New album Foregone out February 2023

[DE4life]

I was messing around with music stems and decided to see if I could separate all of the major stems (vocal, bass, guitar, drums) from a Reroute track and try to clear the 'muddiness' from the production. In the end I went with Dark Signs, and I'm actually pretty happy with the result.



Whether you think it sounds 'better' or not is open to debate, but to me at least the overall sound is definitely cleaner. The only thing that annoys me about the track is that the lead guitar is buried too far beneath the rhythm guitar, but I couldn't find a way to really do anything about that.

 

[Moonshield_]

Sounds amazing.

Would it be possible to put Anders voice on Detonate for example?

 

[DE4life]

I did try this, as results on the DotL tracks were pretty good, but it didn't work so well this time around. I think there's more reverb on Mikael's vocals on MotU, and the tool I'm using struggles to replicate that, so it comes off sounding weird. I might try again at some point when I have more time to mess around with the settings, but initial results were unfortunately not very good.

 

[Moonshield_]

Your version of Dark Signs definitly sounds better than the original, congrats!

 

[DE4life]

I like that the guitars sound a bit sharper. As I said, the only thing I'd have liked to have done was mess around with the lead and rhythm guitar volume. I hate that the lead guitar is so far back in the mix, especially between 02:20 - 02:31. That really needs to be pulled further up in the mix. I can't understand why the band chose to mix the guitars like this - Minus has a similar issue, where some really nice lead melodies are smothered by everything else.

 

[Moonshield_]

Anders already wanted to be the one to shine, not the guitars

 

[DE4life]

It's just frustrating, because by placing the lead melodies so low in the mix it's almost like they're embarrassed by them. I'm sure it was just a weird and stupid production choice, but I'll never understand the logic behind it.

 

[Xpyro125]

I was messing around with music stems and decided to see if I could separate all of the major stems (vocal, bass, guitar, drums) from a Reroute track and try to clear the 'muddiness' from the production. In the end I went with Dark Signs, and I'm actually pretty happy with the result.



Whether you think it sounds 'better' or not is open to debate, but to me at least the overall sound is definitely cleaner. The only thing that annoys me about the track is that the lead guitar is buried too far beneath the rhythm guitar, but I couldn't find a way to really do anything about that.

Just woke up, so I decided to listen to it without headphones. My phone speakers aren’t great, with the left side just outright not working anymore, and the right side not having the best audio quality. But somehow, that might just be the clearest a song has sounded come from my speakers. There’s still the issue of that one lead guitar melody you mentioned, which was definitely more audible in the original, but that’s the only real complaint I have before I really wake up and put my headphones into check that. I’m assuming AI was just used for the stem isolation and maybe some cleanup on them, but I could always be wrong.

It reminds me of the one guy who remastered Cloud Connected and a few other songs a long time ago (I think one was OFTW or something, it was from Clayman), which really showed me how ratfucked RTR’s production was. He did a pretty good job, but mainly just served to take away quite a bit of the compression; this feels like it aimed to take away that muddiness of the frequencies mixing in and becoming indistinct, it’s awesome to hear.

 

[DE4life]

I used AI (Ultimate vocal remover) to separate the stems into the vocals, bass, drums and guitars. The advantage with this obviously being that I can focus on individual components, rather than my changes affecting everything.

I'd love to say that from that point on I used my production mastery to transform the track, but that would be a lie I dumped the individual stems into some audio editing software, then with the guitars just fucked around with the filters until I found something that I liked. I then used another filter on the vocals and drums to try and make them clearer. Left the bass alone. Bass and drum volume is raised by about half a decibel, and that's it.

Someone more skilled in this area could do an even better job, I'm sure, but it's fun to mess around with stuff like this anyway.

 

[DE4life]

Suburban Me, an undeniable classic from the golden age. Let me tell ya how this goes down if they tried to do this on Foregone.

It starts off with some basic electronic or chugging. That awesome lead guitar from 00:10 - 00:23? Forget about it. That shit wouldn't be there. Instead you'd get some more downtuned chugging or maybe some simple riffs. The verses - no guitar melody, that's for sure. Either more chugs or just no guitars. Anders would be singing rather than speaking - OFTW remake style, and we know how shit that sounded. 00:47 - 00:59, you better believe there's gonna be some trademark "evil" and boring riffs here, and maybe we get some of those rootsy growls that everyone loves, despite them in fact sounding nothing like the growls Anders did on TJR or Whoracle. More like Chris Barnes wannabe shit, but whatever. It'll sound like "bleeuughhh auughhhss ooouugghh" but so fucking heavy and brutal, bro, back to the roots.

