You made those guitars hefty as fuck, bro.

Soundtoys Decapitator Neve emulation on the guitar bus, Waves SSL G channel and API 550B EQ. Waves CLA LA-3A not really doing anything, just sitting there on the guitar bus, because much like a real LA-3A, passing a guitar through it adds sheer goddamn mass. Lexicon room reverb. And I doubled the bass track, smashed one with a compressor and distorted the fuck out of the other.

I suppose I don't necessarily use the cleanest, brightest or clearest sounds for... anything, ever, but that's not really the point.

I'd like to hear you mix some slamz.
Big, hefty organic slamz with realdrums, phat bassing and shit.
No one does that..

Except Envenomation.

Give me some slamz and I will mix them. Give me a deadline and a budget and I may take it to a Real Studio and do it. I'm totally up for that shizzle. I've mixed and poasted a pretty wide variety of shit- weird shit, to be sure, but the sonic ground covered is pretty vast- in the past few years. I'd much rather mix records than work.

And I'd work with Geoff in a heartbeat.

Well, as soon as I (we) have some sort of product to work with Dem Slamz will be in your hands.
But due to reluctance to work with another drummer than our own (unable to play due to distance and back problems) Kaleb's riffs are yet to see the light of day..
Unfortunate too, as I really believe that his riffing style (complete perfectionist, HUGE riffs, 100% uncompromising) would set us ahead of a lot of other bands..
But that's a whole nuvva muh fuckin' thread worth of info..

I'm thinking about just programming drums for the motherfucker while I'm in Alaska.

With my luck, everything I'm the tiniest bit affiliated with will finish tracking their records All At The Same Time.

What are you planning to program the drums using?

IMO, metal is about gigantic riffs and either spastic drumming or monster grooves. Or, preferably, both of the latter two. I don't know about you, but I'm not listening for the subtle, nuanced structures and clever lyrical wordplay.

One of the things that's cool about Dem Slams- and Mike's stuff as well actually- is the multiple different rhythmic feels in a given song. As a mixer, it gives you a lot of fun stuff to work with. I should post up the naked drums I went with on the Mortimer Chang tune- they are not small, tight or dry by any means. There's quite a lot of natural-ish reverb- crushed room and lots of un-highpassed overheads- there. The guitars have quite a lot of room on them as well.

To really go off on a bit of a tangent, I think these are things that the whole "modern metal" production style is missing and I think what a lot of people bitch about about it saying it's sterile or whatnot- because there's no real space. Maybe some digital 'verb on the (sampled) snare, y'know? Even a dry-ish space, '90s style, more of a room thing than a big cavernous '80s thing... If anything, I think the smaller room sound versus the arena echo can sound bigger because of its immediate in-your-faceness. It's not some distant thing up on a proverbial pedestal, it's huge, and it's Right There In Front Of You, claustrophobic and crushing. With shit that's totally dead-dry, there's no reference for size.

Here's the drums bare-ass nekkid: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/mc_drums_raw.mp3

And here's the drums having been Snax'd: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/mc_drums_snaxed.mp3

It's a pretty big change. The Snax'd drums are way filthy. They're comparatively boomy, middy and lo-fi with a reasonable amount of distortion, hiss and general grime. They got some balls, though, I think.

Drum programming-wise I was thinking SD2 or some shit, as everyone here seems to think it's just dandy.
The bitch will be programming drums that are ya know.. drummer-y.
Luckily I have a bit more of a leg up on that than a lot of people that might be left with this task.
The other thing will be figuring out the time sigs on some of Kaleb's riffs, a lot of these slam riffs are more or less 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2 (which of course equals out to 4/4) or some similar variation if they aren't in just straight up 4/4.

But some of Kaleb's riffs..
FUCKIN' A, one particular one that we were trying to figure out was SUPER FUCKED UP.
It's something like 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-5, repeat.
Bizarre as shit to try to count out, but it doesn't fuck with him.
I mean, it makes sense; the kid didn't even listen to music (or even like it according to him) except for when he found punk when he was 13.
Then I showed him Norma Jean when we were about to be freshmen (fucked up meter, dissonant ass -core music which Chris_D will admit are pretty good) and he went nuts.
That's when he picked up guitar and developed his riffing style and persona (not necessarily big on technicality, but HUGE on feel, groove and vibe).
He also refuses to use any riff he doesn't think stomps ass, though this makes things difficult at times..
But honestly;
He completely developed into the guitarist that I hoped he would.

