. . .
Death is the end, and so in this series’ finale, we’ll find out what happens when death metal’s brutal and technical side is robbed of power.
1. Suffocation – Breeding the Spawn
Spawn is so murky and flat that it’s difficult to hear what is going on. It’s so bad that it’s nearly lo-fi. If pressed, I couldn’t even tell someone if the songs were good based on the original album. Sometimes the drums are swallowed up by the guitars, and sometimes they overpower everything else. Suffocation later re-recorded four of the songs on later albums: “Breeding the Spawn”, “Prelude to Repulsion”, “Anomalistic Offerings”, and “Marital Decimation”. To sum it up: this album is a fucking tragedy because of the recording.
Death metal can adapt to various production styles and budgets. Unless we’re talking about technical death, clarity is optional, but wimpy production is inexcusable. What’s the cause of this mess? Roadrunner Records decided to be cheap, preventing the band from going to Morrisound and forcing Suffocation to use a lesser studio. Malevolent Creation’s Stillborn suffered the same treatment. One final point: Breeding the Spawn is apparently unsalvageable, because Roadrunner had Effigy of the Forgotten digitally remastered, but Spawn has not received any such treatment. Or perhaps Roadrunner hasn’t learned yet?
Suffocation – “Marital Decimation” (Breeding the Spawn)
VS.
Suffocation – “Marital Decimation” (Blood Oath)
. . .
2. Cryptopsy – Blasphemy Made Flesh
Everything about this album’s recording is wrong. The guitars are a sheet of noise, obscuring the riffing. The drums are awful. The snare is clangy and metallic, and the rest of the kit is muted. There are numerous times when Lord Worm’s vocals are mixed too high. The mix is so flat that the guitars and drums run together, and the bass drums are lost. None So Vile didn’t sound good, but at least it communicated what the band was doing.
Cryptopsy – “Defenestration” (Blasphemy Made Flesh)
VS.
Cryptopsy – “Defenestration” (None So Live)
. . .
3. Krisiun – Ageless Venomous
This is another album that was widely criticized upon release for its bad production. Credit where credit’s due: I’ve never heard a mix that so perfectly conveyed what the guitars and drums were doing. You can literally hear every little nuance. The bass is buried behind the guitars, but that’s so common in metal that it doesn’t matter. Clarity is important for a band like Krisiun, but they also need enough fuzz or mud in the sound to stay heavy. Ageless is too clean and not at all heavy.
The issue here is the guitar and drum tone. The guitar has no attack. The tone is buttery smooth. Ageless‘ guitars don’t chug-chug-chug, they ug-ug-ug. Seriously. I don’t know of another album that has similar guitar tone.
The drums deserve the most criticism. The kick drums have the worst clickety-click sound I’ve ever heard. They have no bass presence, and are mixed loudly enough that they cannot be ignored. As for the rest of the kit, sometimes it sounds like Max Kolesne was playing on one of those awful ’80s synth drum kits with the hexagonal pads. Other times, it sounds like he was playing the drums with his hands rather than with drum sticks.
Funky instrumental tone and squeaky clean mixing conspired to bring this album down.
Krisiun – “Dawn of Flagellation” (Ageless Venomous)
VS.
Krisiun – “Slaughtering Void” (Works of Carnage)
- Richard Street-Jammer
Editor’s Note: This is part 4 in a 4-part series about production mistakes. Visit the other posts in this series for more.
Part 3: Classic, Power & Recent Metal Mistakes
Part 2: Melodeath
Part 1: Black Metal
. . .
Spot on with Breeding the Spawn. Bloody awful sound.
Wow, the thick québecois accent of the Cryptopsy dude when he speaks french! I’m from Paris (and have relatives in Montreal), and I had to replay those two sentences 3 or 4 times before fully understanding each word!
C’est de même quand je regarde des films français. J’ne peux jamais comprendre vos expressions.
J’étais à Montréal (et un peu à Québec) l’automne dernier. Moi ça allait encore à peu près vu que je venais souvent quand j’étais gamin, mais ma copine avait du mal à comprendre et se faire comprendre, c’était marrant !
I remember buying Ageless Venomous when it came out, w/o hearing any of beforehand, and being utterly horrified by the production. Those typewriter kick drums are like nails on a fucking chalkboard. I’m not a fan of bands going back and re-recording their old material, but if any album deserves that treatment it’s Ageless Venomous. Imagine how awesome that album would be with the production they had on Southern Storm or The Great Execution. I don’t think a simple remix/remaster can save that abomination.