Anyway, for the chorus we get Anders and autotune machine with hundreds of layers, sounding like synthesized AI garbage. It'd be backed up by some basic riffs and some 'catchy' electronic sounds, so that everyone in the crowd can either jumpdafuckup or wave their hands in the air, depending on their mood. Sing along muddafukkas, just like in the good ol' days in '97. 'The surburban that is meeEEE' will have some egregious autotune ensuring Anders voice artificially hits high notes that are beyond his capabilities. Oh, also the lyrics would be more simplified and basic.

For the solo we'd get half aimless wankery by Bjorn which sounds like it's been randomly inserted from his trusty generic solo vault. Other half would be Chris doing something decent, but not really relevant to the vibe of the song and nowhere near as good as the OG Surburban Me solo. Song will then end with more autotuned singing and epic moments of waving our hands in the air. Might get a last super brutal growl at the end just because.

Track also wouldn't be called 'Suburban Me' because that's not cool. It'd either be 'Heartbroken Me' or 'Decaying Black Hearted Me' depending on whether we were going with the more emo side or the more rootsy side of things.

Fuck HB's In Flames. Fredrik Nordstrom's In Flames will always be the GOAT.

 

[Xpyro125]

Just woke up, so I decided to listen to it without headphones. My phone speakers aren’t great, with the left side just outright not working anymore, and the right side not having the best audio quality. But somehow, that might just be the clearest a song has sounded come from my speakers. There’s still the issue of that one lead guitar melody you mentioned, which was definitely more audible in the original, but that’s the only real complaint I have before I really wake up and put my headphones into check that. I’m assuming AI was just used for the stem isolation and maybe some cleanup on them, but I could always be wrong.

Decided to listen to it again with headphones this time, and it’s still pretty great. Guitars are a bit low in the chorus, but that actually happened with the Cloud Connected remaster I mentioned below.

It reminds me of the one guy who remastered Cloud Connected and a few other songs a long time ago (I think one was OFTW or something, it was from Clayman), which really showed me how ratfucked RTR’s production was. He did a pretty good job, but mainly just served to take away quite a bit of the compression; this feels like it aimed to take away that muddiness of the frequencies mixing in and becoming indistinct, it’s awesome to hear.

I found it, and although he didn’t do OFTW, he did do Pinball Map and Clayman, so that’s cool. It’s only those three tracks though. Personally, I think RTR needed that treatment more than Clayman, but we only got Cloud Connected. Shame too, since RTR really needed the remastering.

 

[DE4life]

It's basically the same on the original track, just less noticeable because of how muddy the overall sound is - probably the same for the CC remaster. Even going back to the classic era you see the guitar volume decrease during chorus and some verses - it makes sense as otherwise you'd have the vocals at a consistently high and distracting level. This is kind of what they did with Come Clarity (album) and why it's so fatiguing to listen to as a whole, despite being a great album.

 

[mindd]

I was messing around with music stems and decided to see if I could separate all of the major stems (vocal, bass, guitar, drums) from a Reroute track and try to clear the 'muddiness' from the production. In the end I went with Dark Signs, and I'm actually pretty happy with the result.



Whether you think it sounds 'better' or not is open to debate, but to me at least the overall sound is definitely cleaner. The only thing that annoys me about the track is that the lead guitar is buried too far beneath the rhythm guitar, but I couldn't find a way to really do anything about that.

Just as a side note on Dark Signs, I, for some reason, always loved the silly "everything points in the wrong direction, YEAEAH!" bit, can't help but smile every time I hear that one

 

[mindd]

I’m assuming you mean this one. Shoutouts to Dorelia Bast’s videos too, always loved those.

The guy also has a Dark Tranquillity piano video, that one's nice too.

 

[DE4life]

Just as a side note on Dark Signs, I, for some reason, always loved the silly "everything points in the wrong direction, YEAEAH!" bit, can't help but smile every time I hear that one

I think I've mentioned before that I also miss the spontaneous stuff like this in the vocals. I think there's a couple of reasons he doesn't do it anymore. Firstly everything is more precise and manufactured now, and secondly the deep growling style just doesn't lend itself to stuff like that. At best you'll get an "eeuughhhh" or "oooghhhh" which is obviously so brutal, back to da rootz, etc... but I preferred the other style much more.

 

[DE4life]

The guy also has a Dark Tranquillity piano video, that one's nice too.

Oh, nice, I hadn't seen this one. Good stuff.