You've seen the spikes and corpse paint, Satanic or ancient themes, or maybe even the blood and guts album covers. Maybe you assumed death and black metal was something not to be taken seriously, but tons of work goes into recording some of these records. This style of music is aggressive, fast and down right brutal. So, how does one approach recording a band like this?
Usually, these bands have very limited budgets and a very short amount of time in the studio because — let's face it — there is no money to be made in this genre. These people make music because they love it. Not to get paid. Sometimes these records sound just as good as major releases, for a fraction of the cost. In this article I will focus on techniques for the tracking and mixing of this very underground of genres. Here at Nightsky Studios, nearly half of the work we do is in this field. Death and black metal differ in a few aspects, and we will talk about these as we go.
Let me start by saying that if you are in a band like this, the first step is finding an engineer that truly understands the ins and outs of this style and who truly loves it. The sound of these records is very specific, and if the person you're working with has no understanding of what the style is about, odds are it will not turn out right — no matter how great the gear, engineer or studio you are working at. I have been involved in death/black metal for about 15 years. I have recorded seven of my own albums, as well as worked with tons of both black and death metal bands — either on labels or via independent releases. I do appreciate and record many other styles, but this is my specialty. We get bands from across the USA that come to us specifically for this reason. If you are an engineer at a studio, or simply a death or black metal band working out of the house, this should help you get better acquainted with the sounds and approach to tracking these records. As the person that is going to be engineering an album like this, it is imperative that you make sure the band knows the importance of good gear. If you bring in a shitty drum set, you will get a shitty sound. Make sure all the common-sense issues are discussed prior to recording: clean cymbals, new drum heads, properly tuned drums, new strings, intonation set ups on guitars, etc. If you don't have good gear, rent, borrow or steal it. Okay, maybe don't steal it.
ronDRUMS
Just as in most cases, the recording should start with focusing on the drums. This is the backbone of every death/black record, much more so than the average rock or metal recording. they must be unrelenting and in your face. Half the time, the drummers will play to a click track, though some drummers prefer the band to be playing. I always recommend using a click track if the drummer is good enough to play to one. At breakneck tempos of 230 BPM and up, I find this is the only way to truly keep the tempo from drifting. Odds are you won't be using Beat
Detective, as most of the songs will have numerous tempo changes, as well as time changes. Starting with a tempo map is a must. Build a tempo map by having the guitar player play the riffs to the click, and at the point of the change stop recording, set the new tempo and/or time change and then continue recording the next part of the song. Edit this map together, and the drummer will have a rough guitar track that he can record to, in addition to a click track. Mic'ing the drum kit presents unique challenges. Drummers of this genre often come in with very large kits: tons of cymbals, double rides, hi-hats and (usually) two kick drums. I've even seen snare drums on the floor, placed with the intent to be played with an extra kick pedal.
KICK DRUM
I like to mic the inside of each kick, up close to the beater for a sharp attack. Any kick mic will do, such as an AKG D112, Audix D6 or a Shure Beta 91. This helps out tremendously for the sound replacement or triggering after the fact. Be sure to cover the kick with a blanket, or such, on the outside to stop as much leakage into the rest of the mics as possible. This is a must if you need to rebuild some of the fast double bass parts. You didn't think all those ridiculously fast kicks were real, did you? Okay, they may be real in some cases, but in this genre a lot of what you hear is built or manipulated. If the drummer is good enough, we will want to blend some of the real kick drum sound with samples later on. If there's a lot of building of kick drums going on, you may not want to mic the kick and just trigger to tape.
TRIGGERS
I like to use the ddrum's basic Trigger or Pintech's Trigger Perfect kick triggers, if I'm going with a mount- style trigger. An Axis pedal with the EKIT trigger mounted on it is by far the best. Any drum sample brain module I have lying around with a decent sounding kick will do. Odds are I'll be replacing them later on or stacking the samples up for kick layers. The problem with triggers in general is that at these speeds, misfires often occur due to slap backs or sloppy playing, so you may have to spend some time tweaking the sampler unit to stop this from happening by setting higher thresholds and lower crosstalk.
SNARE
The snare drum can be mic'ed top and bottom. Remember to place the bottom mic as far from the rim of the kick drum as possible, in case "kick building" has to happen. Otherwise, you will have to do some serious gating on the bottom head.
TOMS
For tom drums, mic'ing them on the top with a standard Sennheiser 421 will do. I usually do 2" off the head, pointing towards the center for better attack. In death metal, often drummers play with very loose drum heads. This gives a ton of low end, as well as a very thuddy sound without an overabundance of ring. Be sure to make the heads in tune with themselves.
HATS AND CYMBALS
As usual with the high-hats, mic them straight down and point them away from the snare drum. When mic'ing the ride cymbal, I try to always make sure I get half the bell and half the cymbal. The double ride cymbal configuration is becoming more widely used — I make it a point to use two different mics for each ride in order to make them more distinguishable from each other.
