Modern Music Production

[Covet Chaos]

What do you make of it? Been speaking with Simon about it and I think we both agree that modern production is balls. For me it has ruined most new bands for me. I hardly listen to any new albums because I know it's gonna sound like balls.

Albums are meant to be performances of bands. But NOW bands are heavily triggered and quantised for the convenience of a producer. The over use of triggers is very new and it pisses me off. It doesn't sound good... it ISN'T natural. You may aswell program the drums. It eliminates bleed yes... You can play with the worst drumkit in the world and make it sound good. But it will be unnatural. Why don't people just put time and effort in... find the fucking EQ and gates and get a real drum kit down? Make recordings natural again.

And guitars and drums in metal are over quantised so much. I mean fuck man! Wheres the playing gone. Wheres the human elements in modern metal? This is why I have fallen out with modern thrash and modern metal.

Fucking over compression too. You dont have to make something loud to make it good. That just saturates it and messes the EQ up. Mastering fucking sucks now. If you go n get a Sabbath album you need to turn your speakers up! And that's good. The dynamics are still there. If you open a Sabbath song in a wave editor you'll see it is very dynamic. If you open a modern thrash album (I sort of don't want to name names here but I do have examples if they're required) then its all flat.

Modern music sounds dull and lifeless. Real production is dead.

BLAH!

 

[Never the same]

It sucks yeah but I like the loudness stuff. I can enjoy a Sneap production a la latest Nevermore album as much as a shitty produced 80's thrash metal album.

 

[Covet Chaos]

It works for some. But for me you've lost the feeling. It doesn't feeling like a band playing music like it should do.

And if you like it loud like people do... We can all turn up the volume! People dont have to slaughter the sound for this *Cough* Death Magnetic *Cough*

 

[metallicdistort]

Indeed, for me the best albums are the ones that make you feel like you are in the middle of a small room with the band jamming out their songs together. With most modern production, you don't get that, it doesn't really feel like human beings are playing the music, sounds more like it's all being laid down by a computer, which makes it lose a lot of the energy for me.

 

[Podgie]

I agree, to a certain extent. I think a massive chuck of bands (especially those who play mainstream metal) strongly depend on studio ticks and modern production to enhance certain aspects of their sound. I remember watching an old Bolt Thrower interview where they were asked about the same sort of thing, and they said (in as many words) why tweak your sound in the studio to achieve a certain way on record, when you can't pull it off live? You're then not only lying to your fans but you're lying to yourselves as musicians...

However, I do think...

It works for some.

...like modern technical death metal like Gorod, Obscura, Decrepit Birth etc. That's a very new sound, and it suits the very new methods of production.

I do think that over-polished production is part of the reason why I can't really appreciate bands like Dragonfarse, etc though. I know they've used tricks in the studio and have used modern production to cover up their flaws. It's no secret that recording has changed a hell of a lot over the years, and I'm no expert! Hell, riffs can be copy and pasted nowadays, no need to play an entire song all the way though! ... When that kind of thing is done a record can loose all feeling.

 

[Covet Chaos]

I think with bands like Gorod that they can do it without, because they can play the stuff live.

 

[Podgie]

Yeah, that's why I think it's okay for them to create a really spacey, polished sound in the studio. It's bands like Caliban which annoy me, they actually stuggle to play their own songs live.

I might not be getting your point exactly, but I definitely have issues with bands using modern production values to pretend to be musicians they're not.

 

[Covet Chaos]

That isn't cool. But I'm getting more at the vibe of band playing. Cos it's just lost. Even if the bands can play it live I still don't agree with triggering.

 

[D.Ingram]

Dan's first post hit the nail on the head.

 

[Covet Chaos]

I'll hit a nail on your head....

:danceboy:

 

[Revell]

Agreed 100%. Everything's way too polished, and you hit the nail on Dave's head lol with the mention of the loss of the human element. Where's the rawness and the feeling? FUCK MODERN PRODUCTION.

 

[metallicdistort]

I'll hit a nail on your head....

:danceboy:

I'll nail you in the head

 

[D.Ingram]

I'll nail you in the anus.

But seriously, most modern production is shite - especially in death metal, where Russ Russell and Erik Rutan seem to be the only two doing a good job these days. People like Colin Richardson and Andy Sneap are overhyped and overused if you ask me, and a lot of the time their records end up sounding too artificial (withthe odd exception - Bloodthirst and Killing Peace to name just two).

I vote for Scott Burns to return to the prduction helm, since Tortured Existence and The Bleeding have my favourite production sounds ever. Scott knew how to make albums sound utterly crushing, yet keep the whole things sounding organic - an art that you just won't get anywhere nowadays.

 

[metallicdistort]

Andy Sneap's work with Iron Monkey is fantastic.

Although I liked Russ Russell's work on albums like the latest Napalm Death offerrings, and with Venomous Concept, Meathook Seed, Lock Up, and The Exploited, I didn't really like the production on Infected Nations. There, I said it.

 

[Covet Chaos]

The worst band I've ever heard for over doing all this fakery is Behemoth.

 

[MegaPwn]

I know what you mean there man. Behemoth are fucking epic but their production annoys me, it's way too clean on some albums (THELEMA FUCKING 6) and it sounds so flat/one-dimensional. Another thing that annoys me is modern metal drumming, I mean, some bands just blast beat as quickly as they can to make something 'brutal'.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

There's enough metal coming out these days with organic production. I suggest looking harder i.e. go look at any album released on Razorback.

 

[Podgie]

It's all underground stuff though. My problem is that next to nothing which comes out of the mainstream sounds real any more, (bar a few exceptions) it's all over polished and flat.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

Valid point, but I have a hard time thinking of any mainstream releases in the past year that would have benefited with organic production and not been an average album.

One band that needs to reevaluate their fucking production values are Nile.

Also, I find it amusing that bands who are re-mastering albums that had that organic, class production sound and basically taking away that charm and aesthetic and turning those albums into bland, digital offerings.

Hello Megadeth, I see you.

 

[Covet Chaos]

Oh yeh there is modern organic stuff. I didn't say there wasn't. Just there is SO MUCH naff sounding stuff now that could sond so cool with a real vibe. I mean you say organic and some people say retro. But it isn't really. It's just the propper way of doing it.

It seems like people are using modern production stuff because it's there, not because it's right.

Triggering and quantising is so widely used now that I think it is a problem.