Is your mix in mono? It would be easier to make judgments if I could hear the stereo field. And I hate to pop your bubble, but I personally think the snare is pretty muffled sounding, and it needs some more velocities. The mix sounds also sounds pretty terribly crushed by a compressor...most noticeably the overheads and snare.
No worries dude, no bubble for me, critique is always welcome and warmly accepted.
Now, the stereoimage, could you tell me how to improve this in a mix since everything is placed around the field as usual. Treating L and R differently perhaps?What are the elements here I could pan more?
About the snare, It's not really the samples fault, it's my Eq:ing.
I have to say I'm not really a big fan of Dimmu borgir kind of blastbeats where the snare is really tinny, I like it fat, and also it has got something to do with way I drive the compressor. But I guess too much is too much so I may have to cut a little if it sounds muffled.
No compression going on in the masterchain by the way, but you're right, I'd always have a mastering engineer to do the final work but at least in here that costs quite a lot, so some bands have no choice in the matter. I don't think that's as bad as some commercial albums though, there's still transients left.
The whole bassthing, my point of view to it is that if the bass plays a role of defining the chords in music, I see it sounding good when emphasizing it's fundamental and mixing it very low frequency area. But, if the bass is written to follow the guitar and does fast riff based stuff I think it sounds like shit if its mixed in the subs. I'd eq the harmonics and cut from the fundamental like in this case.
but you know what, the penis wasn't meant to be inserted in the anus either
Some people seem to like it more though