Russ Russell: Studio Psychology, Recording a Live Orchestra, Napalm Death’s Industrial Chaos

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by STA Audio. Sta Audio creates zero compromise Recording gear. That is light on the wallet only. The best components are used, and each one goes through a rigorous testing process with one thing in mind, getting the best sound possible. Go to audio.com for more info. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek, and Eyal

Speaker 2 (00:00:27):

Levi. Hey, welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and with me is a man who has made some of my favorite records of all time. Mr. Russ Russell, thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 (00:00:40):

Thank you for asking me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:00:42):

Pleasure to have you. And if you guys aren't familiar with him, you should be. He's worked with artists such as Debu Borg, gear, Napal Death, if that's how you pronounce it, I think. I don't knows. All right. Wild Hearts, the Gagas eval, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just worked with a bunch of really, really great bands. And I just want to jump right into it because I think you know that Dumor Gear is one of my favorite bands on earth,

Speaker 3 (00:01:15):

Is it? Oh, cool.

Speaker 2 (00:01:16):

Yes, it definitely is. And you've worked on some of my favorite records with them, but so one thing that I was curious about was working with a band like that, they're known for being super polished,

Speaker 4 (00:01:29):

But

Speaker 2 (00:01:30):

You also work with bands like Napal Death, which are kind of the polar opposite. Do you take a different approach? Do you get into a different head space?

Speaker 3 (00:01:41):

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I kind of do get into a different head space for every project really. But there's always something you can kind of drag from one to the other. You can make Napal a little bit more polished in places, and we can make Dimmu a bit rougher in places.

Speaker 2 (00:01:57):

True. And is that something that you just bring to the table because you are who you are or something that they would specifically request?

Speaker 3 (00:02:08):

Well, with most people now, I mean, especially the De Napal guys, I've been working with them since 99. So now they just say, do whatever you want to do. Whatever you got in your head, just do it. And quite often, they won't be here in the studio all the time. They're so busy touring. They'll come in and lay some tracks down and then disappear on tour, and they just say, go for it. Do what you want. So they'll come back and I say, well, check this out.

Speaker 2 (00:02:39):

Do you find that bands that are more likely to give you that kind of leeway, bands that you've been working with forever

Speaker 3 (00:02:47):

And also older, more experienced bands? They seem to be, in general a lot more relaxed because they know that the job's going to get done and they put forward their ideas, and they kind of trust me to bring their ideas forward and incorporate my own ideas, but without wrecking theirs.

Speaker 2 (00:03:11):

It's funny because lots of people ask me if with dealing with big bands, we have to deal with big egos. And in my experience, the bigger the band, the easier they are to work with for the exact reasons that you just said, they know the deal and they know the work's going to get done. I often find that with the smaller bands, that's when you have the most backseat drivers and the most ego problems.

Speaker 3 (00:03:41):

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously there's exceptions to every rule, but yeah, absolutely. You're right. In general, it's the more inexperienced people who are constantly leaning over your shoulder, going, do this, do this, do this.

Speaker 2 (00:03:54):

Let's go back to the beginning. What attracted you to production?

Speaker 3 (00:04:00):

Well, right at the start, my father used to work for an electronics company in Germany called Grundig, and they sold TVs and home Hi-Fi and basic pro audio gear reel to reels and microphones, and we always had reel to reel tape in the house and microphones. So from the age of about seven or eight, I just started setting it up and recording stuff, recording myself hitting things and pots and pans. My auntie gave me an acoustic guitar. I couldn't play it, but I used to just kind of tune it up and hit it with pens and record that, and then record all our Christmas family get togethers and stuff like that. And used to do my own little pretend radio show listening to the top 20. And then I'd cut out the DJ and do my own voiceover to it and things like that. So it is always been in my blood. Really?

Speaker 2 (00:05:02):

Sounds like it. So you were doing that as a kid?

Speaker 3 (00:05:04):

Yeah, seven or eight years

Speaker 2 (00:05:05):

Old. Wow. So I'm assuming that you cut out the DJ on tape?

Speaker 3 (00:05:11):

No, he just used to sit with a radio by the microphone. I just used to turn the volume down when he was speaking.

Speaker 2 (00:05:19):

Amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:05:20):

Oh, totally. Amateur.

Speaker 2 (00:05:23):

Well, that's okay. Just the fact that you started that young is kind of amazing. At what point would you say you went pro? How old were you?

Speaker 3 (00:05:35):

Well, the kind of intermediate stage was when I was a teenager, like 14. I joined a punk band and we wanted to record some demos and somebody had a four track cassette recorder, the fostex, whatever it was, and nobody knew how to use it, so they all looked at me and went, Hey, you do it. So I started recording these demos and learning about bouncing and stuff, and other people started asking me to do it. So at 15 years old, I was doing local band punk demos on a four track and then an eight track, and then it just escalated from there really. There was several kind of big stepping stones, I suppose, getting to work in a proper studio. I had a few really cool people, showed me a lot of stuff quite early on. So I had a really good head start. But then I guess the biggest step was when I met a guy called Simon, who's a great producer. He's done all kinds of stuff, and he took me under his wing and he said, yeah, come and work with me. How old were you when that happened?

Speaker 2 (00:06:47):

Blind me. 20, 24. So you already had 15 years of recording under your belt now. I mean, obviously the stuff you did as a little kid was little kid stuff, but still 15 years or so of your head going in that direction?

Speaker 3 (00:07:09):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't do anything else. The only other thing I've ever done is art. I mean, I've never had a job. I've never done anything apart from art and music.

Speaker 2 (00:07:22):

That's pretty cool. So did he start paying you, or did you start unpaid when you were 24?

Speaker 3 (00:07:31):

I was on about 10 pounds a day, which is, well, at the time was probably about five, $6. It got my smokes and got me a beer, and that was about it.

Speaker 2 (00:07:45):

All the food groups.

Speaker 3 (00:07:47):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:07:49):

All the nutrition a kid needs.

Speaker 3 (00:07:52):

We were very lucky. Well, I was very lucky that we were working on some pretty decent album projects in good studios, so there was usually catering and usually few paid trips to the pub.

Speaker 2 (00:08:06):

So I've never heard of Simon. So did he work with bigger bands? I'm assuming there was a catering budget?

Speaker 3 (00:08:14):

Yeah, I mean, Simon, he's worked with all kinds of bands. He's worked with crowbar and helmet and cancer and loads of bands. I can't think off the top of my head,

Speaker 2 (00:08:29):

But, but those are real bands.

Speaker 3 (00:08:31):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:08:33):

So was that a big jump for you going from what you were doing before to working with them?

Speaker 3 (00:08:37):

Yeah, it was, yeah. I mean, I'd met him a few years before he was managed and was really good friends with a guy, Rudy Reed, who I went to college with, who was my manager for a time and was still really good friends now. And he introduced me to Simon and we kind of got to know each other over a couple of years, and he knew that I was interested and I was doing stuff in small studios, doing demos, helping out mostly local band stuff. And he said one day, oh, do you want to come and visit? And he was in a great studio called Linford Manor, absolutely beautiful studio. I can't remember what he was working on, but I was just a visitor. I wasn't working. And I started to notice that the in-house engineer was missing some things. They were mixing, and there was things like a couple of the Toms weren't opening the gates and stuff like that. And Simon had his head somewhere else at the time. He was dealing with other things, and the engineer was supposed to be sorting out gates and things like that. All the technical stuff. I didn't want to say anything. I felt kind of a bit out of place and a bit rude, but when we had a break, I said, oh, I'm really sorry Simon, if I'm speaking out of turn, but I've noticed that some of the gates aren't opening. And he went, what? He went fuck it out.

(00:10:02):

And after that he just said, Hey, do you want to come and work for me? You are obviously on the ball. And yeah, we just started working together and we worked together for about six years.

Speaker 2 (00:10:13):

I want to talk about that for one second. I think that's really interesting that one thing that I guess interns get told a lot or their studio etiquette where you're not supposed to speak up unless it's your session. And so I've seen lots of interns get removed from sessions for speaking up out of turn, and I think it's very clever and very wise that you waited until a break

Speaker 4 (00:10:43):

To

Speaker 2 (00:10:43):

Say something. So you didn't put anybody on the spot or embarrass anybody or hold up the session.

Speaker 3 (00:10:51):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you've got to know your place. I mean, even at that point, I knew my place. I always figured that I was kind of like the ball boy in tennis. I would just kind of quietly wait by the side and wait to run in when needed.

Speaker 2 (00:11:11):

Well, I just think that that's, everyone listening should just take that story and internalize it, because I feel like there's always room for pointing something out like that. Especially if you see that something's getting missed and you have the opportunity to help somebody fix it. Someone in the position of Simon would only appreciate it because like you said, his head was somewhere else, so you're helping him make the record better. But I guess we always tell people that one of the best ways to get a job as an engineer besides obviously knowing what you're doing with audio, is to have good social instincts and to be a cool person to hang out with and know your place like you're saying. And

Speaker 3 (00:12:03):

I think that's number one, really, because everything else you can learn as you go along.

Speaker 2 (00:12:07):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:12:08):

But you really do need to have the right attitude and approach in the first place and know when to speak and know when not to speak.

Speaker 2 (00:12:16):

I mean, it's almost like you can say anything if you say it in the right context and at the right time.

Speaker 3 (00:12:23):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:12:24):

I'm sure that had you said that in the middle of the session with everybody there, it wouldn't have led to this opportunity that changed your life.

Speaker 3 (00:12:34):

Yeah, actually, I've not really thought of it quite like that, but yeah, I guess you're right. Whether you are right or not, in your opinion and your observations, there's a time and place to do it. If you steam in right in the middle of someone's thought process, then they're going to be pissed off so much you won't get another shot,

Speaker 2 (00:12:54):

Especially when you're the guest or an underling.

