Introducing: my metal band Hoarfrost!

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally, I use "sludge" the way it was originally connected to the metal genre- a heavy, bass-heavy sound with distortion and drone, with a dirgelike tempo- not as a subgenre in itself. As such, it would apply to bands like early Black Sabbath, Kyuss and so forth.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I will admit my noobishness when I say this: isn't the amplifier that vocalists use a PA system? IE guitarists have guitar amps, and vocalists use PA systems? Honestly, I thought that was the correct term, and feel free to prove me wrong... I am using a Shure SM-58 mic with it.

You're dead on - I ran professional sound for 13+ years - technically once you start getting crowds above 300+ EVERYTHING should be sent to a PA and mixed by an engineer

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In the yeeeeaaaaar 2000...

Bands will no longer use PA systems and stacks of amplifiers for concerts- everything will go to a mixing board and be broadcast to little electronic devices that the fans will listen to with earbuds, drastically cutting down on tinnitus and electricity costs.

 

[Thunderfoot]

OK - here it goes - - - -
First off Danny made some EXCELLENT points, vox are a definite instrument that can go out of tune as easily as a harp left in the rain. Ask Steven Tyler what years of bad habits lead to (four vocal surgeries and nearly a lost career)

Now, to parse more closely. I too am not a great fan of the Death metal genre, however, the basic premise of your music is sound. Which leads to my points (All posts are based of Rise ov Thor):

1) The tempo issue is your drummer and bassist not working together. The drummer is sloppy and the bassist is too tentative. As a drummer, I can say that this is easily fixable, as a producer I will say, most production companies would rather have you find someone else than wait on him. Since you are just starting out, suggest he gets some lessons on basic form and don't worry about how it affects your overall quality, yet. The bassists sounds as if he is unsure of what to play when (not how the talent is obviously there, just not the experience) The breakdown sections clearly illustrate this point and your rhythm guitarist is also lacking aggression during the 'solo' part.

2) Cohesion - or lack there of. You have some real talent, unfortunately, you haven't learned how to bring it together. A band has to be a unit, not a bunch of talented individuals (ask Van Halen). Again, as you are starting out, this is easy to fix now, let it get away from you and you are doomed. Also, when the inevitable disputes happen, take a week off before coming back to it. Don't tread on them, as friends, you have to remain friends first, otherwise, hand it up now. (this is much easier said than done, BTW)

3) Structure - This song was formulaic and sounds just like every other Death Metal band I've heard. While this is great from a talent standpoint, a producer will look at you and say, yeah, but what else can you do?. There is very much a sense of repetition in this song. Not much beyond the basics. For what it can sound like after a few years of doing it for yourselves, listen to Metallica's Kill 'Em All vs Master of Puppets. Formulaic, yes, bland, no. Repetition is easy, changing it up and still having a cohesive piece of music is not, but it sounds MUCH better.

4) The recording was crap. As someone that takes pride in his job, I cringed at the sound quality. Obviously done on a budget, which is fine, but a lot of stuff gets lost because of it. Next time you record (and I suggest you record this song over at some point in the FUTURE) set up a room capture mic and keep the system away from the drummer. Drums are loud, ALWAYS, guitars are not, even when amplified. Next time, try to get someone outside of the band to record while you play and monitor your song to make mic, level adjusts. Its still not produced, but its a far sight better than what you have now. You will be amazed at the difference.

Now the good stuff - Your lead player is good, he has obvious chops and knows what he wants to do - I suggest he write his solos ahead of time tough as this one got away from him in a couple of places. If he hasn't taken and basic music theory course, I suggest he do so. Knowing the rules lets you break them that much easier.

Vocals, though obviously growled, are clear ESPECIALLY considering the recording quality. You lost it a couple of times, so head Danny's advice all the more. And even though this is a Death metal band, clear vox and harmony can be a great tool - figuring out where and how to place them is a nightmare though.

There you go. If this were to cross my desk I would probably listen to one song (like I did) make some general observations and put you in my - hmmm maybe file and check on your progress in about three months, If you stayed at roughly the same place, I would pass, if you made any real progress towards professionalism, I would give you a harder listen. The thing to remember is that you are a young band (regardless of your age and experience) and it shows. There are all sorts of tricks you can use to makes yourselves sound better without actually getting better. Don't fall in this trap, get good, because that's what will separate you from everyone else on the block. . .
Eric Stearns
aka Thunderfoot
Seat of the Pants Productions

 

[Kurashu]

Personally, I use "sludge" the way it was originally connected to the metal genre- a heavy, bass-heavy sound with distortion and drone, with a dirgelike tempo- not as a subgenre in itself. As such, it would apply to bands like early Black Sabbath, Kyuss and so forth.

