Getting the New UTR Sound: Mixing

While we were writing and recording our first CD, I was listening to a fair amount of extreme metal, most notably Soilwork, Opeth, and Killswitch Engage. (Note: I'm not setting out to have a debate about granular subclassifications of the metal genre.) Many of these albums have a distinct mix marked by crisp, sometimes piercing high-end frequencies (e.g., "clicky" drums and "hashed out" guitar distortion), nearly inaudible bass guitar, and heavily edited performances that produce an intentional hyperrealism. One famous example (and arguably the progenitor of this type of sound) is Metallica's 1988 classic ...and Justice for All. These influences led me to mix our first CD in a similar way.

For Nineveh, we wanted to produce a more natural sound, one that faithfully reproduced the tones of our instruments. As described in a previous post, we went to great lengths to get great sounds of our instruments by recording the drums in a space with excellent natural reverb and focusing on mic positioning. Instead of altering these sounds in post production, we wanted to let them shine through.

Here are just a few of the amazing mixes that inspired us.

Helmet - Wilma's Rainbow (1994) - mixed by Andy Wallace

Muse - Stockholm Syndrome (2003) - mixed by Rich Costey

Stone Temple Pilots - Silvergun Superman (1994) - mixed by Brendan O'Brien 

Andy Wallace has been by far the biggest influence on me (Aaron). Having mixed everyone from Sheryl Crow to Paul McCartney to Slayer to System of a Down, his influence over modern pop, rock, and metal cannot be overstated. For me personally, his drum sounds have been most influential. He typically uses direct mics almost exclusively, using overhead mics mostly to capture cymbals. He doesn't compress overhead mics much, preferring to automate every single cymbal hit so that no detail is lost. He also manages to get a huge kick drum sound without scooping out the mids, a technique which is all too common in the rock and metal genres. While you could argue that these techniques contribute to a different type of hyperrealism, they still preserve the natural sounds of the kit, even when samples are used.