. . .
In the third part of this series, we’ll cover a classic metal gem, wonder what would happen if a symphonic power metal classic put itself on a diet, and revisit recent history.
1. Judas Priest – Stained Class
Numerous modern bands suffer from sterile and synthetic production. I believe it’s due to an inability to experiment with tone in the studio because shrinking budgets push bands to record and mix as quickly as possible. Stained Class was an all-analog recording done for Columbia Records, and yet somehow it’s just as synthetic and sterile as any modern record. It also lacks any oompfh. There isn’t enough bass presence, and the guitars are wimpy. They’re shiny, synthetic, thin, and far too bright. The bass drums sound ok, but the rest of the kit sounds pathetic. There’s a street-performer who routinely sets up camp in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. He spends his days and nights whacking a set of plastic tar barrels for pocket change. His improvised kit has better tone than the drums on Stained Class.
Here’s the studio version of Exciter, and the live version from Unleashed in the East for comparison. Even if you think Unleashed was mostly recorded in a studio, it still sounds better.
Exciter (Stained Class)
VS.
Exciter (Unleashed in the East)v
. . .
2. Blind Guardian – Night at the Opera
I don’t like Night at the Opera, but the question is why. Is it the mix, is it the songs, or is it both? Take a look at metal-archives, because power metal fans love this album. To some extent, my criticism of this album’s production might be a criticism of artistic choice rather than technical issues. Frankly, there are too many times when the rhythm guitars are pushed so far back in the mix that they might as well have been cut out entirely. During these times, the keyboards, vocals, and choirs overwhelm everything else. Heavy metal isn’t heavy metal without the guitars! This album leans on the all icing and no cake side of things.
If Blind Guardian intended the album to have such an emphasis on choirs and keyboards, then I think this intention damaged the album by bloating it. If they didn’t, the album is still bloated by the production, but it’s a technical issue, not an artistic choice.
Either way, Night’s defining characteristic is the extravagance of a thousand Casios and a thousand choirs dueling for supremacy. Supremacy of what is anybody’s guess. If I wanted nothing but keyboards and choirs, I’d be a fucking Baptist. When the guitars are loud enough, I start to like the album, but for me, it’s all ruined by the emphasis on everything that’s not an electric guitar.
Battlefield
. . .
3. Nevermore – Enemies of Reality
This one seems to have faded from popular memory despite being a recent screw-up, but back in the day, it was infamous. Upon its release, Enemies was lauded for the excellent songwriting, killer riffs, and Warrel Dane’s impassioned performance. Upon its release, Enemies was also criticized for the sloppy production. The mix was muddy, with too much bass and not nearly enough treble to retain clarity. Cranking the album just emphasized how tubby it sounded. The guitar tone was flat and dominated the mix. The drums had so much bass that they sounded like Tupperware but had no impact because they were buried under the guitars. Warrel Dane’s vocals were well recorded and mixed, so there’s that. Then again, has any album ever had poorly recorded vocals?
The root cause of this problem may have been the band’s choice of producers, Kelly Gray. The heaviest band Gray had worked with previously was Queensryche, and despite Nevermore giving him metal CDs as reference points, he probably wasn’t sure what to do with Nevermore. A secondary issue may have been the band’s budget. Enemies was Nevermore’s last album on their original contract with Century Media. Century Media wanted Nevermore to resign, and when Nevermore refused to do that until after Enemies was released, Century Media cut the recording budget drastically. A comment on Amazon’s product page for Enemies claims that Nevermore received $20,000 for the job. I haven’t been able to substantiate that claim, nor do I know if that’s a lot of money for a label like Century Media to dole out.
Two years after its initial release, Century had the album remixed by Andy Sneap and then re-released. I recall that the remix was offered for $5 in a paper slipcase by mail order . . . that’s how bad the original was. The remix helped a lot- it cut a lot of the flab and mud out of the sound and made the drums sound more powerful, but I think it’s too trebley and dry. Nevermore promptly leapt back into Andy Sneap’s arms for another safe and cookie-cutter recording with their follow-up effort.
I prefer the original version because I find it heavier, but I still wish Nevermore had worked with another producer. Enemies is unique sounding, but unique doesn’t have to mean bad. The Sneap remaster sounds like every album Sneap’s ever recorded: clear, but boring.
