New York City's independent metal scene has recently burst into mainstream view. At least two venues are primarily putting on heavy music shows nearly every night of the week. Several of the best metal blogs are based out of the city, and there's an exciting diversity and cross-pollination among the musicians. Years from now, when people sift through the scene's impact, anyone interested — bands, audiences, nostalgists — will be happy Colin Marston was the one recording many of the key records. At his ominously named studio, Menegroth — The Thousand Caves, Marston has recorded some of the best music to come out of the scene, like Castevet, Defeatist, and Liturgy, as well as records Marston has made of his own bands: Krallice, Dysrhythmia, Gorguts, and Behold... The Arctopus. His experienced but light touch means the music comes through with maximum visceral impact, while avoiding clichéd approaches that can suck the life out of many metal records.
What's the first point of approach you take when a band is coming in?
I'll ask them how they prefer to record, asking questions such as whether or not they want to all record at the same time, or one by one. Usually it's more than just one instrument, but then the question is, "Are you going to keep everything, or are certain things supposed to be scratch tracks?" I had this one band talking about doing scratch drums... I was like, "Okay... so what are you going to keep, then?" They realized maybe it wasn't a good idea. More often than not, for a "rock" recording, it's just drums, the whole band, or drums/scratch guitar. Vocals are almost always overdubbed. Alternately, I do a lot of live improv recordings. In those cases, I'll often set everything up in the live room all at once as if it's a show or practice. Maybe I'll gobo off some amps, or something like a saxophone. Once we figure out an approach, I'll also ask whether we're going analog or straight digital. Then it's setting up mics and going from there.
For most bands the experience of being in a studio doesn't feel like playing live.
It's completely different. There's a different weight to the performance.
When do you deal with figuring out how a band wants to record?
I'll try to get it sorted out before they come in, but lots of times people will say they're going to make these decisions when they come in. For people who don't really know, I'll make a suggestion based on the type of music it is, and the type of recording they're trying to do. If it's just a demo and it needs to be done as quickly as possible, then speed is the priority. But if it's something they've been working on for years, and they want everything to be just right, I may suggest a more piecemeal way of doing it. If it's someone I've seen live and I know they're a killer live band, I know they should probably at least try to record live, even if they don't think they want to. But I really do want to leave it up to them. I want to make sure the band feels very comfortable. That's almost more important than getting a good sounding recording. For instance, usually the sound isn't as precise if you have everyone set up in the same room — you'll have bleed, and you can't turn the amps to whatever volume you want because they have to work with the drums. But if I get the sense that it would really work for the band — dealing with headphones can be a distraction for instance — then I may suggest that approach anyway, because getting a good performance of the material is more important than how any one instrument sounds.
Is that more likely to make them feel confident about the decisions they'll be making later on in the control room?
Exactly. They'll be able to pay attention to the mixing, because they won't be worried about their performance. That said, let's take tuning drums: most drummers don't know how to tune their drums, so I'll offer to help. That's something I can do to get a better recording that doesn't require them to change or follow a different process. That goes for amp settings as well. Maybe you're used to setting your amp a certain way in your practice space, or at a show. But when there's a microphone a half-inch away from the speaker it might not translate. Maybe you don't want the bass on ten, you only really want it on six.
Is there a particular impression you're always going to leave on the recordings you work on?
That's the kind of thing that's more subconscious, or a cumulative result of the equipment I use, but it's not something that happens on purpose. I have some things I tend to do, such as give a recording a more "organic" sound, particularly in the world of metal. Metal's usually treated with a more "inorganic" approach.
Tell me a little bit more of what organic means to you and why it's important.
For me, it's trying to encourage people to get performances that aren't too chopped up or edited. If you can do the whole thing live, just go in there and play together because that's usually going to sound the best. Once you start taking a particular instrument's parts piecemeal, you start losing a sense of the forest, of the way things are interacting. This can get lost once you're focusing on perfecting every single little element separately. I try to encourage people to have a sense of the bigger picture of what's going on and not to focus too much on their own perfection. It's okay to leave a few mistakes. I'll give an honest opinion when someone asks, "Do you think that was a good take?" But my opinion tends to be very accommodating. As long as it's not a train wreck and the feel is good, that's more important than having something perfect.
Then what?
Then it's making sure the mixes aren't too sterile. I like them to have a sense of the space that they were recorded in. That can be something as basic as simply having a room mic. Starting with the idea that I want the sounds to be as true to the source as they can be usually ends with a fuller sounding recording, because it's less tweaked and obsessed over. But there are times when it's good to have something sound unnatural, or not necessarily stick to exactly what was going on in the room. Maybe the organic approach is a good representation of the band and the way they play, but it's not the material that they're trying to present. So there are changes you may make to place the music in its most ideal setting. It's a bit of a balancing act.