Speaker 3 (00:12:57):

Yeah, I mean, I've experienced it from the other side as well, being a producer and working in different studios, and you get a young guy in his first couple of months on the job, and usually the studio owner will say, is it okay if we put this guy on your session? He's not very experienced. And I'll say, yeah, that's cool. I do my own engineering. I don't need an engineer. But yeah, obviously it's cool to have someone to run around and plug things in for you. But yeah, I've been absolutely horrified with some of them. They just kind of steam in and start changing stuff that you've done and telling you you've done it wrong. And what, you're 17 years old, you've just left college, you did one year at college, and now you're coming in and telling me I've just done it wrong. Okay, well, you've got balls, but unfortunately you're not going to get very far.

Speaker 2 (00:13:49):

Well, I've definitely experienced that as well, and this led to some very, very short internships. But conversely, the guys who have been very, very cool about it now mostly have careers, so

Speaker 3 (00:14:05):

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the young studio assistants that I've worked with over the years, the good ones who were instantly good, good character, most of them are still in the business. Funny how that works. And the others who knows where they are

Speaker 2 (00:14:24):

Not in the business. Alright. Alright. So you get the job with Simon and then what you're suddenly working with cooler bands like Helmet Crowbar, you've got catering budgets, at least enough money for cigarettes. Then what happens? What's next?

Speaker 3 (00:14:43):

Well, obviously at first I was just an engineer assisting him as an engineer. He's an engineer too. But it was right at that time when computers really started to take over from tape because we started on tape. I started on tape, but computers were really coming in. And I could see it because my mother, she was massively into computers at a very early stage of computing, and I was brought up with home computing from the same sort of age as I started recording on tape. Obviously they weren't for audio back then and home computers were pretty pathetic really. But because I was used to using them when they appeared in studios, everybody else was going, oh my God, it's the work of Satan. Get it out of here. And I was saying, no, no, bring it on.

Speaker 2 (00:15:37):

Are we talking mid nineties?

Speaker 3 (00:15:39):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:15:39):

That's what I thought.

Speaker 3 (00:15:40):

Yeah, mid nineties or early nineties really, I guess.

Speaker 2 (00:15:45):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:15:45):

No, no, mid nineties. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:15:48):

I remember going to the studio as a 16 or 17-year-old back then to get recorded. I made friends with one of the big producers in Atlanta who, well, but I don't mean big as in doing the major label Acts. One of the big local producers who did all the local bands. And I remember him talking about computers coming into the studio as if it was the worst thing you could possibly imagine happening to recording. He was acting like it was Armageddon

Speaker 3 (00:16:28):

Basically.

(00:16:30):

And most people did. They were like, what the hell is this shit? But I embraced it and I said to everybody, this is the future. And everyone went, no, no, no, no, you're totally wrong. That's never going to happen. And I swear to God, I wish I'd invested in Pro Tools at the beginning if I'd have had shares in that. I saw it and I knew that was how it was going to go, and I could use it. I was totally comfortable we using it. So at that point, Simon said, okay, great. Will you take over that side of it? I'll deal with the analog side of it. And as my skills came up, not only with the engineering, but he taught me about man management and session management and all the producer skills. And then he said, well, you're not really my assistant anymore. We are co-producers now. So for the last few years we worked together. We were a co-production team. He dealt with the board, I dealt with the pro tools, and we shared everything

Speaker 2 (00:17:37):

Else between us. Wow. That's quite an honor, don't you think? How did you feel when he basically told you that you're no longer the underling?

Speaker 3 (00:17:50):

Oh, yeah. Amazing. It really was the ultimate pat on the back, especially from him. I mean, he's such a cool guy. I held him in such high regard and still do. I don't see him enough. Actually. I wish I saw him more. Well, can

Speaker 2 (00:18:10):

Always hit him up on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (00:18:13):

We do. We do from time to time, but he's so busy and I'm so busy.

Speaker 2 (00:18:17):

Well, good problems to have. I think it's interesting though. I've had the same thing happen where someone that was previously under me kind of got too good to be under me anymore, and we ended up kind of co-working on things. It didn't make sense to call him my assistant, it just didn't.

Speaker 4 (00:18:40):

He's

Speaker 2 (00:18:40):

Too good.

Speaker 4 (00:18:42):

It

Speaker 2 (00:18:42):

Is better than me at some things. So

Speaker 3 (00:18:45):

Yeah, I've got that problem. Well, not problem. I've got that situation now with my son. He's now coming through and taking over the big chair. You trained him, right? I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:18:58):

How old is he?

Speaker 3 (00:18:59):

He's 23 now.

Speaker 2 (00:19:00):

Just the right age. So at what

Speaker 3 (00:19:03):

Age did you start him? Oh, as soon as he could stand up, giving him microphones and just say, yeah, shout into this, and then look here, it comes on the screen and here we can play it back. We've got some songs, some kind of remix songs that we did together when he was like, oh, I dunno, eight, nine years old. And he would choose, he would say, oh, I want this loop. I want to sample Public Enemy on this bit, and I want to sample Bjork on this bit. And we would make up these little tracks. Yeah, I've still got them all stashed away, much to his embarrassment. But he's great. He really is. I mean, I'm starting to learn stuff from him now.

Speaker 2 (00:19:46):

We've worked with another father son duo that are incredible as well. The Chicos, Kevin and Kane Chico. They've done Ozzy Osborne and Five Finger Death Punch and a bunch of stuff. And basically, Kane kind of grew up a similar way with Genius Dad that kind of just put the studio at his fingertips from the point he was a kid. And now Kane is I think 29 or something. But he's incredible. And I think that he's been working since he was a teenager.

Speaker 3 (00:20:30):

Cool.

Speaker 2 (00:20:30):

In the studio. That's great. So I guess a word of advice to all the parents out there, stardom young.

Speaker 3 (00:20:36):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, kids love it. They soak it up so quick. I thought it would be a much bigger task to teach, but not at all. I didn't really have to teach. He just observed and soaked it up. And now working with my daughter as well, which is amazing. She's come much later to it, and she's more on the musical side of it. But I've just done a session with her a couple of weeks ago as a singer, and now she's starting to get interested in the technical side of it.

Speaker 2 (00:21:12):

I have a little production factory. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:21:18):

Yeah. Well, they've got to keep me when I retire. True,

Speaker 2 (00:21:24):

True. Absolutely true. So smart planning for the future. So how long did you work with Simon as a co-producer?

Speaker 3 (00:21:34):

I think about two, three years. The last two, three years we were together. We were kind of build as sort of partners. And then what happened?

(00:21:43):

Well, there was a bit change. He had a lot of personal changes in his life and moved to a different part of the country. But there was also a huge shift in the industry as well. At that point, this is when budgets really started to plummet, and a lot of people started asking If we could do it with one of you, that would work out much better financially. And a few people started asking me, do you think you could do it on your own without him? And I said, well, of course I could. But I didn't really feel very comfortable about it, and I talked to him about it, and he was somewhere else completely at that point in his life and doing other things, and he was very supportive. He just said, yeah, go for it. So yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:22:33):

That makes it easy.

Speaker 3 (00:22:34):

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't an easy thing for me to do. I felt pretty rotten about it the first time. Somebody said, can you do it on your own?

Speaker 2 (00:22:46):

But he was okay with it.

Speaker 3 (00:22:48):

Yeah, he was totally okay with it and very supportive and always has been.

Speaker 2 (00:22:53):

Well, I feel like that's almost the story of every successful producer who's come up under somebody. That happens at some point. That's happened with every single person that I know who at one point trained under somebody,

Speaker 5 (00:23:12):

Which

Speaker 2 (00:23:13):

Is lots of guys that are really, really great. At some point, the clients or the bands will say, can you just do the next one? And in general though, I've noticed that as long as the person approaches approaches their former boss or partner, honestly about it, it generally goes pretty well just because it's almost like it's the coming of age ritual almost.

Speaker 3 (00:23:46):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's terrible if people do it sneaky behind someone's back. And I think if that's heard within the industry, then it can be very damaging. Even if you think you're taking a step up, you could be taking a massive step back if you just stabbed someone in the back doing it.

Speaker 2 (00:24:08):

Well, in that case, I think it's more considered poaching.

Speaker 3 (00:24:11):

Yeah, which I've just been a victim of this week, actually. Have you? Yeah. I can't name any names, obviously, but yeah, somebody's just really stabbed me between the shoulder blades this week. Fun. It's fine. I'm almost happy about it

Speaker 2 (00:24:27):

Because it's not going to hurt me. Well, it is almost inevitable. It will happen from time to time, I guess. I feel like there's an unspoken protocol where if you're getting a gig that someone else previously had, especially if you know them, the protocol is to just call them and talk to them about it.

Speaker 5 (00:24:51):

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:24:53):

Just a little message, just a little email, anything, just so that it's not cloak and dagger shit.

Speaker 2 (00:25:00):

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, kind of back to what we said before, how when you told Simon that you noticed the dude was missing the gates on the Toms, you picked an appropriate way to go about letting him know there's also an appropriate way to let people know that you're getting what used to be their gig.

Speaker 3 (00:25:21):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he mean, obviously I was doing my own stuff all the time anyway. I didn't solely work with him, so I always had my own projects on the go and a lot of bands that I'd been working with since their beginning and my beginning kind of thing. But it just kind of started to cross over into a few of the projects that maybe we would've done together. I'd started to do on my own. And then I guess the big one was when Palm Death said, do you want to do the next one on your own? And that really was like, oh, okay. And was he cool with that? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. He was busy as hell doing other stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:26:06):

So this was a big step for you?

Speaker 3 (00:26:08):

Yeah, it was. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:26:09):

Were you at all worried about being able to handle the actual job of doing it on your own? Or were you totally confident?

Speaker 3 (00:26:17):

Not at all. Not at all. It's probably the most confident I've been in my whole career was at that stage. I knew I could take the chair. And you did? Yeah. I mean, it really helped. Obviously I'd worked with them before and we did two albums. Me and Simon did two albums with them and an ep, so I knew the guys really well. And at the time I was there live front of house engineer, so I was totally comfortable with them as people, and they knew I could do the job and I knew I could do the job. So it was a really easy transition.

