tubular bells (which is my favourite), uber compression/limiting isn't going to be your thing.

The absolute truth is that loudness is a relative concept, so if your whole song is loud, loudness no long exists within the song.

 

[MetalSound]

Do modern loudness driven production methods and mixing styles limit the variety of metal sounds?

no, but each producer has his own sound. so if a lot bands sound equal to each other it may be that they recorded in the same studio with the same engineer.

a band has a certain style-they like the sound from band xy (which is playing a similar style) so they want THAT/THEIR sound and go into the same studio. the result is boring:
same style, same sound, same shit.
useless crap in my opinion but as long as there are people buying it it will never end. this is one of the reasons the music industry is in such a big crisis but that´s another story...

 

[Vinny]

a band has a certain style-they like the sound from band xy (which is playing a similar style) so they want THAT/THEIR sound and go into the same studio. the result is boring:
same style, same sound, same shit.
useless crap in my opinion but as long as there are people buying it it will never end. this is one of the reasons the music industry is in such a big crisis but that´s another story...

Woahh now buddy...
A band chooses to work with a producer (using that term lightly, could be an actual producer, engineer, mixer etc.) because they like the quality of that producer's previous work. And as stated by Chris Lord-Algae himself, you try not to make an impact on that band's sound, but rather have the band breathe and find their own sound that suits them. The bands you are talking about are all the poser/copycat bands that want to be like Attack Attack! or whatever.

 

[Deltones]

Some are complaining about over-producing, quantising, steril sound etc.

I must say in a certain way they are right!

Indeed they are.

A band has a certain style-they like the sound from band xy (which is playing a similar style) so they want THAT/THEIR sound and go into the same studio. the result is boring:

Same style, same sound, same shit.

Indeed it is. That's the thing with modern metal production as far as I'm concerned. If I didn't see the name of the band, I'd wager they were all cut from the same cloth. Say what you will about 80's, maybe early 90's metal production, but you could tell which band was which. They had their own signature, starting from the singer. Vio-lence didn't sound like Blood Feast didn't sound like Agent Steele. Now? Who gives a fuck? Also, I knew that there was a freaking human being behind the drum set. Now? I hear some kick drum pattern that are played at thoroughly ludicrous speed, at exactly the same impact strength, perfectly all the time. Yet, when you compare that to Lombardo on Show No Mercy, where you could hear the dynamic going on with the kick, there is simply no comparison in listening pleasure and satisfaction.

Take Exodus. Bonded By Blood, with its relatively low-fi and imperfect production, sounds a million times more poweful and exciting than the abomination that is Let There Be Blood as far as I'm concerned. Main reason is that it let's my head be the hammer, not the other way around. Why? Because the production breathes on its own and is not constricted like modern production. That's my way of describing it.

 

[MetalSound]

Woahh now buddy...
A band chooses to work with a producer (using that term lightly, could be an actual producer, engineer, mixer etc.) because they like the quality of that producer's previous work. And as stated by Chris Lord-Algae himself, you try not to make an impact on that band's sound, but rather have the band breathe and find their own sound that suits them. The bands you are talking about are all the poser/copycat bands that want to be like Attack Attack! or whatever.

that´s exactly what i was trying to say. i don´t know attack attack but there´s a lot of same sounding bands (especially in those ....-core related styles). hell if everybody is using the same amps, same settings and even the same samples, etc. there can´t be anything new.

btw, this seems to be a "problem" in this forum for a while, too.

 

[Mago]

I also came across this lately.
A lot of people seem to think that a lot of Sneap Mixes I love (Doomsday, Last Kind Words, Nevermore...) sound "sterile" and "not natural".
From what I've understood they mainly seem to focus on the drums, as they sound like a "typwriter".
Personally I love that kind of definition for modern prodcutions. It has to fit the music though, modern/more extreme music needs that kind of definition so you can acutally hear what is going on with the different instruments.
You can't compare an old AC/DC kick to a kick you need for fast metal stuff. AC/DC have one drumm pattern throughout a whole song/album. If the kick is only prominent on 1 or 2 beats a bar it NEEDS punch in the bass, the whole thing is rather there to give a beat. Modern drums are a totally different story. If you give them that much bass the whole mix gets boomy and undefined.
A thing I also do not like though is that the bass doesnt have that much space in most modern mixes. But I've experienced with my own mixes that a lot of listeners boost the bass on default on their systems, so if you make your mixes too bass heavy it gets too heavy.
Loudness is a totally different story though. Dumb thing it is.