. . .
Do you also find it difficult to jerk off to porno mags if the paper is not of highest quality?
As long as the horse penises are big enough, no. I do not.
That comment highlights my reservations about this series. I feel like horrible production is not horrible when I love the music. These pieces are akin to displaying your partner to point out the cellulite on their body.
Oh, but its ok, see, he likes horse dicks. Matter solved.
@ Wallace I’m still not sure if you get the point of this series. I’m out of ways to do it. Chalk it up to inability or experience.
If you want to take my comment and horse dongs and porn seriously, then Stained Class is good porn with lots of huge dong. Fortunately, the mag printing wasn’t so fucked up that the horse dongs are blurred and that I start thinking that I’m looking at, oh, I dunno, dog dongs.
@ Alee I was waiting for somebody to say something like this. (in an intelligent and reasonable manner)
My comment above is just as ridiculous as the comment it replies to. If someone reads an entire article and dismisses it by making a sarcastic or exaggerative comment without bothering to engage the author or other commentors, they’ve missed the entire point of this site. We don’t agree with each other and then we put on our thinking caps and talk about it. I don’t want people to always agree with me, but if they can’t be bothered to think about or offer useful feedback, then I see no reason not to laugh at how they’ve misunderstood me and this site.
If the music invalidates all production issues for you, you’re welcome to that opinion. It’s both as valid and as invalid as my opinion that these albums have flawed production. You’ve made a very absolute statement with many implications, but I’m setting that aside for now.
Claiming that these pieces are like displaying a partner to show off cellulite is 100% off base. Showing off cellulite would be like whining that the cymbals on Left Hand Path are .6dB too loud or singling out one lyric in a song for criticism because the grammar’s not perfect. Recording, mixing and mastering are not minor issues for most bands…those are not cellulite type issues. Please note that other than Blind Guardian, I am NOT criticizing songs, and even with BG, I point out that when I can hear the guitars, my opinion starts to change. If you’re calling this pointing out cellulite and I’m pointing out technical issues that may be beyond artistic control, what’s the problem? What about this bothers you? I regret these albums’ production and in two cases I damned near mourn it. There’s nothing gleeful about this piece.
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t want to write this piece. However, the world isn’t perfect, no person is perfect, and I know of maybe one album that I consider perfect. Absolutely every other album has some flaw(s), major or minor. BUT, I still love many of them, and I’ve made it clear that I like or love many of these albums. The flaws are part of them; we accept them and love despite them. In some cases, we love the flaw. If we can’t accept or love the flaw, we move on. We point out flaws and gripe about them all the time with records and we do the same with partners and every other aspect of life. Taken to a certain point, it’s healthy and normal. If I’d said something like ‘Stained Class is a total piece of shit because the production is not perfect and that makes the SONGS bad,’ then that’s unfair and illogical. That’s going too far.
Somebody somewhere is going to dislike your partner or something about them and it’s the same with art. Pointing out flaws isn’t going to change that. Even if I didn’t write these pieces, people would be sitting in front of their PCs thinking the same thing as me. Not criticizing these albums for their production won’t make them any better than professing undying love of perfection will.
There’s potential for positives here: people who haven’t heard Ordo Ad Chao might decide to listen to it to see if I’m wrong and end up a fan because of this article. If an artist reads these comments, they might read about the Loudness War and decide that frying their album would be a bad idea. Maybe a label will read this and decide it would be dumb to piss their bands and bands’ fans off by being cheapskates. From a label’s perspective, bad product is bad business, and bad artist relationships are bad business too.
My original question was an honest one, and I believed that the analogy was valid. You then made a sarcastic and exaggerative comment without bothering to engage the substance of my question. Just sayin.
I also think there needs to be so much more discussion of Ordo Ad Chao. With any luck, this article WILL turn people on to that HUGELY underrated album.
Thank you
Dick.
Wallace, first let me apologize for being a horse’s dick to you. I did engage the substance of your question in an appropriately crude manner. If you had been trolling or being funny, I played with the metaphor in my answer. Since it’s a serious question, the analogy IS true and my metaphorical answer still works.