Speaker 2 (00:26:56):

So this was your third record with them? Yeah. So that brings up another question. Something I've noticed is you get a lot of repeat clients.

Speaker 5 (00:27:06):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:27:07):

Do you have any advice for producers coming up about how to ensure that your clients come back? Or is there anything you've noticed that makes them come back versus when you've had people not come back to you?

Speaker 3 (00:27:23):

Well, I mean, I have to say that again. I've been very lucky that it's the good people that come back,

Speaker 2 (00:27:31):

And

Speaker 3 (00:27:32):

I don't just mean the good bands, but the good people.

Speaker 2 (00:27:34):

Yes. And

Speaker 3 (00:27:35):

I think that's a lot to do with it when you connect with people. I don't always recommend as a producer that you try and make friends with every person you work with. But in that situation, I became very close friends with the Napalm guys. Obviously you still am. We talk almost on a daily basis to at least one of them. But it's a double-edged sword as well, because obviously if all your clients come back to you, then pretty soon your whole calendar is going to be full up and you're not going to get to work with anybody new.

Speaker 2 (00:28:14):

I've actually been in that situation before,

Speaker 3 (00:28:17):

And that's cool. It's totally cool when it's your buddies coming back to do another record. It's great. But sometimes it would just happen that 2, 3, 4, 5 bands on the trot of bands you've worked with before and after sort of six months, you'd kind of thinking like, oh, I want to do something different. I want to do something fresh and I want to meet some new people.

Speaker 2 (00:28:41):

At the last studio I worked at, there was kind of, well, two studios ago, there was this rotation almost where it was a two year rotation where the schedules were almost identical every two years because it would be the same bands at the same time period, two years apart, because their album cycle would be over and they'd be doing the new records. So almost two years to the date, the schedule would kind of almost repeat. And it was great because it's nice to have money coming in and records going out, but at the same time, it was also frustrating because it almost felt like there was nobody new coming in.

Speaker 3 (00:29:30):

And as a studio as well, you feel like sometimes you're not expanding and you're not growing if you're not getting new clients in.

Speaker 2 (00:29:39):

Yeah, exactly. Because at some point, you know that band's going to break up, or inevitably at some point they're going to go with somebody else, and it's not even necessarily because something went wrong, maybe it's been six records

Speaker 3 (00:29:56):

And they're ready for change something. Yeah, absolutely. And I keep saying this to the Napalm guys. We are currently talking about the next album, just going through some early demos and talking about the schedule for the next album. And I do say to them, please, you don't have to come back to me. I won't be pissed off, but Shane says, who the hell could I ever record with ever again?

Speaker 2 (00:30:26):

You're basically a part of the band at this point.

Speaker 3 (00:30:29):

Well, yeah, in a way, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:30:31):

How many records have you made with them?

Speaker 3 (00:30:35):

Is it nine albums? Jesus? Well, eight albums, maybe eight albums, and some eps and some live DVDs and a lot of stuff. Plus all the side projects, they're all in 10 different bands. So you've got Lockup, which is Shane's side project with Nick Barker, who used to be in Dimmu, and Kevin Sharp from Brutal Truth on Vocals now. And Anton Rice Negar, he's an amazing guitarist. We just did an album with them. No, he just came out. We did it about a year ago. So yeah, I mean, Shane's always keeping me busy with all his side projects, and me and him have got a band together now as well. We've been working on an album for about four years, which we've just finished recording. So yeah, he keeps me busy all the time.

Speaker 2 (00:31:30):

So you think your friendship has something to do with why this has kept up?

Speaker 3 (00:31:36):

Yeah. Oh, no. Obviously, it could be kind of difficult being close friends if suddenly either he wanted to do somebody else or I didn't want to do an Palm album. It might be a little bit weird, I guess, being such good mates, but I don't think that's going to happen. I think we'll work together forever. We're almost telepathic now.

Speaker 2 (00:32:03):

Yeah. That you read each other's thoughts at this point.

Speaker 3 (00:32:06):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:32:07):

That happens with me and some of my friends that I'm really close with. We can predict what the other person's going to say for sure. What about some of the other bands that you've had a repeat business from over the years? Did you become close friends with them or was there something else that you think?

Speaker 3 (00:32:27):

Some of them, a lot of them, obviously it's friendly, but it's still business.

Speaker 2 (00:32:33):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:32:34):

Yeah. I wouldn't say I've got quite so close with many other bands as I have with the Napal guys. But yeah, I guess it's just the no stress, no stress in the studio. I just won't have it. The studio shouldn't be a stressful experience for anybody. Some people thrive on it, and occasionally you have to make almost false stressful situations just to fire people up. But the whole process of recording really, if you don't enjoy it, why are you doing it? And I don't understand. When bands come to me and they say they've worked with other producers and they say, oh my God, he was a fucking nightmare. He was so rude to us the whole time. He just kept beating us with sticks and telling us we were shit. And I just like, yeah, I just don't subscribe to that way of producing really. I mean, obviously if somebody needs a stick up their ass to get 'em going, then I'll provide that. But I don't get the thing of beating people down. It's a bit too military training for me. I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (00:33:41):

So how do you approach it? When have there's some bands or artists, like you said, who thrive on stress or it's almost like they create it without even realizing it?

Speaker 3 (00:33:55):

Yeah. I mean, obviously we have had really stressful situations, but the experience as a whole, I just want people to get to the end of it. And whatever stressful situations there might have been along the way, I want 'em to say, wow, I had a really good time. I really enjoyed that because I really feel like you can hear that in people's music, even if it is grim black metal or whatever. I think there's an added element to an album if people have enjoyed making it.

Speaker 2 (00:34:31):

I completely agree. There's a vibe, I don't know if vibe's the right word. There's a certain kind of energy that the music takes on through the performance. If someone is relaxed and having a good time, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:34:47):

Yeah, absolutely. I really can't name names here. I wish I could. But there was one band came to me who had worked with a very big name producer before, and the drummer, he was a great drummer, and I knew he was because I'd seen them play live and I'd been to the rehearsals and we'd done pre-production. He's a great fucking drummer. And he came into the studio and he was literally shaking. He was a bag of nerves as we were setting up. And I said, what's the problem? And he said, I hate recording. I said, why do you hate recording? And he said, oh, the guy we worked with before, he just broke me down. He told me I was shit. He told me I was no good. Told me I was wasting time and wasting budget. And I thought, that's no way to get the best out of somebody.

(00:35:37):

And then the guy literally was shaking and he couldn't play. And I said, but how come you can play live? Oh, that's different. And I said, yeah, but how is it different live? You've got one shot at it in the studio. If you fuck up, we can just do it again. He was like, yeah, yeah, but no, it's different. It's different. And I spent the first day, I just sat in the room with him, just play. Just play. We're not recording, just play. We'll go through some tracks. I'm going to tinker around with Mikes. I'm going to move stuff around, but let's just hang out together. He used play, and we started recording and he put down one song and he came to me and he just gave me a massive hug. And he said, thank you so much. You've completely given me my confidence back.

Speaker 2 (00:36:21):

That's great. You cured him of his PTSD.

Speaker 3 (00:36:24):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:36:25):

It's interesting. I've experienced the same thing, and oftentimes I've had that with smaller bands because their previous experience recording was with some local dude who didn't know what he was doing. So they come out, they've had a really bad experience, like someone totally unprofessional and a really bad result. And so then they'd come to my studio not having any other studio experience. And so if they don't have any other studio experience and their last one was semi dramatic, then they're bringing that with them. It's baggage. And so they kind of somehow think that it will be that way again, because that's how it was.

Speaker 5 (00:37:09):

And

Speaker 2 (00:37:09):

They have no frame of reference for how good it can be. And I've realized I asked them about their previous experience because I realized that that's usually what it is. It's usually something bad happened in the past. They don't have a good frame of reference for how good it can be. And so they bring it with them, and I will tell them, I'll do what you do, which is not even really record at first. Just try to hang out and get relaxed and take time to get good tones. And

Speaker 3 (00:37:42):

If you don't address it, if you spot something like that and you don't address it straight away, it can be like poison. It can just seep into everybody else's vibe. And before you know it, you're on a sinking ship and it's much harder to turn it around later than much better. It's almost like the same as get it right at the source you source. Sound is everything, but your source of vibe is everything. Make sure that people are happy right from the beginning. Otherwise, yeah, you're going to sink.

Speaker 2 (00:38:14):

I mean, I've definitely had the experience where I didn't get that source vibe, and those were some very tough sessions. Definitely.

Speaker 3 (00:38:25):

We've all had them. You can't always fix it. Some people are unfixable,

Speaker 2 (00:38:34):

Man. Talk about some nightmares. I think that that's one of the, I mean, obviously, and I have to say this, obviously some people listening have been to war and been to some very, very, very life-threatening level of stressful situations. So I realized that it's not anywhere near that. But I got to say that when you're in a project with somebody and you have to sit there for 12 hours a day for weeks in a row, and if there's a bad vibe, it could be very psychologically crushing.

Speaker 3 (00:39:14):

Oh god, yeah. To everybody and yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:39:17):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because that synergistic effect too, that it's not just one or two people. It then becomes everybody,

Speaker 3 (00:39:25):

And

Speaker 2 (00:39:26):

Then it's just not good.

Speaker 3 (00:39:27):

The biggest part of recording a band for me is the psychology of it. And over the years, I think that's probably what I've learned more than anything is when a band comes in, you very quickly sus people out. You get to know who is the alpha male, who is leading the band, who is the pain in the ass, who's going to give you the most trouble? And usually within the first 24 hours, I've got everybody kind of pinned. I know who's going to do what. I could almost write it down and put it in an envelope and seal it and then give it to them at the end of the album and go, here. It's my prediction. You are going to be a pain in the ass. You are going to be cool. You know what you're doing. You don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (00:40:11):

And how do you navigate some of those waters once you realize who the pain in the ass is? Do you just avoid that person or

Speaker 3 (00:40:22):

No, usually the opposite, actually. Usually I try and bring them in really close to me.