It's hard to understand 100% if people are complaining only about the sound or also about modern -core music copycats, or a mixture of both.
But for me it's perfectly understandable that guys who love 80s death and thrash metal mixes arent happy with modern productions.
I for example hate it when old shool death metal guitars pierce my ears due to extensive highs in the guitars.

about the sound/similarity "problem" on this forum:
I think Lasses samples brought some fresh air to it, but it's true that its kind of hard to come up with new sounds if everyone is using the same Equipment/settings and samples.
It's up to everyone to go the prooven way or to experiment with something new. Doing both seems to be the way I like to work

 

[ThomasT]

I
From what I've understood they mainly seem to focus on the drums, as they sound like a "typwriter".

Yup. Not only, but as a big part.

Personally I love that kind of definition for modern prodcutions.

And so do I! And a lot of people. Maybe they would have done in the 80s if they have had the possibilies to do it. [1]

So I think you can say such sound is the ultimate ideal for metal. And when you modify such an ideal you get a worser result. You cannot use a different sound without degrading it in some way (e.g. in loundness).

(Of cource reality is more complex and not that simple, but its about the tendencies and princible.)

[1] you can turn the argument and say that the wide variety of sounds in the 80s is a result of the limited technical possibilities those days. Its imperfection - and maybe some imperfection is what metal needs. It needs not sound like Dark Throne, though.

 

[aortizjr]

Well what I wonder is if all these people bitching are just whiners that think they are recording engineers or that they have golden ears listening to 99% of their music on shitty earbuds mp3 compressed to shit or over pandora or youtube. These days you can spend $100 on a computer interface and pirate a DAW and plugins and call yourself a recording engineer.

Hell I have even done second recording efforts (demo 2, album 2, ep 2, whatever) where their first was a guy they paid who was using the line-in on their laptops. One was actually an "award winning" record producer. Sure we had an award for the biggest shit in my college dorm.

Especially on the internet... pssss.

I hear and see it everytime I do a consult. They think they have awesome ears (that ring constantly) bitching that modern production sounds too robotic, sterile, etc. etc. But then I show them productions from the 90's (ala Death, Slayer, Testament, Cynic, At the Gates, etc.) you know pre edited to death, sample replaced, dynamics etc. Also shocking that kids today haven't even heard of these bands..... another story. And they say well it isn't very clear, punchy, defined, and NOT VERY TIGHT. Also shocking!!!

Then you show them their raw tracks, and guess what.... they are miles worse than that. But then they expect and want the sound they bitch about describing it more ways.... the kick drums aren't punchy, or I played it like shit, or the guitars don't have enough bite, etc. etc. etc. Or "Well I compared it to --insert some modern production here...often produced/mixed by the same guy of the album they bitched about--- and it sounded weak and undefined in comparison." Not to mention they are using a $200 used POS as a drum kit and crate combo amps with metal zones on $100 squiers playing death metal. Also of course they are on a shoestring budget and thought my rate was too high even though I know housekeepers that make more per hour.

So....my point... people bitch just to bitch. Do I agree with a lot of the points above, absolutely! But Nevermore sounds nothing like the new Dimmu. And I can definitely hear what I consider major differences in sound between Sneap, Nordstrom, Bogren, Sucoff, Sturgis, etc. etc. And bands at that level, go see them live, they do not disappoint in the least. Local bands... well honestly 9/10 their live performance matches their record production. Even the best modern techniques can't save really shitty performance and shitty songs.... period.

The cream still rises to the top and shit still sinks to the bottom. But IMO 99% of people don't listen to music, they hear music which is why so much shit sells.

Oh god and I would like to end it there... but if you ever have to work with aspiring pop stars... let me tell you.. that shit..... what sells is actually miles and miles better.....