If I can’t see the horse dicks in a piece of porn because of how it was filmed, I’m not enjoying myself. If the production obscures the content or doesn’t match it, there’s a problem. The analogy IS valid – but I still think you’ve misinterpreted what I’m saying. In some cases, cruddy production is the point. Some metal bands benefit from raw production. Look hard enough, and I’m sure you’ll find someone who prefers porn shot on low-end cellphone cameras because it’s more raw and pure than glossy studio stuff.
Also, why would you ask your question when I’ve said that I prefer the technically worse mix of Enemies of Reality and the noisier and heavier live version of Stained Class, In the Nightside Eclipse, etc.? I’m pointing these albums out because they sound like ass and it’s either inappropriate for the music (Nightside, Stained) or just obscures the music.
Wouldn’t the pertinent question be “Why do you think that a noisier and heavier version of Stained Class is more preferable to the clean, commercially oriented studio version?”
You found a really good booby mag printed on paper you didnt like, so you went out and found the same booby mag printed on better paper. Meanwhile I been whackin it to righteous boobs for a number of years, and then you come along and tell me “that paper is subpar, and the staples are rusty.” So I say “you can’t see the titties for the trees”. It is merely one viewpoint among many.
I hear you and A) sorry if I was too harsh in my comment and B) kudos for bringing up these long-tail topics that people who aren’t musicians/engineers rarely discuss.
Ultimately, the question is not whether the production is perfect but whether it’s appropriate for the music it’s representing. The Loudness Wars, on the other hand, are OVER, and dynamics lost. There will (probably) be a sea change back to it if, from an evolutionary standpoint, there’s enough muscle behind the preservation of dynamics.
Nuclear Assault´s “Game Over” is another example of a good album ruined by a weak production.
“If I wanted nothing but keyboards and choirs, I’d be a fucking Baptist.”
HAAAAA harharharhar hahahaha haaaaaharharrrrrrrr!
*cough*
Fairly good points, but most people are not aware a third version of “Enemies..” was actually printed. The original mix, unmastered.
What label printed that?
Century Media. These were promotional copies sent prior to the album’s mastering. Personally, I preferred that version, as well as its vinyl release. I’m a die-hard Nevermore fan, so I just had to check all versions.
That explains why I’d never heard of it! Thanks for sharing that info. I’ll have to try and find a promo copy. Ah, the days when promo copies were CDs, not 192kbps or low grade VBR mp3s.
Unleashed is great, but I always liked Sad Wings/Sin/Stained/Hell Bent better. They sound about perfect to me!
This would be better served if the latter two records didn’t blow regardless of production quality!
All shenanigans aside, it would be interesting to do one of these columns on albums marred by over production…as the Nevermore record shows, Andy Sneap has sterilized more recordings than anyone in the history of metal. I’ve never understood his production appeal.
I’d say a bunch of these albums suffer from overproduction. Stained Class, Night at the Opera, an upcomin’ album that hasn’t been posted yet. That last Dimmu Borgir album, Abrawhatever, suffered from overproduction, but that was the least of its issues.
I think Sneap’s appeal is that he won’t botch it up. It’ll be clear, it’ll sound good when cranked, but yeah, it’ll be…sterile.
Sneap did some decent work early on with Iron Monkey and Acrimony, but once he started working with slicker Euro bands it all started sounding the same.
Well, if the argument is that you cannot turn Stained Class up to 11 due to its over compression or over production, I disagree. Every stereo has a bass boost, including the one in my car.
And why is this any better or worse than Sad Wings? One is incredibly dry, the other is incredibly squishy.
Gong
Excellent post. I’ve found discussing production, or lack thereof, to be more important that the artwork that accompanies the music, or even often the music itself. I also find the comments here important as well, in that they foster intellectual discussion of production and do not devolve into a litany of butthurtness.
I never mentioned over compression with Stained Class. I don’t think that’s an issue with that at all. The over production is mostly the guitars. The tone makes me wonder if some record exec interfered and told them to soften the tone or make it more commercially palatable.
I’ve used bass boost and manually adjusted bass-heavy EQs settings with Stained Class and the best result I’ve achieved is that I can clearly hear the bass guitar. I like that, but the album still sounds thin. I’ve listened to the album on over a dozen sound systems, including as a FLAC through high-end headphones. Unless I move further up the audio equipment ladder, I can’t get a good result. It’s still a very listenable album, just not ideal.
As for Sad Wings, I think it sounds great – just raw enough so that you know it’s a metal band, and a very heavy one for its time.