Speaker 2 (00:40:28):

Keep your enemies close,

Speaker 3 (00:40:30):

Kind of break down their barriers a little bit so that they can't say at any point that they weren't given a fair shot. Because if you shut them out, they're like, oh, oh, I've been shut out of everything. Yeah, no, bring 'em in close. And then they haven't got that excuse. Say, what's on your mind? And usually within a couple of days, you can find out what their little niggles are and sort it out, and then they're cool.

Speaker 2 (00:40:56):

So I've kind of noticed that the pain in the ass is usually because they have some sort of an issue with the process that may not have anything to do with you even.

Speaker 3 (00:41:09):

Yeah, they've either got an issue with another member of the band or they haven't done their homework and they're not ready to do their own parts. So what they'll do is focus on somebody else and give them a hard time. Just for example, say the guitarist isn't ready, he doesn't know his parts. He might give the drummer a really hard time so that we spend more time recording drums to put it off until he's got to do his parts. But it's so easy to spot. I can spot it a mile off.

Speaker 2 (00:41:44):

What about with the personality? Well, with the band member that doesn't know what they're doing,

Speaker 3 (00:41:50):

Well, it depends if they're honest about it. If someone comes to me and says, look, I really dunno half my parts and I can't play this bit at all, that does happen, then it's like, okay, well what are we going to do about it? Usually I say, nine times out of 10, it's probably the bass player.

(00:42:13):

So then you go, okay, which one of your guitarists wants to play the bass on this bit? But it's just all about helping people and helping people through. And if it means you need to hold their hand and guide them gently through and massage their ego a little bit, then that's what you got to do. If somebody needs to be shouted out a little bit, then you've got to shout a little bit. I don't like doing that, but sometimes you think, well, this is the only thing that's going to sort it out. So you have have a little rant at somebody and they usually buck up pretty quick. But there's no point in doing that to somebody that is either going to fight against you or is going to crumble into a heap of tears. You have to really work out the psychology before you act on it.

Speaker 2 (00:43:03):

I've made the mistake of being too brutal with someone who couldn't take it, and that only backfired. So you really need, I completely agree. You need to tailor your approach to who it is you're talking to. You can't just expect everybody to react the same way to what you might have to say to them. Have you ever noticed that sometimes the guy who's the best musician in the band is also the shy one in the band?

Speaker 3 (00:43:33):

Yeah, quite often. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:43:36):

I've had some interesting situations where the guy that wants to do the most playing is not necessarily the best guy, and the best guy is kind of shy, and so he'll let the other guy do it.

Speaker 3 (00:43:50):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:43:51):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:43:51):

I've seen

Speaker 2 (00:43:52):

That

Speaker 3 (00:43:52):

A good few

Speaker 2 (00:43:53):

Times. Yeah, that's always an interesting situation to work out.

Speaker 3 (00:43:56):

And then there's the situation of if you're doing some real fast, I guess thrash is the main example for me. You've got two guitarists. One of 'em can play certain riffs better than the other one. And you have to then broach the subject of like, okay, well, sorry, but this guy's going to do your guitar too, because it's the only way it's going to be tight. Unless you want that complete separated two guitar feel. Of course. But if it's a really tight thrash riff, then hey, this guy's going to do both sides. And most people are cool with it, but sometimes you get someone go or what? I'm not going to play on my own song. Well, yeah, well, maybe you should have worked harder.

Speaker 2 (00:44:47):

So changing topics, I want to talk about Diab Borg gear a little, just a fan boy. But also, I know that a lot of our audience are very interested in records that combine lots of different elements like orchestration and synth

Speaker 5 (00:45:03):

With

Speaker 2 (00:45:03):

Metal. And I'm wondering, what's it like for you to take on a project of that kind of scope? What kind of headspace do you have to get into? Or do you need to do a lot of pre-planning?

Speaker 3 (00:45:16):

Well, I guess the best example is the new dmu live DVD. That's coming out in a couple of weeks. I mean, we recorded it ages ago now. I think it was like four years ago. Was it three years ago? Something like that. We recorded it in Oslo live band. Obviously you've got six piece band with full orchestra and full choir. I think there was something like 148 microphones on the stage. We had nine mixing consoles, three recording trucks. It was huge. Jesus Christ, dude. Yeah, it was crazy. And they took me over to oversee it all. I mean, luckily, I mean the guys from NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting company, they were recording it, and they're so good and such nice people. It was so easy. I mean, they really could have done it without me, I guess. But yeah, I did have a few pointers. But yeah, just kind of pulling in all that together and then mixing it in surround sound. When you've got the guy who scored everything for the orchestra, he's there behind me with all his music spread out going, why can't I hear my second oboe? And I go, fuck your second oboe. It's the solo.

(00:46:43):

Yeah, we had some really funny times. It was a classic bit. Oh, I've got to tell this story. This is brilliant. One of the Dimmu songs, there's a church organ, kind of arpeggiated kind of solo section. I can't remember the song now. And the orchestra guy, he's going through his music and he's shuffling all these bits of paper and he's saying, whoa, what is this? What is this? I said, I didn't write this. And I said, no, it's in the original song. It's the keyboard player. He's playing the church organ. He said, but that's not what I intended. I said, but it's the original song. It's Tim Bogie with orchestra, not the other way around. I mean, we ended up the best of friends, but we had some real fights in the studio. It was brilliant. And I said, anyway, I like it. I think it sounds like Philip Glass. And he stood up and he smashed his fist on the table. He said, I fucking hate Philip Glass. I was about to say,

Speaker 2 (00:47:41):

That's some fighting words right there, but hey, you ended up friends.

Speaker 3 (00:47:48):

But dealing with that amount of stuff, I mean, especially mixing, it's just like, oh my God. Okay, where do we start? Where do you start? Well, I started with the core of the band, of course being as it was dmu Bo gear tracks, and they're the guys in the middle of the stage. So yeah, I mean, a lot of cleaning up, I mean, going through all the microphones and just cleaning out anything that wasn't being used, just trying to get some kind of focus. I mean, it really was just a blur. You push up 148 channels, you just go, oh shit. Yeah, it was a massive blur. Hundred 48 channels live.

(00:48:36):

Yeah, it was pretty crazy. But we did it again with the help of the guys at NRKI mixed it at their studios, which are fantastic. Yeah, that was probably the most hectic session. And being on top of it, I was in recording truck one where everything else was being fed to, and we'd done a full rehearsal the day before and everything had gone great. But I kept saying to the guy, are you sure digital console? Alright, what if it crashes? And he was like, are you old school fuckers? You all say that. He say, don't worry. This is the best in the world. It never crashes

Speaker 2 (00:49:17):

Except for this time.

Speaker 3 (00:49:18):

Yeah. Came showtime, the intro's rolling, the orchestra starts and my desk goes, just goes totally black, like, oh my God. And I said, well, it's still passing audio. I can hear it. So I think it's just the control surface that's gone. And I just said, right. Go to the truck next door where all the recorders were. I said, just go make sure it's all still recording. And he ran to the truck next door and there was a little window in the end of the truck, and I looked and his head popped up in the window and he just gave me the thumbs up. Yep. Still recording. Oh, thank God for that. And he came back in and he said, well, at the end of this song, we could just turn it on and turn it off again off and on again. And I said, no way, if it resets itself, we're screwed. At least at the minute it's passing audio. And it's exactly how I set it up yesterday. So I said, just leave it. Just leave it how it is. And he said, well, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to get a beer and go and watch the show.

(00:50:19):

And he said, did you plan this?

Speaker 2 (00:50:23):

And so I guess you just fixed it later. I mean, whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:50:28):

Yeah. I mean, luckily the output from my desk was only going out for, there was a small part of the show that was broadcast live as it happened, and that was what my desk was outputting at the time. All the splits were going to the recorders, but my desk had nothing to do with the sound of what was being recorded. So basically I said, well, it doesn't matter, does it? Because as long as it's all still being recorded, we'll mix it later.

Speaker 2 (00:50:58):

So when approaching something like that, what precautions do you take to make sure that you don't get into a situation that you can't back out of? I guess? Do you capture DI's on the guitars?

Speaker 3 (00:51:11):

Yeah. Yeah, we did. I don't think we used them in the end. I think everything was okay. Oh, no, actually no. Yeah, we did because on the first song, as they came in, I think there's a clean guitar part, and he stamped on the wrong pedal and all his clean parts came out. So I think we did have to reamp the first little bit of the show. But apart from that, I think it was all the amps. I mean, because the cabs were off stage, the cabs were all underneath the stage anyway in little ISO areas. So we had good cab sound, but things like not having the drum kit too close to the orchestra. And even then, obviously you've got your front row of violins, a lot of very delicate sound going on, and you've got this brute of a drummer just like, what, five meters away, six meters away, whatever. And you like, oh my God, all I can hear down the violins is symbols. So I said, come on, let's screen it all off. And we screened the drums and we screened the front row of the orchestra, which helped a hell of a lot with an acrylic. Yeah,

(00:52:20):

Yeah. I mean, luckily they're so well prepared. They had a truck full of screens ready. I'm pretty sure they would've done it if I'd had not said after they'd heard it in the truck. But that was pretty nasty.

Speaker 2 (00:52:34):

I am trying to imagine trying to EQ a violin with all the symbol bleed in it, and it just seems like the biggest nightmare ever.

Speaker 3 (00:52:43):

Yeah. Luckily though, there's so many of the violins and there was no violin solos, so it was strength in numbers. Fair enough. But they had to move all the pyros because every time the flames went off, it put all the violins out of tune Jesus, and they were really concerned about it. Some of these are like 50,000 pound violins and this flames right in front of them. So yeah, they all had to be moved. Did you mic up the pyro? No, we didn't actually. But I think you can hear it on pretty much everything it was near, but just sample in explosions. Yeah. Well, I have got a favorite of mine is a sample of a bomb that I've been using for, it must be 15 years now. Somebody once said to me, I want the sound, or I want the feeling of a bomb going off underneath the beginning of a chorus in a song. So I made this fake bomb sound out of a kick drum and distortion and reverb, and then more distortion and then more reverb. And I've done it loads of times since, but I just made this one magical bomb sample and used it on every record since it's always there somewhere, just very subtly, just for the big, mid late or for the big chorus hit, or for a big double Tom hit somewhere in the song, just layer the bomb underneath it. Boom.