OVERHEADS AND ROOM
On the drum overheads, I will often use a three or four mic set up instead of the standard two. With such wide kits, and so many splashes, crashes and cymbals to take into account, this is often necessary. I usually go to AKG 414s, but any decent condenser will do. I close mic the cymbals, about two feet away, due to the speed of the music and clarity that needs to come through. If I need a more roomy sound, I will add a couple of room mics, however these rarely get turned up too much. The drums aren't "pop" drums. Usually the "bigger" the sound, the more muddy it can become with layered guitars and growling vocals. Don't be afraid to carefully compress things hard, even to tape. If the drummer is truly not up to par, tell him not to play the kick drums on the fast parts — then you will be sure not to have any out-of-time kick playing bleed when you build. If you do incur a ton of bleed and try to build over it, the sound turns into popcorn with kick hits everywhere.
BASS GUITAR
I will always track a DI signal, as well as an amp with a cabinet combo, like a 4x10 cab and a single 15" speaker. I usually only use one of my kick mics for the mic'ing of the cabs. I place the mics slightly off axis, maybe an inch and half off the grill, for the 4x10 and maybe a foot back for the 15". Be sure to check for phase issues. After the kick samples are done, you may decide the bass sound wasn't right. You may have to re-amp with a different head or cab.
GUITARS: RHYTHM AND LEAD
For the guitars, there's rarely any room mic'ing. I usually go for a very tight, precise guitar sound — once again slightly off axis of the speaker and usually using a Shure SM57 on a 4x12, an inch or two off the grill. Every now and then I'll blend a Sennheiser 421 with the SM57. More often than not, we seem to come back to the single SM57. I recommend doing a standard left and right rhythm with one amp (two different passes) and then the same thing with another amp for a total of four rhythm tracks. In extremely tech death metal, this may be impossible due to absurdly fast or technical parts. In this case, a left and right is fine. Keep all your harmonies on the same side. This helps with more easily distinguishing the parts and players. I don't want to get too much into the war of amp modelers versus real amps, but I will say no metal record I do will have an amp modeler on it! I prefer a tube powered guitar amp head, preferably Mesa, VHT, Budda, Hughes & Kettner — something along those lines. Even a Marshall JCM 800 will do, as long as it's heavy sounding. One common mistake is to turn the gain all the way up on the amps. This prevents any clarity or note discernment. With grinding guitar parts, a super high gain just sounds like buzz. Gain is important, but don't overdo it. You will be surprised how much heavier it sounds when you can actually hear notes. Sometimes I track a DI of the guitar with no distortion and then blend that behind the mix for clarity. Even though it's death metal, whatever you do, don't overdo the low end. This is one of the most common mistakes people commit when trying to make the record sound heavy. As opposed to a standard guitar tuning, with a low E string, many times these guys are tuning to B and sometimes even C. Have the band go to a baritone set of strings, if they are tuning lower. Floppy strings and low tunings cause mud. The heaviness doesn't come from boosting guitar low end to an insane amount. Don't be afraid to low cut by a few dBs, even as high as 80 Hz. Guitar amps with the EQ set with the low end turned up to ten, highs up to ten and the mids removed usually need tone adjustment. Mids are important; especially those flesh tearing upper mids. Remember to always check the bass and guitar intonation. These low tunings can really mess up a neck if the guitar was not properly set up after changing tuning and strings. For guitar solos, I usually will go to a different amp, or at least change the settings by removing more low end and giving a slight upper mid boost, maybe around 5 kHz. I keep solos in the middle of the mix instead of panning left or right.
VOCALS
I use a high-end condenser microphone to ensure that I catch the guttural throat growls for the death metal guys and the high shrieks of the black metal guys. i want to catch that "wolverine caught in a bear trap with razor blades in his throat" kind of sound. Sometimes I'll even let the singer hold the mic to get a real performance. It's hard for a vocalist with so much aggression to stand still behind a mic and sing. Some others use the cheaper Shure SM58s for this, but I find that it doesn't deliver the throatier quality. In most of today's metal, the vocals frequently switch between loud and quiet. The high shrieks can be double the volume of lower vocals, so be sure to reduce the preamp gain. Conversely, ride the gain or set up two different chains — one for black vocals and one for death. I'll also use compression, up to 6 or 7 dB of reduction. I recommend the Empirical Labs' Distressor because I can mash the tracks and it still sounds fairly transparent yet in your face. Most bands like to do multiple layers of vocals to get a thick vocal sound. I've often had the singers cup the mic to deliver a really low sound. With proper filtering this can have a great effect.
KEYBOARDS
What about keyboards?
There are no keyboards in real death or black metal!
MIXING
Mixing this style of music can be rather difficult. The beats are very fast and, in most cases, you have no sonic room in which to work — it's usually everything full speed, all the time. I will say this: compress everything. I also tend to do an overall multiband compression to tighten up any out of hand areas in the mix, as well as an overall EQ. I can't stress enough the importance of cutting ultra low frequencies along the way. The heaviness comes from smart tracking, low tuned instruments and clarity — not tons of low-end frequencies everywhere.
