Metal mix Hammer down .Dark ride

Metal mixing is something i would like to improve on, its a bit specialist i think so any pointers would be cool.

Hey Alan, I did compose a whole reply for this, but it got swallowed up in the server restart yesterday… oh well!.. here we go again…

Wow, that is some fast double-kicking and guitar playing happening here - pretty impressive!

I like all the balances here, and the low end of the song is nice and tight. I especially like the vocals - they sound really clear, yet well seated in the mix.

The thing I noticed is that overall, the mix has a bit of a congested sound in the mids - is it too much 400-500hz? The snare isn’t sitting as well as it could for me too. It sounds a little dry and disconnected, as well as having too much top snare “pop” and not enough bottom snare “sizzle”.

I was pleasantly surprised by the melodic vocals on this song - when I heard the music, I was expecting cookie-monster stuff, but this was good!

Possibly some build up there ,so much going on in it .The snare was like that to cut and has lots of verb on it, in solo it sounded it sounded pretty overkill. Deffo want to study metal mixing more.
Cheers for the feedback

Took some mids out not sure if its improved it or not .

Seems a little better. I wonder if experimenting with some distortion on the snare might help?

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Hey, listening to both mix and comparing with Mike’s one.

Your revised mix sounds way better than your first mix. Drums cut thru the mix better and get more high end and snap.
I’m not very keen on the guitar sound. I’m not a specialist on metal mixing but I found that Mike guitar sound is more spot on that yours.
By the way, I think @brianinogang could help you on that song.

Nice job man!

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Pretty nice.
your drums need more fat room.
A feel a lack of sub freq.
And you cymbs are strong at 6/8 k
Other than is good.
Good job !

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wow thanks ncls.

I just listened to mix 2. This is a great song in my opinion.

I know we all have different styles of mixing and sound influences so my comments are purely just my thoughts and I may be wrong at times.

The mix is well balanced and it has the potential to be more powerful by adding more energy to the individual sounds.
The things I noticed is mainly the drums.
For metal, I usually mix the drums first because it the most important foundation of a rock song.
I then mix the bass to fit into what my final drum sound is and then lastly the guitars.

The first thing that came to me is that drums is a bit too dry. It could use some room mics brought up. Aslo the hats are panned too far to the left. I usually avoid that because it makes the whole hat track sound sampled. I usually pan the close mic of the hi hats center but before bringing it up in the mix, I listen to how it sounds in the overheads first. Commonly the combined sound of the hats in the overheads will naturally pan it to the left since the hats are closer to the left overhead mic. I review the response first then bring up the fader of the close hat mics up to the point where its there but the stereo field wont totally put it to the center when combined the the overhead mics. I also noticed that the snare is a bit overcompressed and it is now lacking the tail which is important because it brings character to the sound of it. Id try to bring up the threshold and down with the ratio. Once its audible enough, I would increase the make up gain to balance it with the the attack. Optional, send snare to a separate track and add reverb. for the whole drum sound, paralled compression is i think a requirement for metal if the drums are not sounding full. The objective is to make it sound full and energetic. then at the end of the chain, i will put in gclip to chop the peaks coming from the snare and kick. this will massively help you in the master buss when you’re trying to bring up the volume of the whole track. It will avoid your masterbuss compressor from working too hard and result to pumping.

Guitar tone is awsome. I wouldnt change any setting on it. But I will just tweak it on the guitar buss. What I will do is eq and compress it to match with the sound of the drums and the bass. Always put a limiter on the end of the guitar buss chain to bring up those tasty frequencies that are hiding. Adds more character to the tone.
I use waves L1 as a guitar buss limiter.

That it as far as I can say. I hope this helps you out on your journey mixing metal.
sorry for the typos. Im using mobile at the moment :sweat_smile: cheers!

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Cheers very much for the feedback Brian.

Well, I do think it, really :blush:

is that a song from one of those mixing sites or contest or something?

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Yes it is

Had another mix of this .Think I’ve decided not to mix metal anymore its just hard work and not enjoyable and I just end up bored with it,