Speaker 2 (00:54:22):

It's just every single record you've ever done has the bomb on it. I, that's

Speaker 3 (00:54:26):

Amazing. Think pretty much. Yeah. Pretty much every record since then has got it on somewhere.

Speaker 2 (00:54:31):

It's your signature move.

Speaker 3 (00:54:33):

It's like the Wilhelm scream.

Speaker 2 (00:54:36):

I love that scream. I'm pretty sure that I heard it somewhere else. I'm trying to remember.

Speaker 3 (00:54:42):

Oh, the

Speaker 2 (00:54:42):

Wilhelm Scream. Yeah, it's been everywhere. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:54:45):

I've even put that on a record. Oh, amazing. I won't say which one, though. We might get told off.

Speaker 2 (00:54:53):

I'm pretty sure that I heard the Wilhelm scream in Logan.

Speaker 3 (00:54:57):

I bet you did.

Speaker 2 (00:54:58):

Yeah. I

Speaker 3 (00:54:59):

Mean, it's a competition now with all Hollywood movie sound designers. It's a competition now. Who can sneak it in? They all do it.

Speaker 2 (00:55:08):

It's amazing. I know. I heard it in the latest Star Wars movie. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:55:12):

Oh, definitely. I mean, if you look on YouTube Wilhelm Scream compilation, it takes you all through every movie it's been in, and it's hundreds of them.

Speaker 2 (00:55:21):

It's amazing. I love that you brought it into metal.

Speaker 3 (00:55:27):

Do you know, it suddenly occurs to me. We've been talking for an hour and we haven't even mentioned anything really technical or

Speaker 2 (00:55:38):

That's kind of good. That's good.

Speaker 3 (00:55:41):

I'm quite happy

Speaker 2 (00:55:41):

About that. Yeah, I mean, if you want to, we could talk about that stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:55:46):

Well, that's kind of what I was expecting, but I'm actually relieved to talk about other stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:55:53):

I feel like we definitely talk about technical stuff on this podcast, but I feel like we do nail the mix, and we have so many videos also through our fast tracks that are intensely technical and that I feel like our podcasts should almost be more about the human side of everything.

Speaker 3 (00:56:19):

People skills. That's the stuff you can't learn from a YouTube video.

Speaker 2 (00:56:25):

And we definitely will do talk about technical things on the podcast, but I also think that a podcast is not necessarily the best medium for learning that kind of stuff

Speaker 4 (00:56:38):

Because

Speaker 2 (00:56:40):

We talk about a compressor setting. Does it really make a difference if you can't hear the source that it's working on?

Speaker 3 (00:56:48):

Yeah, it makes me chuckle when I get a lot of people say, oh, can I see your settings for this and your settings for that? And I say, why do you want to see that? It's really not going to help you unless you're there in the situation and see how it's all been built up together, then. Yeah, sure. I mean, I'll send you all of my plugin settings if you want, but it's really not going to help you much.

Speaker 2 (00:57:16):

Yeah. Well, that's what we do differently with now, the mix with people actually getting the tracks to work on when they then watch the live stream with the mixer mixing,

Speaker 4 (00:57:28):

They've

Speaker 2 (00:57:28):

Already had a month working on those tracks. So whatever the mixer does makes a lot more sense. They can actually relate it to something as opposed to if you, just like the famous Andy Sneak C four settings that he posted in 2005 that everybody then tried to copy.

Speaker 3 (00:57:51):

Yeah, I didn't see that.

Speaker 2 (00:57:52):

Oh, it was this famous thing on his forum, the Andy Sleeps C four settings. He just posted a screenshot of his C four settings on some album, and everybody was like, oh my God, this is the way and the light. And I tried it. I tried it too, and it sounded like shit. And it's like, of course it sounded like shit because I wasn't working on the same album as him, and I didn't do every single other thing he did to that guitar chain. He didn't include the very important part that you need to figure out those settings for yourself. So yeah, I feel like, I mean, that said, I do have a few technical questions for you.

Speaker 3 (00:58:37):

Oh yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (00:58:39):

So you want to talk about them now?

Speaker 3 (00:58:41):

No, whatever comes next. I'm good.

Speaker 2 (00:58:44):

Well, I think that I still want to know a little more about the DMU thing and about the live recording. Actually, I do have a technical question. So how do you keep that from becoming overwhelming? How do you organize a session like that?

Speaker 3 (00:59:04):

I guess dealing with things in sections. I mean, particularly the orchestra, divide that up into strings and brass and percussion so that you're only looking at a few groups of things rather than hundreds of things. I mean, straight away, psychologically, that's much easier to deal with. Then you can go into the group and you can, okay, let's arrange the violins and the violas and the cellos. But once you've kind of done that, then you just stick that out of the way and forget about it. It's just one thing called strings. So yeah, grouping. Grouping is vital. Even in smaller sessions, if you've got 40 tracks of stuff, once you've dealt with the 40 tracks, condense it, get it down to groups, it's much easier to deal with and much easier to think about.

Speaker 2 (00:59:57):

I know guys that condense things down to four or five groups.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, drums, bass, guitar, vocals.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):

Yeah. It's so much easier to get a bang and mix that way when you're mixing five stereo tracks. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):

Yeah. And tons of automation.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):

Yeah. When you're cutting out the silence on that many micd instruments, did you do that yourself or,

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):

You did that yourself?

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):

Yeah. Oh, except for, I must give a shout out to Russell Cartier, is that how you say it? I forgot how to say his name. Great engineer. Great producer. He actually, at the time, I was so pushed for time, I just put a post up on Facebook, can anybody help clean some Tom tracks? And he said, I'm not doing anything. I'll do it for you. And he cleaned all the tom tracks for me on the drum kit, which considering there was six Toms on the kit, that was a lot of cleaning to do. And yeah, he went ahead and did all that. And then for a while it looked like the whole project wasn't ever going to be released. So I always felt really bad shit, dude, I asked you to do all that work and it's not even going to come out, but now it is coming out. So yeah, everybody go get your copy in two weeks. Actually, you can pre-order it now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):

Nuclear blast sent it to me. I have to say it sounds great. Really.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):

They haven't sent me one.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):

Those bastards, well, they gave me a download thing. I guess I'm on the press list or something. It sounds incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):

It's always really scary though, when you get the master back, especially from a DVD or a Blu-ray, because you find that a lot of the time what happens is everybody's fighting for space on the disc. The video people, the people who are doing all the menus and graphics, the people who are doing all the bonus material, everybody's fighting for those megabytes on that disc. And you quite often end up where your mix comes back and it's been encoded in a slightly different way to make more space for other things. And you listen to it and you go, that's not my fucking mix. But I talked to the guy who was doing it on this blue rail, quite confident that I'll be happy with it when I hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):

Do you do your own mastering or do you get someone else to do it?

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):

I quite often do my own mastery now. I don't enjoy it particularly. It's something that came out of necessity really, because I was tinkering around with it. I always thought it was the black art. Any mastering engineer would always tell you, oh yes, it's the black art. I always used to think, yeah, but you're only dealing with two tracks. I have to do much more work than you do. So I kind of started to look into it and get into it, and I tried a few masters and I wasn't very confident about it, but I kind of got better and better and studied it a little bit and just listened to records that I liked and tried to make my mixes sound like that. And gradually developed some mastering techniques. I never wanted to do it, but we were at the Townhouse mastering in London, which was a fantastic place.

(01:03:22):

I think it's gone now. Yeah, it has gone now. Mastering one of the Napalm albums and the guy there, he was clipping it and it was distorting, and I said, it is clipped, it's distorted. And he said, well, it's no Palm Death. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. It's the wrong kind of distortion. I don't like it. And all the rest of the band was saying, no, just back off, Russ. You're too close to it. Let the guy do his job. I said, yeah, yeah, fair enough, fair enough. So I went home and I did my own version of the master and ended up giving them both versions and everybody picked my version. Boom, there

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):

You go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):

And I thought, right, actually, I do know what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):

Well, it's funny you said that. Well, got me thinking about that was how you mentioned that sometimes the DVD audio will come back and you'll be like, that's not my mix. I can't think of a time that that's happened more than when I've sent something to be mastered. It comes back and I'm like, what the hell happened? Well,

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):

That was another reason I was mixing the Wild Hearts album, and that got sent away to a few different places and it kept coming back like, well, it's not even recognizable as my mix. What the hell have they done to it? Or the other one was, would've done nothing to it at all. It's just a little bit louder. And I started to think, well, it almost seems in a way, it's not how good the mastering engineer is technically, it's how much he understands the source of what you're doing. And I guess a lot of mastering engineers don't understand extreme

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):

Music. That's something that I noticed is that it's a lot like musicians. I've noticed that when I went to school for music, the musicians were typically great at everything except for metal, or they're great at metal and nothing else. And with a lot of mastering engineers, it's almost like, and I don't know if this is true anymore, but I know that I felt like it was true for a little while

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):

In

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):

The mid two thousands.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):

I think you're right. It's not true anymore because there are some fantastic people out there doing great metal masters now. But yeah, going back a while, it wasn't so good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):

Yeah, some guys would do only metal and they would be okay, but generally I would sometimes have to work with a dude who has all these major label pop credits and rap credits. And you think that because he's been on all these huge records that he would do a great job and you give him a metal record and it sounds like garbage

Speaker 4 (01:06:13):

Because

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):

They made the low end as big as they would on a hip hop record or something, and they just didn't get it and they didn't care to get it either. But now I definitely do think that's changed. And I know some mastering engineers now, like Michael Legian, I don't know if you know of him, but he's phenomenal. Who really, really understand the genre. They get it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:40):

Yeah, there are some guys, I mean, I still prefer to send my stuff away and have it mastered if I can. I think it's always good to have somebody else have a different look at it in a different room and different gear and a different head space. They can really pull something out of it that you didn't quite get, especially if you have a good relationship with them. I mean, I've got a good relationship with several mastering guys who I would love to send everything to, but unfortunately, budgets don't allow it a lot of the time, which is another reason why I do my own mastering because with the budgets available, these people are going to go to somebody who's not the best because that's all they can afford and it's going to come back like garbage as you say. I mean, there's one guy in particular old school, real old school guy, Kevin Metcalf in London.

