I have to say that eventho 80% of my record collection consists of heavy metal, but I really like to work with more of rock-orientated stuff and mix it so that it sounds more natural. For example when you hit a huge wall of guitar for the chorus, it doesn't really matter if I don't hear the snap of the kick fully then, because it gives the idea of dynamics, "hey man, this wall of sound is really fucking huge, it even drowns out the drums". If you hear mix it like heavy metal so that you hear everything all the time so that you compensate the hits lost in the mix by raising them up, the song loses the feel of dynamics and it usually just makes the mix sound boring. "If there is no quiet, there can be no loud". But constructive critism on disastrophie-m2:
- the parts arent played that well and thats what makes the whole song sound a bit bad, especially guitars and drums sound a bit sloppy and because of the triggers the drums sound a bit boring. try to automate the volume on the drums just a bit, swing the volume of some random hits like 0.5-2.0dB or try multiple samples with different velocities on them
- the guitars sound like they are out of tune with the bass or vice versa. if its just the bass, try to fix it with melodyne/autotune, but if its the guitars, then ask if the guitarists could retrack the guitars, because they would otherwise blame you in the end
- The snap of the kick is unnaturally too much in front, try to take it off a bit (eg. something like 2khz highshelf -3dB)
- The sample on snare sounds a bit horrid and unnatural, too much lower mic to my taste. If you have a trigger and a mic track on the snare, try to add the trigger to the track to get the snap and ditch the lower mic track
- The mix sounds super dry. Try adding a bit delay and hall reverb to the vocals and some room reverb to the drums. Also just a slight delay on the guitars would prolly make them fit a bit better (especially solos), but if it sounds like sheeeet, just take it off.
- You need more bass guitar and cymbals in the face.
I tracked, mixed and mastered this four song demo in 3 days about an year ago and used those tricks in it and I think it turned out pretty nice except for the vocals (the vocalist just plain sucked and I refused to use pitch correction. Lesson learned: they got a new singer after that demo):
http://www.myspace.com/noisynewt