To each his own. I see it as a legitmate genre of metal that has a unique sound not ascribed by other genres. Though, you pretty much defined the genre of sludge metal. Sabbath is more proto-doom, psychadelic rock in my book, though. *shrugs*

Also: lol sludge grind.

 

[Nyaricus]

Thanks Thunderfoot

1) The tempo issue is your drummer and bassist not working together. The drummer is sloppy and the bassist is too tentative. As a drummer, I can say that this is easily fixable, as a producer I will say, most production companies would rather have you find someone else than wait on him. Since you are just starting out, suggest he gets some lessons on basic form and don't worry about how it affects your overall quality, yet. The bassists sounds as if he is unsure of what to play when (not how the talent is obviously there, just not the experience) The breakdown sections clearly illustrate this point and your rhythm guitarist is also lacking aggression during the 'solo' part.

Fair enough That was the bassists' second jam with these songs, so he was likely holding back a bit, haha.

2) Cohesion - or lack there of. You have some real talent, unfortunately, you haven't learned how to bring it together. A band has to be a unit, not a bunch of talented individuals (ask Van Halen). Again, as you are starting out, this is easy to fix now, let it get away from you and you are doomed. Also, when the inevitable disputes happen, take a week off before coming back to it. Don't tread on them, as friends, you have to remain friends first, otherwise, hand it up now. (this is much easier said than done, BTW)

Yeah, the one thing I really like is the camaraderie of this group of guys - they're all good guys. I think it's more like the early baby steps of this band just simply getting some songs down and finding out how we all fit together. Everyone has diverse influences in their music, so it's going to be interesting to see how we fuse them together for our sound

3) Structure - This song was formulaic and sounds just like every other Death Metal band I've heard. While this is great from a talent standpoint, a producer will look at you and say, yeah, but what else can you do?. There is very much a sense of repetition in this song. Not much beyond the basics. For what it can sound like after a few years of doing it for yourselves, listen to Metallica's Kill 'Em All vs Master of Puppets. Formulaic, yes, bland, no. Repetition is easy, changing it up and still having a cohesive piece of music is not, but it sounds MUCH better.

Very true. I'm a big fan of bands which mix in prog and extreme metal, so I like it when stuff switches up and does something unexpected - and I'm definitely trying to get my band to do that

4) The recording was crap. As someone that takes pride in his job, I cringed at the sound quality. Obviously done on a budget, which is fine, but a lot of stuff gets lost because of it. Next time you record (and I suggest you record this song over at some point in the FUTURE) set up a room capture mic and keep the system away from the drummer. Drums are loud, ALWAYS, guitars are not, even when amplified. Next time, try to get someone outside of the band to record while you play and monitor your song to make mic, level adjusts. Its still not produced, but its a far sight better than what you have now. You will be amazed at the difference.

Yeah, we actually did a mic and laptop hook-up which sounded a lot better yesterday, which are now up on our MySpace. Sounds *tons* better, and next week we'll have the full line-up and get a more complete sound going for us

Now the good stuff - Your lead player is good, he has obvious chops and knows what he wants to do - I suggest he write his solos ahead of time tough as this one got away from him in a couple of places. If he hasn't taken and basic music theory course, I suggest he do so. Knowing the rules lets you break them that much easier.

Yeah, he's trained in music theory by a fellow who composes for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and who produces on a world-wise scale, and he likes to break the rules plenty, haha

Vocals, though obviously growled, are clear ESPECIALLY considering the recording quality. You lost it a couple of times, so head Danny's advice all the more. And even though this is a Death metal band, clear vox and harmony can be a great tool - figuring out where and how to place them is a nightmare though.

Thank you I can't do clean vocals at all, but the bassist does and we are all definitely open to throwing some in the mix at the some point in the future.

There you go. If this were to cross my desk I would probably listen to one song (like I did) make some general observations and put you in my - hmmm maybe file and check on your progress in about three months, If you stayed at roughly the same place, I would pass, if you made any real progress towards professionalism, I would give you a harder listen. The thing to remember is that you are a young band (regardless of your age and experience) and it shows. There are all sorts of tricks you can use to makes yourselves sound better without actually getting better. Don't fall in this trap, get good, because that's what will separate you from everyone else on the block. . .

Thank you again TF Some great feedback in there, and I will surely consider all you've said.

cheers,
--N

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

double post

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This song was formulaic and sounds just like every other Death Metal band I've heard. While this is great from a talent standpoint, a producer will look at you and say, yeah, but what else can you do?.

I want to jump in and really stress this point. One of the most crucial elements in "making it" (that you control) is having something about your band stand out.

It could be vocal style or quality, it could be difficulty of the music itself, a taste for dissonance or harmony that is unusual for for your genre, unusual time signatures or tempo changes- whatever. You need to have something about your band cut through the "noise" of other bands in your genre.