(01:07:39):

He's fantastic and he does every kind of music and he taught me so much, not just about mastering, but actually about mixing as well. He would always give me a really good critique on my mixes. And the one day I was with him and he was mastering this album, and he used to hover over the board with his hands out, ready to dive in. And this one day he didn't dive in, he didn't touch anything, he just sat back and crossed his arms and he listened to the whole song and he said that my friend is a perfect mix. All I'm going to do is turn it up a little bit. I thought, bloody ow I've made it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):

I know what you mean, man. That's like the greatest validation ever is having a mastering engineer tell you that they didn't need to correct anything.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):

And I would dearly love to work with him all the time, but he is just prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately,

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):

Some of the best guys are for sure. I remember back in the day in 2005 or six, my band had Ted Jensen master a record. I think it was like $5,000 for

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):

The

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):

One day. Wow. For a four hour session. Wow. He did a great job though. I fucking hope so. Yeah, he definitely did a phenomenal job. But holy shit. I mean, that's what the label wanted. And I wasn't going to argue with them, but I actually flew there for it. And literally he worked for four hours, did a few things, and that was that boom done. But it was also a Colin Richardson mix. So it was a combination of really good elements put together. Yeah. So I've seen that You've got a pretty interesting technique when you're miking drums where you put a mic over the top of the drummer's head, then you run it through some sort of compressor, like an 1176 or something. And I have a similar technique, so I'm curious, could you talk about that a little and where that comes from? And

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):

It came from a really old engineer at the BBC in London. We were doing a radio session and we got there late and we didn't have a lot of time to set up. And also the other thing with it being the BB, C, it's all a union. I wasn't allowed to touch anything. I could tell them what I wanted, but I couldn't actually touch even the microphones or the mixing desk or nothing. I wasn't in the union. So they set everything up, they put all the mics on the kit, and I was saying, I want this mic here and this mic here. And then the guy threw a Coles over the top of the drummer's head, and I'd seen it done before, but I kind of chuckled and went, yeah, it's not the Beatles. And he said, no, no. He said, we'll get half the sound off this mic. I went, oh, well, yeah, I'm sure you do with your little lightweight indie bands, but this is something a bit different. And sure enough, we went into the control room and he spanked it with 1176, and I went, oh my God. It was half the sound at the top of the kit Anyway, so yeah, I've done it ever since.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):

And that was with a Kohl's, but is that what you normally do it with?

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):

I don't have one, unfortunately. I keep trying to push for that, but I have to clear all my budgets with somebody else. Unfortunately, it's pretty high up on the list. I think they'll come soon. But the thing is, you can't buy one can you? You've got to buy a pair.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):

Yeah. So no, I still don't have a pair yet, but I've got various other ribbons or I'll just kind of emulate that kind of ribbon sound just by softening

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):

Off the top end. Honestly, and this is going to sound crazy, but I've been doing that technique with an SM seven B.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):

And it sounds great.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):

Yeah, I can see that. I've done it with a 58 a few times.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):

Yeah, I could see that working. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):

And when it's a more trashy punky vibe. But yeah, I've got, I can't remember what it's called. It's one of the SE electronics, which they're okay for cheap mics. I wouldn't exactly rant about them, but the ribbon one, I stuck that up and I was like, oh, actually that's pretty good. It has that same kind of vibe about it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):

There was something else that I was hearing that you did, which was something that I've done and gotten great results with this. So I wanted to hear your take. I heard that sometimes when miking up a guitar cab, you'll use a 57, but then you'll put some audix drum mics on as well.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):

Yeah, that was a pure experiment, just because I'd bought the whole case of the drum mics, all of them, and I just wanted to see compare them. Oh, what's it like compared to a 57? So yeah, it stuck the whole lot up, including a D six. No, actually I didn't put the D six on that time. I have tried it a few times with more doomy stuff. If you want to get that bottom end, it gets it. But yeah, the D two, the D four had those, what is it? I can't remember what. I'm terrible with numbers. Me too. Yeah. But we had three, four different or spikes set up in a flower shape around the cone. It looked ridiculous. And it was funny, actually, there was an engineer friend of mine came in and he said, oh, can I take a picture of that? I said, yeah, sure. And he put it up on the sneak forum and everybody jumped on it and went, who the fuck's this idiot? He obviously doesn't know what he's doing. That's never going to work. And that turned out to be the guitar sound for the Napalm album, which was spectacular. I've got to say,

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):

I love it when people criticize something that they can't hear. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:13:57):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):

I mean, one thing is that there's a very famous picture of someone miking up a head, an amp head instead of cabinet. And obviously you can make fun of that, but always blows my mind on these forums when people talk, they give criticism about things that they can't fucking hear. How can you talk about it if you can't hear it? The hell's wrong with you.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):

Yeah, yeah. But the thing was though, I only intended to use the 57 and one of the others maybe, and we kept putting them up and listening to each one and going, oh, that one sounds pretty good. That one sounds pretty good. And I accidentally turned three on at the same time, and Mitch Harris, who was playing guitar, he said, oh my God, dude, that sounds fantastic. And I said, no, it doesn't. It's just louder. He went, no, no, no, it sounds really good. And I said, no, you just fooled into thinking that because it just got louder. And he went, no, listen. Oh, okay. Alright, let's gain match this up. And I said, you're right, it does sound better. I went, oh my God, three mics. I really don't want three mics on there, but okay. Yeah, alright, sounds good. And then just taking the piss. I said, okay, well why don't we just put all of them on then? And I turned them all on and we all went, holy shit. Sounds amazing. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):

Sometimes it does.

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):

I said, no, but it can't, it possibly, there is no way that all those mics can be in phase. And of course they weren't in phase, but the different phase cancellations just somehow miraculously made this awesome sound. And we spent about five, 10 minutes just adjusting the balance between the mics and yeah. Which record was this on again? I can't remember which album it was now. Now I want to know. It was either, I think it was Time Weights for No Slave, because I want to hear those guitars sound now. I think it was that one. Yeah, it must've

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):

Been. Okay. Well, I'm going to check that out now. I want to know.

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):

Yeah, I mean, I've tried it since and I've never ever got it to work ever again. So this was just, the Stars aligned was pure fluke, absolute fluke. And honestly, I taped off the whole area. I wouldn't let anybody in the room. I said, if one of those mics moves an inch, we've lost the sound. Nobody go in there. And I said, come on, dude, we've got to track all the guitars today. He was like, what? I went, alright, okay. I'll give you two days, but we've got to track all the guitars right now because if anything changes, it's going to be ruined.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):

Speaking of that, am I correct that you own a Kemper?

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):

Yes. You see now? Yeah, that would be the first thing I would do would be profile. It

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):

Did sleep turn you onto that? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:16:57):

He did. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):

Because he's the one who turned me onto it as well.

Speaker 3 (01:17:01):

He just got it and he just used it for the first time and he said, have you heard of this? And I said, well, yeah, but isn't it just another pod? And he went, no, it's really not. No, not even close. So I checked out his went Wow. And then got in touch with them and they were very kind enough to give us a deal and we got two of them further. Napalm album. So you get yours? No, no. They were out, but it was very early doors.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):

Yeah. So 2013

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):

Probably. Yeah, I think it was. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):

That was when he maybe 14.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):

Right around then. Yeah. That was when he told us about it, and I immediately got one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):

Oh, it is the best piece of tech that's been invented in the last decade for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):

So right now, the moment that if you got that guitar sound now, you would immediately model it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:03):

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):

I don't blame you.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):

And just hope that it would with the amount of gain that was on it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):

Well, I've heard that some of the newer firmwares, I haven't done it in a while, but some of the newer firmwares are much more capable. Oh, they can deal with the noise. I've heard that. They can.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):

Oh, great.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):

Yeah, I've been waiting for that. Don't quote me on that, but

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):

I'm so reluctant to upgrade. I let everybody else do it first.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):

Yes, I understand.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):

And see what goes wrong. But yeah, I think I'm probably about two years out of date, probably on mine.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):

Well, I remember 2014 was the year that they figured out the low end finally. That was a big problem at first that you

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):

Yeah, you always had to dial in the extra afterwards.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):

Yeah. And I found there was a firmware update in 2014 that kind of fixed it to a degree.

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):

Well, that's why I'm reluctant to do any updates because I'm so happy with how mine sounds now.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):

Ja, don't mess with it. Yeah, buy a new one.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):

Well, yeah, I do need another one actually, because all the LEDs are going on mine. So

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):

Yeah, put the new firmware on the new one.

Speaker 3 (01:19:17):

I hope they'll give me another one. Well not give me, but give me a deal on another one.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):

Yeah. I don't see why they wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):

You

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):

Never know.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):

Yeah. People are giving away less and less these days. True. Understandably.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):

Well, amp Sims have also come a really long way. So I think that even back then there weren't that many amps Im options and so

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):

Not any good ones. No.

Speaker 2 (01:19:43):

Yeah. So Kemper was the best of the best, and I still think it's the best, but your regular software AMP Sims now are much better than they used to be. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):

What was I using the other day? I can't remember what it was called. A 51 50 simulator revolver, or was it?

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):

No, TSEX 50.

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):

Yeah, that's the one.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):

Yeah, that one.

Speaker 3 (01:20:06):

Wow. I've got some great sounds out of that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):

Yeah, man, that's a really good one. I recommend. Anybody listening, go download that one. Isn't that one free or 50 bucks or something?