Pardon me, I didn’t say you did.
IMO, the material on Sad Wings… sounds rather folky, much like Haphash & The Coloured Coat or The Zombies. I appreciate the commercial song quality and the dark bent of the lyrics. Heh.
I was trying to reply to David, but I missed the correct reply button!
Ah! Next time, Jamm it a little harder.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I think “Sin After Sin” and “Stained Class” are both demonstrative of a band that was actually AHEAD of technology. I’ve concluded that those tones are so reedy because they just couldn’t figure out how to get all the technical nuances to shine through with a dirtier sound.
It’s arguable. The heavy songs on “Jailbreak” and “Lights Out” are HEAVIER, sound-wise, and close as far as complexity goes. Terry Brown was obviously capturing a similar guitar style with Rush around the same time. It has always been a great mystery to me.
Obviously, Van Halen I changed everything and pushed heavy rock into the 1980s. Priest and Scorpions both hefted up the crunch in the guitar department after that release and everyone followed suite soon after.
Just my thoughts.
Oh. I was so looking forward to Queensryche’s – “The Warning” in this installment.
I went back last night and listened to the Van Halen debut and Deep Purple’s In Rock and those both have monster guitar tone. Van Halen especially was recorded with little double tracking.
I guess I partially disagree with your theory that they couldn’t figure out how to get the complexity and heaviness to work together in the studio. I think they just had the wrong producer(s)
and I also think that Stained Class is quite heavy, soundwise, with no loss in clarity.
argh, stupid fingers. I meant Sad Wings is heavy, not Stained Class.
I was listening to Montrose first album done by Ted Templeman from 73, I think he is somewhat responsible for that sound. Rock Candy and Bad Motor Scooter sound really good.
The Priest sound really came together with Hell Bent for Leather, great guitar sounds. It is ponderous that it took so long for the sound to come around, Roger Glover did Sin after Sin and it is thin, He played on a lot of great sounding Deep Purple before this. I have always wondered how it happened. It must have been the bands preference for the older more atmospheric sound they kept all the way through Stained Class.
To each his own. Even tho I like lossless, I recently got stained class used on cd, and I think it sounds great.
Chris Dalton makes a good point below on the record production being more a result of the times, or then-current trends in rock. I’d take that point further and say the record sonically resembles Rush’s Hemispheres and Thin Lizzys Black Rose, even Live Live Rock and Roll and Never Say Die, all released around the same time
….speaking of, why was every guitarist wearing long scarfs in the late 70s? A global cold snap? Blame Uli?
Night at the Opera suffers more from overstuffed proggy songwriting than anything else, I think. The excess is palpable on so many levels. It was when the band realized they couldn’t play most of the songs live that they decided to strip it back for the next record, which was just as divisive for being too commercial. I actually like Opera one song at a time, but the “Hansi choir” starts to hurt after a while. And the final straw: after 50 minutes of music across 9 songs, you’re hammered with a 14 minute final song. Pure punishment.
If they’d mixed the record differently, I think I could’ve handled the kitchen sink mentality on those occasions when I specifically wanted that kind of album.
Figures that you join the staff and the very next article is me bagging on a Blind Guardian album! I look forward to the revenge piece: “Reign in Blood is stupid bullshit and you should not listen to it. Ever.”
“has any album ever had poorly recorded vocals?”
I don’t know about for recording, per se, but mixing, absolutely yes. Wintersoul’s Frozen Storm Apocalypse. (Link to my review.) Quote from my review: “[The female vocals] seem like they were mixed in as an afterthought, and they got lazy with it. They turned everything else down when her voice comes in, like a radio DJ talking before the lyrics start.”
So does anybody know what the deal is with that last Manilla Road album? Does it sound like that on purpose? Incredible.
Well done, Street Jammer. I greatly enjoy reading these articles. Cosmo be proud!
Jesus fucking christ…. ugh, I guess I don’t give a damn for production more than most people because Stained Class for me is one of the greatest albums of all time.
A Night at the Opera is the last Blind Guardian album I actually listen to. A combo of being disappointed with Thomen leaving, not liking the first couple songs I heard off the following album and in general losing most interest in Power Metal at the time.