With a lot of metal recordings, it doesn't start with how the band sounds in the room.
There is a really broad spectrum of different approaches in metal — there isn't just one common way of doing it. But over-producing and overdoing it in the studio is something that's always objectionable to me. What's special about recording music that's played by people? To me it's that it's played by people. Not all music has to sound like that. I like a lot of 20th century electronic music, where it's all programmed. But if it's a rock band and that's what they're doing, then I want to retain some of that on the recording. Usually the recordings I like best have that.
Do you feel your recording techniques have changed a lot over time?
I've tended to have the same basic approach the whole time that I've been recording bands, but I do feel like I'm always learning, and I never quite have it together. I never go in and think, "Oh yeah, no sweat. This is going to be the best sounding thing ever." So, in that sense, I always feel like I could have done a better job. I'll get the recording back a couple of months later and I'll be really happy with it for a second, and then I'll start to pick apart the things I don't like. It's like learning guitar — you get better faster in the first few years, and then the pace of learning slows down.
How about mixing?
I feel like my mixing has gotten better in the past two or three years from doing more of it. I think when I was learning, I was more sensitive to overworking the mix and over-EQ'ing. I was very militant: "I can't put too much treble; I can't put too much bass." My approach to EQ'ing was to find a couple of frequencies I didn't like, notching them out, and trying to leave things as untouched as possible. More recently I've been a little more willing to mess around. I'll grab the high shelf EQ, start moving it around, and be surprised, "Oh, it sounds cool there." I'm trusting my sense of what sounds good a little bit more, rather than trying to keep everything as pure as to the way it was tracked. I think that's made me let things sound a little more dramatic. I'll have mixes where the instruments all have more of their own space. It used to be that they were a lot more squished together in one range.
When you say space, do you mean where they sit in the stereo field, or roominess?
Spectral space, more than anything else; but also roominess. I've gotten more comfortable with some things getting drier than I used to think sounded good. Other times, things sounding "wetter" than I used to like. I still don't like artificial reverb on drums; some things won't ever change. But, on certain things, I've come to enjoy using plate reverb — I do that more on vocals now, which I never used to do. I've let myself expand the sounds that I'm comfortable using. It's the same with microphones or choices of gear: I've tended to use the same mics and the same gear, over and over again, and I think that's been helpful for me understanding what stuff actually does. Now I feel like I can say, "I can try something different." I'll have a sense of how it's going to be different from the usual approach. I'm getting to the point where I think I want to get different drum overheads. I've been using the same Neumann KM 184s on almost every single recording I've ever done, and I've never really liked the cymbal sound I've gotten. But it's useful to have the experience of years of recording and mixing with a particular setup. If I try a stereo ribbon pair, I'll be able to say, "Ah! That's the difference." I never used to use dynamic microphones on amps, which is funny, because that's what everyone is "supposed" to do. It's the default for distorted guitars. But on the last few recordings, I've been using less condensers and ribbon mics.
What mic have you been using on guitars?
My go-to mic lately has been the Sennheiser MD 441. I recently found a Sennheiser MD 409 — they haven't made them in years. I'm getting more comfortable with something that sounds a little bit like a Shure SM57. It's a real slow process, because there's so much gear out there and it's impossible to really familiarize yourself with it all. I feel like to really know something, you have to have worked with it for years and use it on every recording. What do you do? Maybe you can borrow something for a session and get a sense of how it works. But that's still just one session.
What are some key reference recordings for you?
Well, even with those recordings, if I can even think of some, I rarely like everything. There's usually one thing about it I would change. I think that's a healthy thing, or at least I hope it is! It means you're never satisfied, and you're always trying to push yourself. I remember hearing the Neurosis records [Steve] Albini [Tape Op #10, 87] did and thinking he nailed that. I heard the first one, Times of Grace, and thought, "This sounds huge!" It sounded like my idea of what a heavy, dirgey metal record should sound like. That was a good one.
Any that have good instrument references for you?
I'm never quite happy with the snare drum. Every time. That's the one instrument I've tried more different mics on than most. I know it's not just the gear, or just me, because any time I listen to someone else's recording, I never quite like the snare. There are perhaps two albums where I think, "Yes! That's the snare drum!" Kurt Ballou [Tape Op #76] did a recording of a band from Canada, KEN Mode, called Venerable. Right after I heard that I wrote him an email and said, "All right, how did you record the snare? This is the snare sound I've been looking for." He told me, and I went out and bought one of the mics he said he used, a Heil PR- 31. It wasn't the exact setup he used, because I think he said he used a particular condenser, along with the PR-31 on the top, and then a [Sennheiser MD] 441 on the bottom. I find the 441 on the bottom to be too dark; that one I never really understood. In any case, I tried but it still doesn't come out the same.
Oh no.