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):

No, I think you can use the demo and it's less limited than most demos are.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):

I think it just doesn't save, but yeah, I mean, the whole thing is only like 140 bucks or something. Really? That's pretty good for 50 or 50.

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:37):

Well worth it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):

So let's talk about your techniques for recording metal vocals. First of all, do you have any way of dealing with vocalists to make sure that they don't totally blow themselves out the way that you pace your sessions or anything?

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):

Well, that's something you have to kind of ease into gently. I mean, obviously this is another good point, like we were saying earlier about working with people repeatedly, what people are capable of. But when you work with somebody for the first time, I always say to them, please don't push yourself too hard. And you are going to know before I am. If you are pushing yourself too hard, if you can feel it, if you're feeling hot, if you're feeling rough, then stop. Just stop. Don't be a hero. It's usually about 10, 15 minutes later that I start to hear it. And by that point, it could be too late. They might have already shot themselves and they might be okay the next day, or it might, but they also might not. Yeah, they might not. I mean, people who have massively different recovery rates. I've worked with some people who once they're shot, that's it for a week, they won't sing again for a week. And when you're booked in for an album session, that's devastating to a session, you're still doing vocals right up to the last day of a mix, which, okay, it's totally possible, but it's not really what I want to be doing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):

It's hard to mix and track at the same time, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):

Yeah, I don't like it. Sometimes it's okay, depending on what it is. If it's just like, oh, I want to stick in this little extra backing vocal or I want to stick in this, then fine. But when it's major parts, I really would like it all done before I start to mix. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):

Absolutely. What about your vocal chain? Do you hit a lot of hardware on the way in?

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):

Well, I've got to say I'm quite an oddball in the fact that I don't

Speaker 2 (01:22:44):

Like SM Sevens. Actually, it's just me on the podcast this time. But Joey Sturge is my partner in this. He hates SM Sevens too.

Speaker 3 (01:22:55):

I just don't, I keep trying it because for years everybody's told me, well, SM seven B, it's the aggressive vocal, and I keep trying it and I just don't get on with it. It just doesn't capture what I'm looking for.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):

It's a very polarizing mic in our Facebook group. I've noticed people are divided on it either. I love it. I think it's great. And I know a lot of engineers who think it's great, but I know just as many engineers who fucking hate it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:28):

I mean, I have used it and it's worked, but far less times than it has worked, and I do still keep trying it. I'll always put one up when I'm working with a new vocalist, obviously it's all down to the voice. The voice has to suit the mic or the mic has to suit the voice. So I do still keep trying it, and a couple of times I'm like, yeah, okay, that's good. But I think people have this idea that it is just the mic to use and they'll put it up and just go with it without trying anything else because they've been told that's the mic to use.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):

I don't think you should do that with anything audio, honestly, no, except for a click track. But even then some bands sound better without a click, but I always shoot out various mics with vocalists too, unless I already recorded them before and we have already done it and we know what he sounds great with, if it's a repeat client or something. But I totally agree, you shouldn't just go with an SM seven because someone said you should. Yeah. I mean, what do you like instead of it?

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):

Most of the time we've got an old 87, which we had recapped, and it sounds phenomenal on pretty much everybody. I've used that on so many records now. It just works. You put it up and it is not like a wow microphone. You don't instantly go, wow, that sounds fantastic, but it just covers all bases. And when you come to mix, you just slide it into the mix and it just works straight away. Don't have to EQ much. A bit of brightening maybe, but it's not like some of the new mics where you put it up and you go, wow, that's really impressive. But then when it comes to the mix, you're like, shit, I've got to EQ the fuck out of this to get it to work.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):

Do you ever find that an 87 is a little harsh on screaming?

Speaker 3 (01:25:30):

Not if they're not too close. Luckily we've got a really good room so that they can stand back and we don't get too much of the room sound in there. But yeah, I mean, if somebody's right on top of it, then yeah, it's not very pleasant sometimes. But then sometimes if I'm doing a combination of clean and aggressive screaming vocals, sometimes I'll just give 'em a 58, just scream into that. All the napalm stuff is done with a 58.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):

I think that 58 is one of those classic mics that just end up on so many heavy recordings. And I mean, they used on Metallica recordings.

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):

Yeah, I think people would be amazed how many albums are done with a 58. People don't think it's good enough because it's not expensive and it's not a condenser and it's not or whatever. But I mean, you think, how many shows have you been to? And nine times out of 10, the guys shouting down a 58 and it sounds great, so why not? I mean, of course a lot of it comes down to technique. If you've got somebody who shoves it in their face and swallows it, it's not going to sound very pleasant. But somebody really has got good mic technique then the 58 sounds fantastic. So do

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):

You hit any compressors on the way in?

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):

Awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:27:02):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):

Man, I love hardware compression on vocals on the way in. I don't understand how people who don't do that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):

Well, the thing is, because I was brought up in the tape days with limited outboard, you had to do it on the way in because you had to do everything on the way in because there wasn't enough compressors and EQs and gates to do it on the way out. So you had to mix as you recorded kind of thing, or at least do half the work. And I still do. I commit everything to tape. I still call it to tape. Yeah. I mean I EQ and compress everything on the way in.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):

What are your go-tos for that?

Speaker 3 (01:27:48):

I'm going into either usually the Chandler EMI channel with the eq, or I've got a Neve something or other, I can't remember the number. And then Tube Tech C one B, proper one. And I'm also loving now the warm audio 76, and I Warm audio is a very cool company. I love it. The 1176 is awesome, and it chained the two together, go preamp to 1176 to the Tube Tech and just do a little bit with each on the way in, and it's smooth as hell.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):

So three stages. How many DB have gain reduction in total on average, do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:28:39):

Probably at least three, four on each?

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):

Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:28:43):

No, no, actually probably a little bit more on the 76 and a little bit less on the Tube Tech because there's something wrong with our tube tech. We've had it looked at, it's got too much gain, too much compression and too much gain to it. We sent it back to whoever deals with them now, and they had a look at it and they said, well, everything's as it should be. But even when you're on two to one, it sounds like you're absolutely slamming it. And I've used plenty of tube text. I know that they're not usually like that, but for some reason ours is just super aggressive and I love it. I don't want to get it fixed.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):

So I was about to say, nothing you're saying sounds like a bad thing.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):

No, it's really good. Really good. I use it on snare drums and vocals and it's fantastic. So

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):

I've got a few questions here from the audience that I wanted to ask you. So Brooke Johnson was wondering, how would you go about capturing and channeling the intensity of a band like Napalm Death without losing the clarity and the articulation?

Speaker 3 (01:29:58):

Actually, I've got to say, I don't really consider that my skill, but theirs, they're just that good. Yeah, I've always joked, I said to Barney that he doesn't really need a microphone. He could just scream down the cable and it would get in. He's that intense, and he does his vocals in the control room right next to me, and it's punishing. I mean, he's spitting all over me screaming in my ears, and it really is punishing. And yeah, I mean, that's why he can do it just with a 58 in his hand. No headphones in the control room, just fucking go for it. But also, it is how much they push when they play. They push down on their instruments so hard. The intensity of what they're putting in is so brutal that it is very easy for me to capture. All you've got to do is make sure that takes are tight and leave enough space for everything to happen. I mean, the base sound is huge. We call it the tractor. It sounds like it's diesel powered. And that alone could take up the whole mixed space. So you have to carve at it pretty heavily with the EQ to make some space for everything else. So yeah, I guess that would be my part of it, is just carving everything up and making space for each other to let it come through so that it's not white noise.

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):

But if they weren't already badass at what they do, no amount of carving would help. No, no, it comes from them. It really does. So Rufuss Ambler is asking, how does your mixing workflow change from working on studio material to say, mixing the Big four live show,

Speaker 3 (01:31:55):

You have to have a bit of a different head space and a different workflow because your end goal is different. I think it's a mistake to try and make a live show sound like a studio production. I think you need to leave a bit more of the raw dirt in it and not try and clean it up too much. Because obviously when you go and see a live show, it's blaring at you at a hundred plus DB and you've got flashing lights and people screaming all around you, and you've probably had a few beers. And so listening to that show at home is going to be a very different experience, and you've got to try and mix it to capture some of that live excitement so that it doesn't turn into a dull experience in your living room. So yeah, I guess you kind of focus on different things, especially with something like the Big four.

(01:32:53):

I mean, you've got amazing full stadium micing. I think there was seven, no, five different positions, I think it was, of Crowd Micing all around the stadium. It's amazing. I try and get as much as that in as possible. I mean, ultimately, I've got to say Andy Snoop did the final mix, but from my experience with mixing other live stuff, you try and leave in as much of that crowd vibe as possible, even if it does make it a little bit messy and blurry at times, it kind of gives you that feel. Whereas obviously studio workflow is all about precision and a different vibe completely. I hope that answers the question.

Speaker 2 (01:33:42):

Yeah, for sure. Eric Burt was wondering, when you were tracking guitars for Abra, was your approach in finding tones different knowing that there would be so much orchestration to work around?

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):

Yeah, yeah. It was actually quite difficult in that sense, trying to predict exactly the amount of density of what was going to be on top of it. And it also, it's very difficult with them as well, getting tones, because the riffs are so different from section to section and song to song. You get some good metal chugging going on, but then you'll get the speed pick black metal stuff. And a lot of the time that's not done as an overdub. It's all done as part of the rhythm track. So you kind of have to find a tone that works for all riffs and is powerful, but not too overbearing so that it takes up all the room where the orchestra's going to sit, and eventually, plus all the keyboards and samples and everything else. I mean, demo really is one of the densest productions I've ever worked on. Studio and live. There's so much going on.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):

Yeah, it's kind of incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:35:02):

But we got a great guitar tone on the first day, and then the amp blew up, so we had to ditch that and get another one. What do you mean it

Speaker 2 (01:35:14):

Blew up?