I also like to think I'm a pretty damned good vocalist, so I think we have mad potential.


I just want to crush the living fuck out of people with our slams, thus this huge digression.
There's nothing I like more than talking about this little band we have.

What all is on your drum bus? Those drums sound massive.

This.
Fat kick sound FTW.

SD2 is good stuff. It's not just the sounds themselves, it's the editing depth that makes it. If you really get into it, you can make it do oddball things like, say, ride on the bell of the hats. It, like most good digital things- The AxeFX comes to mind- you really have to dig deep into to get the most out of it. There's a ton of expansions to purchase, beg, borrow or steal though, and it seems ubiquitous enough you could pass things around this crowd, even just the MIDI files with the appropriate mappings, and get good results sans massive audio tracks.

I keep meaning to hunt down the Evil Drums expansion for the thing; the guitarist in my heavy band has it for BFD, and it kills.

...and if I'm not counting it wrong that riff still works out to be four in the end? There's something to be said for intuitive playing. See: mid-period pre-Black Album Metallica. Y'know, when they had all the time changes and whatnot. And it still flows naturally and doesn't sound forced despite the changes. That's something I think is actually harder to pull off if you approach it in an overly intellectualized way. Listen to Soundgarden- you don't even realize that's in odd time without thinking about it.

I seriously wish you guys the best because I've seen a ton of the most talented, creative, interesting players and writers fall by the wayside, especially young ones, guys and girls your age, while mediocre d00ds (the egoists doing it for all the wrong reasons are the worst!) at best rise to prominence through sheer goddamn persistence and refusing to go away.

Excuse me, I typed the rhythm out wrong now that I'm looking again.
1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-5

Most of his weirder riffs DO equal out to a multiple of 4 in the end, but that particular one throws me for the fucking loop every time.
19 beats rather than 20 in this one.
Stutters like a motherbitch.

My nickname for Kaleb is The Chuggernaut.


There's actually quite a bit of an art to The Slam if you wish to approach it with that kind of attitude, lots more nuance and dynamics to be had then you would expect.

I know EXACTLY what you mean re: Soundgarden.
Are you familiar with the track Dusty off of Down On The Upside?

Waves SSL G Channel on all drum tracks. Like, seriously, having been able to sit behind a real SSL G series a few times now, this thing rules.

Stock Logic compressor acting as a limiter on the snare, -12db threshold, 0db peak limiting. The comp itself is set to 1.5:1. 10ms attack and 4db makeup gain. No modeling, the clean "Platinum" compressor.

OHs are 4:1 Logic FET compressor, 20ms attack and 50ms release.

Room is the Waves CLA 1176, Blackface. Fastest attack and release, all-buttons-in.

Parallel smashed with Cytomic The Glue. Full range with Peak Clip in, HP filter off, fastest attack and release, 100% mix @ 10:1, blended in under the drum bus. Soundtoys Decapitator with Drive on 2 of 10, low and high cut off, tone @ 1:00, mix @ noon, Ampex model.

Master bus is Decapitator on the Thermionic Culture Vulture Triode setting, The Glue again and Waves Pultec shelving EQ cutting and boosting 60hz at once, on 3 (of 10), 10 broad bandwidth, boosting 12k @ 3 of 10, and Waves Pultec midrange EQ boosting 1k and 2k @ 1, and cutting 200hz at 1.

Your mention makes me tingle!

Y'know, we:

A) Are releasing our EP on Pathologicaly Explicit
B) Are sort of reactivated as a studio only project?

Edit:

This thread is rich with content! Moreso than that thread in the OT where the Russian spammer was on us minutes after we let our guard down.

SD2 really is the tits.

And Snaxie, I would definitely work with you in a heartbeat. We are both totally on-task. If we wanted to we could nail it. By it I mean... a lot of things.

Badass!


Just say something if you want some guest vocals.


Is Connor gonna be doing vocals all the way from New Zealand?

Yes.

I have already started writing some slammy stuff but my faith in this working out is not so big. It's basically a possibility. We are all willing to do it. The EP release though is going to happen. Also, merch...

Make it happen, Cap'n.
This world needs more badass slam.

Some sort of mid-fi brutality that sounds like dinosaurs exploding in a cave, some sort of distilled substance and Russian spammers In The Buttocks?

Definitely feeling the mid-fi.