I don’t get your off hand insult for This Godless Endeavor. It might not be as good as Dreaming Neon Black/Dead Heart in a Dead World, but it’s certainly still a rather good album (their last). Sterile and lifeless by far is The Obsidian Conspiracy.
Definitely agreed on TOC.
@thewolf please quote the offending portion, while keeping in mind that 8 out of 9 albums discussed so far contain no discussion of songwriting quality.
“Safe and cookie-cutter” strikes me as the thing one says when you want to slam something.
Though what exactly do you mean by safe? It’s the most ambiguous insult I often hear in Metal/Punk circles.
When I describe Sneap’s production style as safe, I mean that he has a very barebones style. I find that when he records or engineers, the guitar tone and drum tone are very similar between albums. Nothing about it leaps out at me as being interesting or different. Compare the guitar tone on one of his albums to something the recording jobs from Sunlight (not just the HM-2 tone) which varied between bands, or Seasons in the Abyss, Covenant, Symbolic.
I also find Sneap’s mixes barebones and repetitive, just nothing about it jumps out at me as interesting. His mixing and mastering jobs strike me as meticulous, so I do at least see why Nevermore and other bands choose him for that.
I understand his appeal – I can’t see him ever fucking something up. When a band gets one shot at an album and it’s an expensive proposition for people who care about their art, I can see and respect why they’d make the safe choice, but it doesn’t mean I have to love it.
Is this the only BG album you think suffers from production issues? It’s one of the ones I’m less familiar with.
It’s the only album I’m aware of with issues, but I’ve only listened to Night and BG’s first three albums. I’m not a big BG fan, partially because of Night.
If the early albums didn’t move you, then let it be at that but don’t let Night at the Opera be the final judgement. I’d say their best albums are the ones between the first three and Opera: Somewhere Far Beyond, Imaginations from the Other Side & Nightfall in Middle-Earth. Interesting note: Flemming Rasmussen was producer for Imaginations & Nightfall.
Blind Guardian’s take on power metal doesn’t do much for me. Hansi has a good voice but again, it just doesn’t do much for me.
Agreed 100% with theWolf. The earliest albums were speed metal; Tales from the Twilight World was where they started to develop their style, but Somewhere Far Beyond is a much better album.
I know that the earliest BG albums are speed metal, and I’m quite fond of speed metal. By Night, they were playing power metal, and I still don’t like their take on it. (or Hansi’s voice)
The first two BG albums I listened to were Twilight and Night. I liked Twilight enough to give the previous albums a try but Night totally turned me off to anything after it. I never got around to Somewhere because I didn’t see much reason to keep investing time into trying to appreciate BG. They were 0/4 and I made the decision to move on; there are dozens of other bands I like more and hundreds more to discover.
Maybe I’ll go give Somewhere a try.
Somewhere is still pretty much in the same vein as Twilight, just better developed. Imaginations got a little thrashier and has heavier production courtesy of Flemming, and Nightfall needs to be heard at least once just for being such a ridiculously batshit concept album. Half the tracks are voice actors reciting quotes from the Silmarillion, and the other half are BG at their best, before they got over-bloated on Night. The later albums peel back the bloat, but they shifted to a weirdly “commercial” sound, and have less cool parts in general.
Stained Class had a good sound if you ask me, it never sounded synthetic or sterile, just clean and definitely a product of the 70s. Defenders of the Faith and Ram it Down would be my choices for shittily produced Priest albums.
How is the production on Defenders any different than Screaming?
Oh, I think “Screaming for Vengeance” and “Defenders of the Faith” are worlds apart, sound/production-wise. “Screaming” is high-tech, state-of-the-art, top shelf, android steel. “Defenders” pushes all that high-tech even farther, making it almost synth-pop/video game sounding… And I love it.
I think Defenders might be Priest’s most underrated “Kraftwerk” album. “Love Bites” and “Night Comes Down” are ridiculous synth metal tracks…all done using traditional guitars and drums! (to my knowledge) Much more nuts that programming drum machines and actually using guitar synths on latter records, especially “Turbo,” which Decibel called their Kraftwerk album.
I absolutely love these articles. I’m really excited for the 4th part, do you mind me asking what genre your going to do next? I feel thrash has a lot of albums that are great but seem to have piss poor production.
I won’t tell you what genre, but it’s not thrash! I’m writing a companion piece to this series that addresses some of the nuances of thrash production.