I don’t think any album should be re-recorded. At least, not if you’re going to be faithful to the original music. Bands should look forward, not backward. If you’re going to re-record it, change it up, experiment with it.
My only experience with re-recording was listening to Vader’s XXV. I wasn’t familiar with their work, and thought, “Well, it should be better than getting the old stuff, because the sound is better.” But there’s just something boring about it. You can tell they’re not pushing the boundaries. It sounds like a bunch of cover songs by a band who doesn’t really care about the original band, and is only doing it for money. Honestly, it ruined Vader for me, which I’m sure is unfair because of all the great things I’ve read about them (especially their new one). It might take me a while to get over that.
Anything re-recorded loses all of its idiosyncrasies, so I’m in total agreement with you.
Rerecording do lose all of their idiosyncrasies, but good ones gain new idiosyncrasies. Pagan’s Mind rerecorded the song Embracing Fear from their debut, and good lord, the new version is not only better but it’s a whole new song. The old song’s tone was kind of scholarly, like they were observing somebody else. The new version is angry and defiant, very personal.
Hell’s Human Remains is a rerecording and it loses that rough NWOBHM charm, but it sounds so much more malevolent to me.
Hearing a band with a different singer is kind of a rerecording. The live versions of Dickensen doing the Di’Anno songs don’t work for me. Di’Anno’s punk rock/Motorheadish singing style is perfect for those songs. Dickensen is unquestionably better the better singer but something is lost.
I can’t say any of those examples win me over (and I wouldn’t include live albums, that’s a whole different bag). With Hell it was a demo, which I haven’t even heard, and again re-recording demo material is another bag/game as well.
I think Exodus re-recording Bonded by Blood is horribly idiotic. Which reminds me, it is kind of like movie re-makes and especially with Horror remakes. It all looks like shit because it’s been replaced with cgi that ruins any suspension of disbelief.
I mostly agree with you on XXV. I think some songs really got a boost from the new production (Kingdom sounded especially awesome), but it felt like a cash grab for sure.
I think a BIG part of that was not having Doc (RIP) on the drums — that guy could PLAY. He did the same thing that Dave Lombardo does for Slayer. A lot of other guys can play Slayer or Vader parts, but Dave and Doc really know how to push through the blasts like it’s a tank coming through, and pull back just a touch in the groovier parts for maximum effect. All the best metal drummers have that quality — Kevin Talley between like 1998-2002 for Dying Fetus and Misery Index, the guy from Krisiun, Vitek from Decapitated to name a few. They could play through some crummy productions too.
On Breeding the Spawn . . . I love it anyway. I agree with you, but I still love it. Everything they’ve done is fantastic, despite any faults (overly murky, powerless production there, overly processed production on some of the newere ones).
Interesting thing here is of all the articles in this series, I think far fewer people would call any of these three albums the best albums said band have done (where as some certainly would of at least one album in the previous articles).
Breeding the Spawn is one of my absolute favorite Suffocation albums, despite the murkiness. I think that’s because I knew about the production beforehand, and was able to consciously make an effort to overlook it. I can’t imagine buying it in 1993, though, after hearing Effigy.
And besides, the production is only really bad on Epitaph of the Credulous…
Another great DM album ruined by abysmal production is Incantation’s “Blasphemy.” Those guitars lack any sort of crunch, just kind of simmering along against vocals mixed too high for their actual volume. Every time I hear it, I want to cringe.
Also, why no thrash installation of this series?
I don’t know of any thrash album that was really damaged by the recording quality other than …and justice. I thought it would be really boring to talk about that album’s production again.
Every thrash recording I’ve has heard struck me as being appropriate to the genre. Did you have some albums in mind?
Energetic Disassembly, maybe?
The only thrash I really know is ’80s thrash, and a pretty large percentage of it sounds too tinny and reverby—but that’s also just how it sounds. It’s ’80s thrash.
There are still large differences between various productions/mastering jobs. As an experiment, put on …And Justice, just long enough to kinda get used to the sound of it (which I love, but I understand why people don’t), and then switch directly to the middle of any song on Killing Technology, without moving any of your knobs. It sounds *way* the fuck worse.
Do we care? We’ve made a mental exception for everything but Justice, I think. Because we’ve talked about it too much.
I love reverb. There needs to be more of it. Screw dry production.
Me too. That dank, swampy murk of early Slayer is the best.
A recent example that takes it too far, however, would be the new Antediluvian. Too much swirl, not enough riffs.
I’ve always thought Killing is My Business… could have greatly benefited from better production, especially since it has some of my favorite ‘Deth songs like Mechanix and Rattlehead. Same thing for The Gathering, although it’s not too bad.
