I just listened to Toxicity after a very long break (like about 7 years), and noticed that album pretty much kicks ass and it's one of Rick Rubins best metal works in my books. Does anyone have any production info on the album? I tried to google it, but since it's so "old" album internet-wise, I only got some random info on wikipedia.
What I gathered was that the songs are in drop C and that Malakian used Ibanez Icemen a lot, but when listening you can clearly hear guitar character changes on the guitars like going from humbuckers to single coils, but it also might be just drastically different amp settings. The album has that super-dry trademark Rubin sound going on it, and at least the drums sounds pretty consistently the same through out the whole album.
The first thing I noticed right away was that the rhythm guitar tone is scooped really thin (in a good way) and it's REALLY dark. It makes the palm muted rhythm guitars have this really cool distortion characteristics that I really like, like it has no annoying fizz at all. Another cool thing is that it doesn't take much spectral space, and thus gives the vocals and everything above 7khz a lot of room, so you can have stuff like acoustic guitars, synths, strings and stuff that they have there.
On Chop Suey the open tremolo picked single notes near 0:40 sound like it's a blend of Mesa and something else.
I also noticed that they varied the bass tone a lot. On Deer Dance at 1:35 there is a really good bass guitar reference tone, sound like it's slightly saturated but generally clean tone. In the beginning of Psycho it sounds like it has a distortion and a chorus on it. At 1:35 on Bounce it sounds like it has a bit more gain than in Deer Dance
It also seems they rode the levels A LOT on the album, which is really cool because it makes the musical dynamics sound really effective.
What I gathered was that the songs are in drop C and that Malakian used Ibanez Icemen a lot, but when listening you can clearly hear guitar character changes on the guitars like going from humbuckers to single coils, but it also might be just drastically different amp settings. The album has that super-dry trademark Rubin sound going on it, and at least the drums sounds pretty consistently the same through out the whole album.
The first thing I noticed right away was that the rhythm guitar tone is scooped really thin (in a good way) and it's REALLY dark. It makes the palm muted rhythm guitars have this really cool distortion characteristics that I really like, like it has no annoying fizz at all. Another cool thing is that it doesn't take much spectral space, and thus gives the vocals and everything above 7khz a lot of room, so you can have stuff like acoustic guitars, synths, strings and stuff that they have there.
On Chop Suey the open tremolo picked single notes near 0:40 sound like it's a blend of Mesa and something else.
I also noticed that they varied the bass tone a lot. On Deer Dance at 1:35 there is a really good bass guitar reference tone, sound like it's slightly saturated but generally clean tone. In the beginning of Psycho it sounds like it has a distortion and a chorus on it. At 1:35 on Bounce it sounds like it has a bit more gain than in Deer Dance
It also seems they rode the levels A LOT on the album, which is really cool because it makes the musical dynamics sound really effective.