I have a preference on how I want thrash to sound on record, but other than …and Justice, I’ve can’t think of any thrash that’s really damaged by production. For example, I don’t love the way Coroner’s RIP sounds, but it’s quite listenable and the band’s brilliance shines through.
Nothing wrong with Stained Class’ sound, content, or art. Pieces like this make me want to get offline permanently.
This Godless Endeavor is one of my favourite albums of the last decade. Can’t find fault with it at all. Enemies had a horrible production…the re-issue went some way to helping but really, it needed re-recording altogether to sort out. Agree with the BG, definitely their weakest album.
Don’t Turn These Up To 11, Part 3: Classic, Power & Recent Metal Mistakes – just great!
The difference between Screaming For Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith is the drums- Defenders has a terrible 1980s drum sound. It’s still a classic, though- song-for-song the most consistent record in the Priest catalog.
Thrash that was damaged by production:
Extreme Aggression
Agent Orange
South of Heaven
Practice What You Preach
Around the era these came out, I drifted away from metal and started listening to punk and hardcore. At the time, I felt all the metal bands I liked were wimping out, but I didn’t see a conflict with listening to punk bands that were way wimpier. 20 years later I figured out that it was the raw production I needed from metal, not the speed or aggression.
Which is funny for me since I consider South of Heaven & Agent Orange to be Slayer & Sodom’s best albums.
I’m not familiar with Sodom, but Extreme Aggression and Practice What You Preach have functionnal (not extraordinary but clean and heavy enough for their times) production.
South of Heaven, on the other hand, is one of the best-sounding thrash records to me. Those drums sounds so spacy, lively and fucking heavy! The guitars do seem a bit pushed back, but they have enough bite and mid-low presence to make each riff hit home. Overall, it’s an odd sound in itself, and you can understand that nobody (not even Slayer) wanted to imitate it afterwards, but it fits those songs perfectly.
I’m such a fanboy [girl] of Blind Guardian, I have trouble finding fault with them, but I’ve heard this complaint many times before.
I love Night at the Opera so much, I have it on picture vinyl, too. They’re all different, but the title of this album in particular seems to describe their intention.
Have you seen them live? They are able to translate the songs into concert performances as well.
I don’t mind the 50 layered tracks, myself. Just my opinion.
Their new 3-CD collection, Memories of a Time to Come has remixes and remasters of quite a few tracks plus very early demos, for their 25th Anniversary.
I’m not sure if this would help any, but I do like the clarity that the new production has brought to some old classic tunes.
Please do give Somewhere Far Beyond and others another try, if you find the time.
I dig your articles. Thanks!
The interesting thing about the Blind Guardian critique (which I agree with 100%) is that in the band’s most recent press tour of Europe they divulged to SpazioRock Italy that they have plans to remix “A Night At the Opera”, and in quite frank statements, said they realized that the album was difficult to listen to. Something else was said to the effect of they wanted to get away from the Nightfall-era sound and decided the best way was to get ultra prog-ish, which of course turned out to be the sonic equivalent of suddenly jerking your steering wheel in one direction to careen across multiple lanes of traffic. What is even more interesting is that they have yet to deliver on the promise of a remix of this album, instead releasing the new “Memories of a Time to Come” remixes collection, which only features one song from the Opera album, “And Then There Was Silence”. God knows what the point was of that particular song choice, firstly the original sounds better anyway, secondly there was better material on the album that could have been selected.
In my opinion, “A Twist in the Myth” (Opera’s follow up) was a mostly flawed attempt to correct that over steering by once again, over steering. They finally found a happy balance on “At the Edge of Time” – a great blend of old and new elements. Not all agree, but to me its the best thing they’ve done since Nightfall (and for those who can’t handle that record’s more dramatic qualities, my advice is to simply rip the actual songs from the disc and eschew the interludes — there really is some quality songwriting there).
As far as Nevermore is concerned, I remember reading the press release way back when that announced Kelly Gray as the producer of the record and straight away I predicted trouble. This is the guy that ruins everything he touches because you know everything has to have a good lumpy coating of grunge sheen on it, it worked for Candlebox right? What the Nevermore guys were thinking by hiring the man who effectively prevented Queensryche from ever righting their ship I can’t possibly fathom.