You might really like the remaster of Killing is My Business then.
Has Cryptopsy ever not sounded like crap?
Part of me loves the funk bass on Blasphemy Made Flesh, and the rest of me wants to vomit.
Quite short an article…ok, listing stuff that should be here is not exactly an exercise in originality, but come on: Immolation – Failures for Gods?
How awesome would No Jesus, No Beast sound with a great, thick yet clear production that really captures the essence of that song/album?
You could make that argument for most Immo albums, except maybe the last one. Part of their charm, in my mind, is that the songs and the playing are so fucking strong that they crush all in spite of the shitty production.
I prefer my death metal to be crushing, rather than to be charming. If better production allows it to be more crushing, that’s preferable to being charming.
Charming for me would mean in part song-writing, which Immolation have in spades compared to most other Death Metal bands that’ll have an album the basically repeats one or two songs.
As for Immolation’s production. Close to a World Below & Unholy Cult sound great to me.
This is mostly for 4th horseman: the point here was to find stuff that is really damaged by the production. Immolation’s older albums sound anywhere from ok to really good, but I don’t think there are any Immo albums that are ruined by bad sound.
We’ll just agree to disagree then, I think the production on Failures for Gods really harms the album and doesn’t do the songs justice. The drum sound just tinny, weird, and too high in the mix, while the guitars could really sound more aggressive. But I do agree that their songs are so amazing that they are totally crushing even with a lacking production. I’d just perhaps like to hear Failures with Majesty & Decay’s sound.
That’s the only album of theirs where I have a problem with the production though. It’s just a bummer that even the preceding Dawn of Possession sounds heaps better. Maybe I misphrased myself, I don’t need a clear production as such, I’d just like for the mix to not be completely all over the place.
Am I the only one who thinks that Shadows in the Light is far and away the shittiest-sounding Immolation album? Failures for Gods doesn’t sound great, but Shadows is an absolute mess. And on top of that, it came out in 2007!
@Doug – Agreed! Hard to imagine how that one got so out of control. Unholy Cult and Harnessing Ruin are miles better sounding. Sadly, Shadows in the Light was the first Immo record I heard, which meant I took my sweet time digging deeper into their back catalog.
Wash, the same thing happened to me! Fortunately, a few months later a friend played me “Rival the Eminent” off Unholy Cult and disabused me of my misconceptions about’em. They’re easily one of my favorite death metal bands now.
I think the production on Breeding the Spawn is perfectly fine, certainly for OSDM. It’s Effigy that I’ve got a problem with, the mix on that album is just so flat and lacking in dynamics, it robs it of all impact and makes it just laborious to listen to.
The Human Waste ep slays Effigy.
After listening to the song from Works of Carnage, I can now see what you mean about Ageless Venomous sounding too clean. But I don’t really see a problem. So it’s a little clean-sounding. It’s still heavy as fuck.
The music is heavy, yes. But those click, er, kick drums aren’t. If they could fix the drums, it’d be a lot heavier on tape.
What about Nihility by Decapitated? I love some of the music on that album but the overpowering click-click double bass just kills it.
you’re crazy … flawless album , production or otherwise
“Nihility” is the first album that made me rediscover technical death metal and take it seriously. I would easily put this album up there with classic, late-80’s / early-90’s death records.
90% of what this blog considers metal is utter bullshit compared to OG Suffocation, I still stop by here sometimes but you guys are fucking morons who don’t like metal, give it up and kill yourselves please, I’ll fuck you, you’ll feel like a real human for a minute…, wimps, hipster wimples, wimple hipster metal faggot southern griddle is in trend now for a month, goddamn, fuck you, I was over your new find 12 years ago, die… die… die… die… die …
Oh, you were actually OVER this before it was cool?
Hipsters hating hipsters hating hipsters.
Breeding the Spawn is flat, but it’s still way good. Sounds more like an 80’s death/thrash album in that regard. To call it bad is a huge overstatement. And judging by labels retouching albums, you could be in for something worse. Breeding’s still better than the majority of releases of the time, attune your ears and enjoy the album, because it could be better, but it’s still damn good.
It’s weird how different people’s perceptions are….. as a studio engineer, “murky” is the last word I’d use for Breeding The Spawn. You can hear everything perfectly fine. Maybe you’re just confusing clarity with the actual character and vibe of the sounds captured. It’s definitely flat and lacking character and impact, but definitely clear as hell.
Oh god, that Krisiun album makes me want to vomit