So, I wrote this huge fucking book of a post on facebook without realizing just how much of a fucking book of a post it was, so I decided to bring it here as I thought that maybe it would bring some interesting discussion.

Or, at the very least, I would be enlightened by those more knowledgeable than myself, as I am just a lay-man know-nothing 4 stringer at heart.

There's a TL;DR at the end, but anyhow, is as follows:


As I noted before, this new album from Wretched is fucking killer, by and far better than Son of Perdition.

However what strikes me the most from this album after listening to it for a few weeks isn't so much the technicality and the cool shit they're playing. No. It's the production that catches me the most. Specifically the bass.

Why the bass? Because, listen to any death metal album, shit, listen to just about ANY metal album. How much of what that bassist is doing can you hear? How much of his actual bass tone can you hear? Not much.

For the most part producers tend to gut the bassist out of it, leaving his tone a hollow shell of clicks. Think of Fieldy's tone from Korn, that shitty, underwater sounding rattle tone. The only reason that shit worked for Korn was because it was shitty nu-metal (that I liked at some point, mind you, but lets not kid ourselves here, that music was fucking garbage that came out at the perfect time.)

There is a legitimate reason for gutting the bass or at least lowering him in the mix, but to a degree. A bassist's low end exists in the frequency realms of both a drummers kicks and low toms, and our mids and highs exist in a guitarist's lows and mids, respectively. While this is perfect for live and perhaps easier to negotiate in that arena, in a studio environment it's apparently nothing more than a pain in the dick when it come's to the extreme metal genres.

With the bass picking up such a spectrum, if we're too loud in the mix, or if our tone isn't quite right, we can seriously muck up what would be an otherwise awesome recording. This is especially true in music that's has as much going on as metal, where we're pretty much trying to sonically beat you to death. It's what lead to most metal album's having, what is in my uneducated and humble opinion, a less than stellar bass mix.

"Gut the true mids, low-mids, lower the low end a bit, raise the highs to get a bit of click out so you sort of know he's there," seem's to be the formula these days, and that's heart breaking because some of these bassists do some seriously GNARLY shit.

Ryan William's of Black Dahlia Murder kept up with some insane riffs, and played some incredibly creative shit in places that you wouldn't know about unless you had heard him live with his ballsy tone in all it's glory.

Nick Schendzielos of Job for a Cowboy played some crazy stuff on Demonocracy that's a bit hard to hear unless you've got a kick ass system. He plays your typical finger style, slap, tapping and chords all over that album, and while he's in the mix a bit more than most you still have to listen so damn hard to hear the finer things he does.

My point is this, we shouldn't have to struggle to hear the 4  (or 5 or 6) stringed mad-men in the mix. They're an integral part of these band's live sound, otherwise they'll sound weak as hell and with very little energy carried through to the audience, so why cut them out to such a harsh degree as most are?

That's what I love about this album. Andrew Grevey is right there, throughout the ENTIRE thing, backing up the guitarist and giving their music some fucking balls. His tone is solid, it's heavy, and it's brutal, but it's also clear and discernible. I don't know if it's just his tone, or if the mix and master team just had their shit straight, but this album has EXACTLY the right amount of bass, and I fucking love it.



Too Long? Didn't Read?

After listening to this on low volume, I'd have to agree with you. Tomorrow I'll give it a listen at higher volume with a sub. It's funny you posted this today since this afternoon on sirius they played a Metallica song with guitars cut and only Cliff, drums, and vocals. It was that same clicky bass but not really bass sound. If I remember the particular track I'll update the post, but I've listened to a couple others and it wasn't mixed out as bad.

I'm not much of a Death Metal fan, but I know what you mean. Having the bass sit in the mix where you can hear it makes music better, IMHO. And that goes for any instrument, and any genre.

And Justice For Jason may be what you're thinking.

Basically somebody remixed Jason Newstead back into the mix like he always should have been.

Absolutely. I'm biased, as I am a bassist, but I feel like that bottom end holding down the rhythm is what drives the feel of the music regardless of what genre. Listen to what they do in Country, they stand out in the mix in an awesome way and hold the feel of the song with the drummer while the guitarist's strum their chords. Jazz and funk bassist's are what make the music jazzy and funky.

Drummers are in there too, same with guitarists, every instrument plays a part. Just that in metal, especially some of the more extreme sub-genres, bassists seem to go just about ignored until they're live.

Kind of like William Murderface of Dethklok

Murderface going "What does it matter anyway, I'm just going to get pulled out of the mix"  is one of my favorite lines.

Will give a listen when I'm not at work.

As a guitar player I never understood the whole value

It's a lot of fun. I only just started playing guitar, so everything I write is stuck to 4 strings more or less, hahaha. Not to mention using a pick takes some learning, and there's a much smaller margin for error than on a bass.