There're too many factors. There's the drum itself, there's the player, the way it's being hit, the room it's in, the way it's mixed with the rest of the context... you can't really ask someone how they recorded one element of a recording, then do that and expect it to sound the same way. It just doesn't work. Which is kind of interesting.
And frustrating. The KEN Mode record, the Neurosis record... anything else?
Covenant by Morbid Angel. I would never make a record that would actually sound like that, but I think it's a good example of a pure death metal album that doesn't sound overcooked. Especially if you compare it to the one they made a few albums later — Gateways to Annihilation, which has the weirdest drum sound I've ever heard. It sounds like someone's playing a drum machine with their fingers. It's completely triggered. Covenant is one where I think the kicks are triggered, but you can't really tell. It just sounds even. It's pretty room-y, or reverb-y, or something. It sounds big and precise. You can hear everything that's going on. The vocals are way too loud, but it's a good example.
Even though you'd never record something that sounds like that.
That's exactly why to do this. I hear all of these records and I'll think, "You know, I could do that better." Like, I could combine the guitar sound from this record, and the drum sound from that record. This is especially true with extreme metal recordings. The majority of them sound ridiculous. Just horrible! It's like — why would everything sound stupid?
What do you think is up with that?
I think it's a couple of things. Number one is that it's impossible music to record, because it's supposed to be the most extreme, in every way, at the same time. Those things end up canceling each other out. Everyone's tuned super low, there's too much distortion, the tones usually tend to accentuate more of the rhythmic elements of the guitar sound — and I guess, at this point, I'm speaking more in terms of death metal. So you want to make the palm mutes sound good, and to make you hear every piece of the rhythm. But, as a byproduct of that, you can't really hear the pitches of the notes. They're too low and too distorted, and the sound that accentuates the rhythm counteracts the melody. Same with the drums. Every hit is supposed to be the equivalent of a MIDI velocity of 127, but it's so fast that it's physically impossible to play that way. So then you rely on triggering, or compressing and gating the shit out of everything. Then you have problems with cymbal bleed, there's no room for ambient mics or anything that would make it sound nicer. It's flawed music, in terms of being able to make what I would call a "good" recording of it.
Music too extreme to even be recorded.
I think that aesthetic is different from the organic one that I like. The aesthetic with a lot of these extreme metal recordings is to be brutal. It's caustic and irritating, and maybe it's not supposed to sound good — it's supposed to sound a little bit bad, and a little bit disgusting, because that's what the lyrical vibe is. It makes sense, but it's just not my vibe musically. I love so much of that style of songwriting, but the aesthetic that they're going for, in terms of lyrics and recording style, is something I could take or leave. Same with black metal. It's supposed to be caustic in a different way: a less precise, more blurry way; but it's like, "Let's turn up the treble on everything. We want people to be assaulted by the music."
So this is the problem with recording metal?
But it's not just metal. I'll give you an example from the opposite end of the spectrum: classical recordings. Classical recordings are too accurate. You can't listen to them anywhere, as there's too much dynamic range. Unless you're sitting in a recording studio, there's no way to enjoy a symphony recording. The only parts you hear are the loud parts. Or you're turning your stereo up all the way, only to turn it down. I mean, can't we just find this middle ground? Not too compressed?
Bolt Thrower's The IVth Crusade was a real gateway album for me. My favorite song off that record is "Spearhead," which starts off with a bass drum nailing these 16th notes. But it sounds like a typewriter.
That's such a typical product of that technique. You get to the point where your metal mix sounds awesome, and then you listen to that intro and the drums, played by themselves, sound stupid. My belief is you can get something that's somewhere in the middle. If you take the purist approach to recording most metal bands, especially extreme metal bands, it doesn't quite work. It is kind of unnatural music. It's not supposed to sound like a blues band; it's supposed to sound bigger than it is.
The drum hits are actually very light, because it happens so quickly.
It's so fast. I'm someone who's totally comfortable working with triggers, mostly on the kick. Once you get into the other drums, it gets a little hairy. But triggered kicks, that's such a well-established sound for so many different kinds of metal at this point that it doesn't bother me as much. I totally see why it works. To be honest, it's not only because of the speed. Even at a slower rate, there's like one out of every 20 drummers that actually plays double bass drum evenly. When you don't trigger it, it often doesn't sound the way it "should" sound.
But these approaches to solving problems end up creating their own defaults for a recording.
People get used to the way that extreme metal records sound with this typical processing — triggering the kick, compressing everything, gating the toms, having the cymbals be quiet, not allowing a lot of ambience — and then that's the expected way for them to come out. Musicians don't focus on gearing their playing toward achieving that sound without the studio. I think that's the case a lot of the time. That makes me feel like the times when I do get the drummer that really plays loud, even on the double bass drum, like, "Wow. Holy shit. You're actually doing this for real." And I appreciate it.
