Old-school Death Metal sound?

[The Unavoidable]

Recently I've fallen in love with the oldschool death sounds, most notably Left Hand Path! I fucking love that type of production, and I would love to be able to get some of those sounds going myself!

The classic Entombed guitar sound is often discussed, and has pretty much been delt with (HM-2 into Marshall/Peavey) but there is little discussion as to the drum sound, the vocals, etc.

Using Blodbaths Resurrection Through Carnage as an example, how would you get the snare to sound that "muffled" yet so clear? And the bassdrum, it really has the exact same feel as that old-school entombed/hypocrisy bass drum!

And anyone has any idea for that Death/Entombed/Hypcrisy vocal sound? Sounds like alot of reverb/delay going on, but how would you aply it with out mud-fucking the whole mix?


Discuss the awesome-ness of old-school death production!

 

[Skaldir]

For the drums sounds Thomas Skogsberg made in the early 90's in his Sunlight Studio, I'm pretty sure everything except cymbals was and E-kit.
Listen to Cemetary, Dismember, Entombed, even Katatonia on Discouraged Ones. All have a similar drum sound. So I guess it was an old drum module.

edit:
I found some infos from Dan Swanö about the RTC Drums.

"Come on guys!!!! The drumsound on that album was meant to sound BAD!!!!! I wanted it to reek of old 80's death metal recordings, and I guess I failed???
It was recorded this way...I programmed all the drums to use when we recorded the rael tkes of guitars, bass and vocals. Then I erased all the programming except for the bassdrum!! I tuned up (or tuned down) a 15.000$ Premier Signia kit with Paiste Signature cymbals (and some incredibly junky hihat cymbals that was broken beyond belief) and miked it all up. I played everything but the bassdrums to a clicktrack. When I came home I realized that I didn't played it tight enough so I cut up all the snareparts in recycle and quantized the audio and then I rerecorded all the cymbals!!!"

"The kick sound is the classic "Spiked" from Alesis D4, used on 70% of all my productions in the 90's. The only working triggerkicksound from that machine..."

 

[The Unavoidable]

Wow, thanks! That's exactly the kind of stuff I was talking about! Now to find that sample...

 

[Trevor Marks]

Daniel told me when they were recording drum takes for LFDGD, that they did some huge takes for one of the last songs and then the console fucked up somehow and Tomas told him it didnt get get taped or whatever, so daniel comes running in the control room and was like "what the fuck?" And the way I remember it, Daniel said that Tomas had to put a stack of books on some input cord or button on the console to get it to record properly..haha, i wish i hadn't been so hammered at the time, but it was a great story! As a matter of fact I'm a bit tipsy now

Anybody who is a fan of this sound should def check out desultory's into eternity album

 

[Metaltastic]

As a matter of fact I'm a bit tipsy now

Dude, please don't tell me you're currently in Missouri - isn't it like 12:15 in the afternoon there?

 

[Skaldir]

About the Last fair deal gone down recording, Blakkheim also told that the tape machine was broken and they couldn't really drop in somewhere, only in long gaps. So they had to play really long takes, basically the whole song through live.
I heard Skogsberg still doesn't have a computer in his studio and still records everything to tape.
The sound is huge there though, it's all acoustic drums there, but not the old school death metal sound we want to discuss here in this thread

 

[Torniojaws]

So they had to play really long takes, basically the whole song through live.

That is the old school way

 

[Seizure.]

http://www.myspace.com/massiveassault

Ask the guitarist of those guys he almost made it his live duty to find the perfect oldschool dm sound haha
He's the Dirty Bird in there top friends.

I did monitors for them and entombed on a festival in holland, and they actually sounded 10 times better then entombed themselves haha

 

[Melodeath]

Good satan, I love OSDM and its production