Bass get's boring as soon as you stop playing creatively underneath everything. A nice stop here and there (among other things) adds a touch of subtlety that goes a long way

I woke up to that show this morning, the episode where Pickles became a Realtor. Lol. It was cracking me up.

Deathmetal does tend to bury the bass, but I am a fan when it isn't.  I tried to not do that on my last album.  

Good bass is nice, adds so much heavy.

I blew my amp to this once lol

Coming from a live sound guy point of view, many bassists (And guitarists) do this shit to themselves.

They gut the mids, crank the lows and the highs.  The low end gets lost in kick drum mush, the highs compete with the sibilance of vocals, and the mids aren't there to carry it.

MANY bass players think that as long as things are vibrating, they've got good tone.  Especially youngsters with little live experience who think that as long as it sounds badass in their living room, it's gonna be badass on the stage.

Then you've got people whining you can't hear this or that, and the fact is that they aren't giving you anything to work with.

If you listen to track separations on albums where you think the guitar just sounds HUGE or the bass sounds GREAT, you're gonna be disappointed with what the individual tone sounds like.  Guitar sounds best as a upper-mid with the lows dumped out to prevent that 'whoomph' when palm muting, bass sounds best as an ugly midrange with a flat low end and the highs largely ditched.  Both of which aren't awe-inspiring on their own, but combined make a HUGE wall of kickass.

This.



Both.
 

what it is, is them hearing their own practice tone at home and thinking it sounds bad ass, so they use it in the band where there's a lot more shit going on and then wonder why they can't hear damned thing they're playing clearly

Sure my amp can get shit to rumble like a motherfucker, and that's great that it can, but more importantly is getting a tone that's discernible when playing in a band like you said a lot of folks don't get. Now, if you can't get both... that's just a bonus. I've got a serious rig, I can do both

As a sound guy, how do you mean by we don't give you anything to work with? I love analyzing audio, but I'm no professional by any means, I just know how to get my shit to sound good. But what do YOU look for to work with live?

You're exactly right, and I used to argue the same points with my former band mates. But they have it in their heads that mids make guitars sound muddy.

I like a Bass player that does not have to be too busy constantly playing every note, let the notes you play add an emphasis to the music not so much low freuquency that you drowned out everything else below 130 hertz.

I have been doing FOH for almost 40 years, in my early years it was for punk, rock, metal and hair bands and now for a church and the best bassists are the ones that play with distinction and for God's sake stop cranking up your levels while playing, I am already running you through a compressor and gate I don't need a heavily distorted signal coming from you, I can't highlight your bass playing when you are sending me nothing but low freq distortion because you have damaged your hearing.



good bassists like greg riddley from humble pie were loud but not distorted listen to thirty days in the hole and to grand funk rail road mean mistreater to hear I what I am talking about  

 

I agree, OP.

Mids can be important to a bass, especially if the guy playing does more than chug on the root. It's even better if the instrument has a certain special quality to it...

"Scoop the mids" is the mantra of every guitarist and bassist who has never recorded or played extensively live.  I think they do so because they are trying to make their amp sound like the end product on their fav albums, not realizing that their fav albums have a shitload of processing after the sound leaves the amp to get to CD.  

Live or in the studio, you can take mids out, but you can't put them back in.  Noob guitarists don't realize that, so they scoop the shit out of them, because it sounds bitchin in your bedroom.

I do a bit of both of this. There's a time to play the rhythm note for note and there's a time to make your accents, and even go off and do your own thing (provided it works).

It doesn't help when they're hardcore Metallica fans and think that because James and Kirk do it, it's the way to go. I love Metallica, but their EQ settings........

Fucking atrocious. This silly Scottsman covers what so many new guitarists get wrong pretty well, I think. Admittedly, I like the way the first tone sounds when it's on it's own, however I know for fact it'll sound like shite as soon as anything else other than him starts playing.

Sounded good till the tempo picked up & the cookie monster chimed in!

That's more a matter of musical taste than tonal reference

I can't judge you for it though, I used to fucking hate this sort of music.

I get a kick out of that guy. He also has a good how to vid on modding wah pedals. But anyway, he's right, and the thing I find most ironic is the Slayer fans that think Kerry King is the shit and fail to realize that he boosts his mids. Hell, back before Marshall made the JCM800KK heads with his EQ settings built in, he would use a MXR 10 band EQ to booost the mids because his JCM800s didn't have enough mids for his taste.

http://www.jimdunlop.com/product/kfk1-ten-band-equalizer  hehe Kerry Fucking King 10 band EQ.

"Your tone is dildoes"