MIXING KICK(S)
Here is where most of the real work will occur, as far as the drums are concerned. I'll begin by bringing in my samples. I'll usually use two to three different sounds, layered on top of each other, for each part. One for thud, one for click or attack, and one for the oomph. Sometimes I make my own samples, if the drummer's set is really great, but usually the sample library is adequate and sounds better than most player's kick drums. You can use a program, such as [DigiDesign] SoundReplacer, and let the computer do its thing. What we (or our interns) do is literally hand-mark each kick drum hit and then paste all the samples in. SoundReplacer would place all of our samples on a single track. Instead, I like to have all the kick drums on separate tracks for blending purposes. Also, SoundReplacer never seems to place the kicks perfectly — the way it reads waveforms doesn't seem to be 100% accurate. When using samples where the drummer used two kick drums, it is very important to use two separate tracks for each drum sample. You don't want the tails of the samples being cut off any more than they have to be. I may have up to three tracks for the left kick and three for the right. All kicks are placed in the middle of the mix, or just slightly off center if you have two kick tracks. This creates room for the bass guitar. If you want a more realistic feel, try tuning one of the samples slightly off from the other. Most drummers never seem to have the kicks in perfect tune with each other anyway. If the drummer wasn't up to par, you can go into grid mode and literally start building the kicks to what you need them to be. Move some off the grid a tiny bit for a more "real" feel. Ideally the drummer's performance was good and then you won't have to go that route. If the playing was pretty accurate, you can usually get away with moving the bad spots around or copying and pasting a good section. You can then blend those samples with the real kick drum sound. Most death metal you hear usually has some drum samples, especially on the kick drums. If you are building double kicks or blast beats it is imperative to build them correctly. There are many types of blast beats such as; standard off foot blasts, hyper blasts, bomb blasts and even double bomb blasts. I can't get into the correct method for each blast, but be sure to look it up or talk to a good drummer so they can explain what the proper hand and foot combination is.
MIXING SNARE AND TOMS
I usually keep all my real snare and tom sounds but, depending on the sound we're after, I might blend in samples. These samples will be deeper in the mix than the kick samples — I just use them for added pop. Most of the time, the band doesn't even know they are there. If you do decide to use samples on the snare and toms, please make sure you adjust the gain of each sample accordingly for each real snare or tom roll. If you don't do this it sounds like a drum machine. I like to mute the bottom snare mic on tom rolls to remove the rattle. You can gate it, but why bother when you can delete it and not have to worry about the gate not opening or closing? I also remove all the dead space in between rack and floor tom hits. It makes for a much tighter sounding mix. Try not to cut the tail or ring off the toms. If I have to cut them short, I make sure I sampled the actual drum set that was used. I will then add that sample under it to ensure I keep some tom ring sustaining.
SNARE EQ
For the snare, try to add a little 350 Hz for depth and some 4 kHz for snap. 11 kHz can be good for top end. You may have to utilize a bit of compression on the snare because of blast beats; usually drummers have a tendency to play hard on the other song parts and then blast at half the intensity. When this happens, the snare can disappear in the mix. You will probably have to automate the snare's volume while mixing. Remember to low cut your cymbals and always use a drum buss for an overall EQ and compression scheme. For death metal you want to get a very tight, clean, punchy sound. For black metal bands, you may choose to utilize some of the room mics since these bands often want more "atmosphere". Black metal might also call for more reverb on the snare, toms and, in some cases, on the overall kit.
MIXING BASS
When you're mixing the bass avoid some of those low frequencies the kick drums are using. Otherwise, you will have a muddy mess on your hands. A little bass distortion is often used in death metal mixes, though I personally don't like it. If I have to use bass distortion, I like to use a SansAmp RPM as it has a very clean, tight distortion that doesn't fight too much with the guitar overdrive. You can also cut out some extremely low frequencies that simply aren't going to be heard anyway. Even though you don't hear them, they can build up and cause mushy bottom end. Compress the shit out of the bass. Bassists generally tend to beat the hell out of the bass and often have an inconsistent volume. If the player is good you can get away with less compression. You'll want to use one, or all, of the bass cabinets — or re-amp the DI. The straight DI doesn't have the depth and punch of a cab. You need that in death metal.
MIXING GUITARS
On guitars I'll generally add a small amount of 120 Hz. Also some 3 and 6 kHz, but I equalize only if necessary. Some lower EQ cuts will always help. Try focusing on getting the sound you want when tracking so as to avoid over EQ'ing later. On my solos I use a bit of delay, timed to the tracks BPM, in that section. Compress until it growls, but watch out for overbearing palm mutes due to over compression. Remember to pan the first set of rhythm guitars full right and left and then the second set slightly in, closer to center. This makes for a full sound.
MIXING VOCALS
In death metal, vocals tend to sit on top of the mix a bit more than black metal. I do my typical low-end cuts and then I'll boost upper mids. Sometimes I'll even boost at 17 or 18 kHz to add some air. This helps the vocals stick out, without adding volume. Getting the right blend between low and high vocal, or layered vocal tracks, is very important. Sometimes a slight vocal distortion can be nice in black metal.
in the end
Mixing this type of music will take practice. Most people recording this genre have been into it for quite some time. After about ten years you might begin to understand what the vocalist is saying. If all this fails, or you simply don't have time for it, you can disregard what I've told you, set up your boom box in the woods while it's snowing, and make a truly unique cult album. r
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