Example: Portishead is/was a little band out of England that does some interesting new new-wave/trip-hop tunes, but they were pretty big for a short period of time because someone in their camp- I don't know if it was a producer or a bandmember- had this thing for stylized fuzzed out spy guitar /electric balalaika sounds that hadn't been used in pop music since the 50's or 60's (there are bands like Laika and the Cosmonauts or Los Straitjackets out there using that sound, but they aren't aiming at the pop mainstream).

It simply sliced through the airwaves as a completely unique sound in its context, and those guys sold a fair number of records.

So...

Find something within yourselves to bring out. Perhaps your axeman can borrow some ideas from his WSO teacher, melding some classical structures with extreme metal heaviness and become the Randy Rhoades of your genre.

Or instead of doing that sonically, do it lyrically. Nile had a fairly big song by simply reciting an ancient Egyptian prayer, right?

 

[Testament]

OK, just listened to Rise Ov Thor and Splayed Before a False God. And yeah, the recording quality is pure junk, but I somewhat expected that.

The Good:
1. Your Vox. Very sharp, especially for such poor sound quality. Some coaching on breathing techniques and warmups and you could be impressive. Bravo on your growl, your razor scream is also pretty good. Based on this, I'd be emphasising your growl in most tracks. Heed Thunderfoot and Danny's advice, there are few things more downright impressive to me than someone who can deliver both brutality and clarity at the same time (Corpsegrinder and Dallas Toler-Wade come to mind)

2. Guitars. Very good work, tight and heavy riffing. Some more focus in the solos would be helpful; unless you're a god - with the rep to go with it - like Kerry King or Karl Sanders, noodling ISN'T a good thing.

The Bad.
1. Cohesion. You're a young band, but you need to work on this. The drummer seems overenthusiastic, and the bass is all over the shop.

2. Sound Quality. If you're gonna put together a proper demo, get the acousitcs and quality up. As T-Foot said, the drums are always gonna be loud, and have a tendency to drown out just about everything else. I'm not a mixer or producer, but I know what I like as a metalhead, and overdrumming drives me nuts more often than not*

As for the songs themselves, they were worth a listen. Similar to Thunderfoot, as a producer/rep, I'd listen to these and put you under the file "check in X months". Get some tight focus and make yourselves stand out, and then I'd be willing to talk.

Mad props on getting this stuff out there though. Good luck with it!


*About the only things that I've ever listened too where the drums were uncomfortably high in the mix that I liked were "The Essential Salts" on Nile's Ithyphallic, because the trained octopus they had behind the kit on that track was so good (sorry, I don't believe it was George, since no human should be capable of that!), and CoF's Cruelty and the Beast, because the songs were so amazing I could live with Nick's work being way too high. Besides, Cradle of Filth's production is always terrible it seems.

 

[Testament]

Find something within yourselves to bring out. Perhaps your axeman can borrow some ideas from his WSO teacher, melding some classical structures with extreme metal heaviness and become the Randy Rhoades of your genre.

Or instead of doing that sonically, do it lyrically. Nile had a fairly big song by simply reciting an ancient Egyptian prayer, right?

On the first point, its been done by a lot of bands (notably Emperor), but mostly in Black Metal. Unsuprising given BM's focus on mood and atmosphere. Combining classical structure and influences with DM could be tricky, but that's no reason not to try. When its done well, the results are always impressive.

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As for Nile reciting an ancient Egyptian prayer or other ancient text, they've done it a LOT. Sometimes as a paraphrase, other times verbatim. The verbatim ones can be really really cool though, and have provided ample fodder for me in various games.

Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka: "Barra Edinazzu", "Die Rache Krieg Lied Der Assyriche"* and "Opening the Mouth".

Black Seeds of Vengeance: "Defiling the Gates of Ishtar", "The Black Flame", "Chapter for Transforming into a Snake", "Multitude of Foes", "Nas Akhu She en Asbiu" and "Khetti Shatha Shemsu".

In Their Darkened Shrines: "Execration Text", "Churning the Maelstrom", "Kheftiu Asar Butchiu" and "Unas, Slayer of the Gods".

Annihilation of the Wicked: "Sacrific Unto Sebek", "Chapter of Obeisance Before Giving Breath to the Inert One in the Presence of the Crescent Shaped Horns" (Or as Dallas introduced it live, "Chapter of really long title only Karl can remember")

Ithyphallic: "The Essential Salts", "Eat of the Dead"** "Spell to Preserve its Posesser Against Attacks from He Who Is In the Water"

* EVERYONE needs to hear this track at least once. It is in no way metal, and sounds amazing.
** This is seriously one of the most disturbing things I've heard. And when I used it as a handout in my Age of Worms game, I think my players could feel their skin crawling.