My first full-length release! In Malice's Wake - Eternal Nightfall

[Ermz]

Hey guys,

The very first full-length release I've worked on is very close to hitting the market. The band will start selling copies on the 24th of November.

They've just updated their main page to reflect this: www.inmaliceswake.com

There are song samples on their site, or alternately if you want to hear the full version of the title track, you can do so by going to my myspace by clicking on the banner in my sig.

I just wanted to draw some attention onto this as it has been a long time in the making.

I worked on most of the CD including around 50% of the tracking & all the mixing. Master was done by Plec at Panic Room Productions. Guitars were re-amped by our own GuitarHack.

I hope you like.

 

[James Murphy]

sounds good Ermz... and very nice use of delays on the vox and solos.

 

[Ermz]

Thanks James. It means a lot to hear that from over your way.

Anyone else have any thoughts? It was a bit of a long slog, this project, so I'd love to see the band get some attention from it.

 

[KeithTidd]

Nice work, it sounds very pro. Love the guitar tone.

 

[spioraid]

Sounds fantastic! Great production. Songs aren't too bad themselves!

 

[Ermz]

Great to hear you're liking it. Don't suppose any of you would know good avenues for the band to promote themselves and circulate these amongst some labels and A&R guys?

 

[Nebulous]

Awsome, can't wait to get my hands on it!

 

[poidaobi]

Excellent as expected!

 

[Teddyboy]

Sounds really nice!!! Good job Moonlapse!! What amps and cabs did you finally use?

 

[Youpimatin]

Nice job, love the sound of drums a lot !

 

[Felix Neumann]

I like the sound of the cymbal (on the right side) a lot, it sounds unique and great. The marching snare at the beginning is awesome,too. Great job, man!!

 

[miche]

Really well done, congratulations. Now you have to tell us everything about how you achieved such a great tone

Don't suppose any of you would know good avenues for the band to promote themselves and circulate these amongst some labels and A&R guys?

I guess there is nothing like the oldschool and expensive way: send the CD to people you would like to work with by post...

 

[Ermz]

Haha, is there anything in particular you would like to know? I think if I were to try and recount the whole process I'd be here for days..

Really heartening to hear the overall very positive reaction so far.

 

[GuitarHack]

Ermz.......you suck.

 

[poidaobi]

Haha, is there anything in particular you would like to know? I think if I were to try and recount the whole process I'd be here for days..

Really heartening to hear the overall very positive reaction so far.

I heard you had it recorded and mixed within 5 hours.

 

[Ermz]

. Change that to months then multiply by 4 and you'd be getting close.

 

[miche]

is there anything in particular you would like to know?

Well, i was wondering if the snare / kick / toms were full samples or blended. Or does this more acoustic feeling comes from the overhead / room mics?

And for the [incredible] guitar tone: is it the 6505 or the krank rev1 [or both?], and which mic(s) was(were) used to mic the cab?

 

[Ermz]

With the drums I commonly try to do as small amount of blending as I can possibly get away with. In this case the snare really needed a lot because the original snare was a piccolo, (I didn't track the drums) meaning it was basically high pitched and ringy. I counteracted that by blending about 80 to 90% of the deepest, most scooped Slate snare I had on hand (can't recall exactly which). For the kick I believe I may have used Slate's Kick15Z3, blended maybe about 60% or so, as the original kick sound wasn't too bad - just a bit dull. I can't recall the blend on the toms, but they are the infamous Chimaira samples, anywhere from 60% to full.

You are correct though, a lot of the 'naturalness' comes from the (fantastic) room. The room the drums were tracked in was unreal, even if the drums themselves, as well as the methods used for their capture weren't. There are about 5 types of ambiance in the final mix for the drums. 1 is the OHs, 2 is the Rooms, 3 is the room on Slate's Z1 (snare), 4 is Slate's Z4 & 5 is Freeverb 2! Mixing and matching always seems to work best for me on drums.

For the guitar tone, you'd be getting more specific answers from GuitarHack, but I'll tell it from my perspective regardless.

They were basically done in 3 parts:

1) Clean DI Into a Presonus TubePRE which went into a Digidesign Mbox 2 Mini.

2) GH used his Maxon OD820 into Krank Revolution into Mesa Recto Standard cab, mic'ed with what I believe was one SM57. For more specifics you have to ask him.

3) In the mix I overhauled the recorded tone quite a bit. There was about 6 EQ plug-ins and 2 dynamics ones involved on the rhythm guitar bus. I used the EQ plug-ins to essentially pull a tone as close as I could to Enemy of God and Violent Revolution. I think the tone that made it to the mix was quite a bit different to the raw sound.

I strongly believe #1 screwed us hard. I will never in my life again use such nasty gear if there is any option around it. We did extensive comparing between direct guitar into amp and DI signal into amp and the quality loss was very evident. I'm getting custom Mic Pres soldered up and using RME converters to avoid this in the future. The best lessons are learned the hard way.

 

[InMalicesWake]

Hi Ermz, thought I'd finally join up here Cheers for chucking this up here, great to hear positive feedback too!

 

[Skaldir]

Pretty good mix. One thing I don't like is the crash cymbals. They are too dominating and bassy for my taste.
And the snare on faster passages sounds a bit like false triggered sometimes. But I think it's because some reverb is coming too late after the hit. How high was your pre-delay?
But other than that, good natural sounding mix.