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):

I dunno. It fried. It just fried. Oh man, that sucks. And the guitar tech had a look at it and he just said, I can't fix it now. We need parts. And it's not just valves, something's gone.

Speaker 2 (01:35:29):

That sucks. Yeah, Kemper, that was pre Kemper.

Speaker 3 (01:35:33):

Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have a Kemper.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):

Yeah, that was what, 2010 nine?

Speaker 3 (01:35:38):

Was it? Really? Bloody hell.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):

Yeah. Right. Time flies, man. It does. It really does. So Charles Elliot was wondering what was it like working with Bruer? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):

Difficult. No, it's cool. I mean, obviously most of the guys I know really well, but it's always difficult when you've got things that are done over such a long space of time in different studios. And I mean, some of the people didn't even, weren't in the studio at the same time, weren't in the same studio at all. Some of it was recorded years later, things were rerecorded, different guitar tones, different vocal sounds, and it was a little bit of a mess. I say when I got hold of it, it took a lot of smoothing out to try and make it sound like a cohesive record. But yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):

I can only imagine with that type of band getting something from various sessions.

Speaker 3 (01:36:47):

And also because they're all such experienced musicians, they've all got a really strong idea of how they want their individual parts to come across. I mean, again, they trusted me to do it, but they had a specific idea of what they wanted with Barker's drums. He said he wasn't particularly happy with the studio where they recorded the drums and it didn't really come out with the tones that he wanted. So he said, can you help me out here and get it to somewhere closer to where I want it? So I worked on the drum sound with him, and he was like, yeah, that's fantastic. I love it. But then other people in the band suddenly went, well, what's happened to the drum sound? Oh, we kind of got used to how it was. I'm like, yeah, but that's not how he wanted it. And when you got big individual characters in a band, you want them all to be happy. You want them all to have their own character in their instrument and they're playing. So yeah, you've got to fit a lot of big characters into the mix.

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):

So maybe that's the bigger band version of that ego thing we were talking about earlier where maybe it's not that you're dealing with ego problems, but you are dealing with big personalities.

Speaker 3 (01:38:07):

Yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't. I wouldn't say it was ego shit. It just, people are really good at what they do, and they want to sound a certain way, and

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):

They're identifiable. They have their identity.

Speaker 3 (01:38:23):

Exactly. They want to be identifiable in what they're doing, which is totally understandable and totally acceptable. It just makes it a little bit harder work. But we did it. We got through it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:37):

So here's one from Jack Hartley. Can you give some insight into the work you did with the Berserker?

Speaker 3 (01:38:42):

Oh, wow. Actually, I didn't do a great deal with them in a way. I was more a kind of advisor for most of the time. I did mix the one live DVD thing, but I met them on tour in America. They were supporting Napalm on a US tour. I loved it. It was so crazy. Like, what the hell is this?

Speaker 2 (01:39:10):

Yeah, I remember when I heard them for the first time, it was like, oh my God, what the hell is going on? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:39:18):

And yeah, I mean, I got really good friends with him, particularly Luke, the main dude. And we still stay in touch occasionally. He's back in Australia now. But from that point on, anything he did, he would always send it to me and go, dude, what do you think to this? And how can I make this any better? I can't remember which album it was. And he said, I've done the whole album with no microphones. I said, well, what do you mean? Okay, what? You've programmed the drums? You went, no, no, I played him an electric kit. Okay, yeah, guitars are all done Di okay. Yeah, yeah. I said, but what do you mean vocals? You can't do vocals without a microphone. He said, well, I dunno if you'd call you a microphone. He said, it's the pinhole mic in the back of my laptop. Oh my God. I listened to the vocal tracks on their own, and I said, what sort of reverb on it? He said, no, it's not reverb. He said, I did it in the bathroom. I thought it sounded really good. So yeah, I didn't exactly produce any of the albums. I was just more of an advisor, or not even advisor. I was just the guy who went, what the fuck have you done?

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):

I've never heard. I've never heard of, I did it through the laptop, Mike, in the bathroom, because it sounded better before,

Speaker 3 (01:40:46):

Actually, in context of the album. It works.

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):

I think that if you've never heard the Berserker before, you need to hear them literally insane the name. They have the perfect band name for what they sound like.

Speaker 5 (01:41:00):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:02):

So here's another one. This one is from Isaiah Bu Hay. I probably totally butchered that name. What was your biggest challenge during Apex Predator? Easy Meet. That album is such a masterpiece.

Speaker 3 (01:41:16):

Wow. Yeah, there was a lot of challenges in that one actually, because when we started talking about it, they said, we've really, really got to push it hard on this one. And I said, what? Like we haven't before. And they said, yeah, but it's got to be different. We've got to come up with some new angles and incorporate all the things that we love, all the things we've ever done. We've got to incorporate all of it into this one album. And there was so many All of it. Yeah, everything, everything. The experimental, the brutal, super fast, punky, proper metal, everything, just all encompassing. Napalm, I don't want to use the compilation word, but a condensation of Napalm. Then we were working on the track, apex Predator, and they said, we just want noise. It's not musical. There's no riffs particularly. We just want noises, industrial scrapings and metal sounds and everything.

(01:42:18):

And we got a bunch of milk churns and dust bins and pieces of metal and pipes and baseball bats and drumsticks and all kinds of shit just set up in the live room. And we just went and beat the hell out of it all and recorded it in a complete insanity. No particular sort of plan or beat in mind. And then they buggered off on tour for a couple of weeks, and they went, well sort that out while we're away. So I went through everything we'd done and arranged it into beats, and we'd done a load of noise with Shane on the base where he wasn't playing notes in particular, was just making these really weird, distorted unearthly noises. And I had a library of about an hour of that stuff. And I went through that and found pieces that really excited me and just pieced it all together as a track.

(01:43:17):

And I always imagined that it would be the outro to the album, because usually the Experimentals were always at the end of the album. But they came back and Barney heard it, and he said, I've got a vocal thing that will work really well over that. And we did the vocals and started adding other stuff like cello. There's some low piano notes in there, and there's even a vacuum cleaner in there. Got to have the vacuum cleaner. I was doing the Hoovering in the studio just tidying up one night, and I thought this, it's actually the motor in this. It's fucked. It sounds like it's on the way out. It's making a real grinding noise, going to have to get a new vacuum. And I went, oh, hang on a minute. Oh, I'm going to mic this up. It sounds really good. And I micd it up and just ran it through some distortion and went, holy shit. That's amazing. So yeah, there's a lot of the sound in there is actually our fucks vacuum cleaner from the studio. But yeah, we worked on it so much and everybody was enjoying it so much, working on something so different. And then I remember one day Shane just said, this is going to be the album opener. I went, holy shit, dude. Are you sure? That's pretty brave? And he was like, well, why not? Why not? It says volumes about where we're going and what we're intending. So yeah, it ended up being the first track on the album and my favorite.

Speaker 2 (01:44:44):

And you put a vacuum cleaner on every album since then?

Speaker 3 (01:44:48):

No, I will.

Speaker 2 (01:44:51):

Can't have a metal record without the vacuum cleaner. So final question. This one is from John Ner, and he's wondering, what's a battle you don't want to deal with when recording bands past or present?

Speaker 3 (01:45:05):

Good. Wow. God. What do you think he means by that? And that could be so many different things. Well, what do you think he means by that? It's quite a difficult question in a lot of ways, actually. Do you know the thing I most hate about dealing with sessions is mates of the band. Yes,

Speaker 2 (01:45:29):

Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:45:30):

And not just because they dunno studio etiquette, but they can actually really poison the minds of the band. It's like we were saying earlier about knowing when to speak up and knowing what's going to be the right thing to say for the good of a session. Obviously, mates of the band don't have a clue about any of that. And they'll come in, they'll put their beer down on the corner of the mixing desk. I mean, I'm pretty strict on that kind of shit, obviously. But you can't have eyes in the back of your head all the time. A few times I've come back from taking a whiz and find somebody sprawled all over the mixing desk with a pint in their hand. What the fuck are you doing? Get out. I've had other people on the phone behind me, and somebody one day even actually asked me, could I turn the music down because they were having a phone conversation.

(01:46:24):

Oh man, you're in my fucking studio. Go outside. Also fighting. Fighting is a pretty big one to deal with that. That's a battle in the true sense of the word. A battle I didn't want to deal with. I've had a few bands that have had punch up in the studio. Oh, like physical fights? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Proper fists and weapons. Weapons, huh? Well, a pint glass or a bottle or whatever they've got in their hand, launched across the road. That's a weapon. Yeah. I've had things thrown at me and a tambourine in the back of their head once. That wasn't very nice.

Speaker 2 (01:47:03):

I know a producer who, he's got a temper on him, and he got sick of this one vocalist, who I guess never, he showed up to the session not having written any lyrics at all for the whole hour, like nothing. And this producer got so mad at him that he threw a can of Dr. Pepper in his head, but a closed can, like full can, and this dude is strong too. He could kill someone with that. I've only ever punched two people that I've worked with only. So what caused that?

Speaker 3 (01:47:45):

Which is not bad in 20 odd years. No. Yeah. One per decade.

Speaker 2 (01:47:50):

What causes you to punch somebody in the studio?

Speaker 3 (01:47:54):

Well, actually, by the time I did hit them, we weren't in the studio anymore. It was afterwards, they'd wound me up so much. There was one guy who wasn't even in the band when I worked with them. He joined later, and I ended up on a tour with him, and he just kept saying to me, why wouldn't you mix the album? And I said, well, because the record company offered me like five pounds in a pickled egg to do it. And I said, no

Speaker 2 (01:48:24):

Pickled egg.

Speaker 3 (01:48:25):

And he said, yeah, but you mixed that one song. I said, yeah, I did. And I never got paid for it. And it shouldn't have even ended up on the album, but it did end up on the album. It was the best mix out of all of them. And he said, oh, you fucking rockstar producer. Fucking you've, you've ruined my album. I was like, you are not even on it, dude. You weren't in the band then. What the fuck are you talking about? And he continued to harass me and other people on the tour, and in fact, he got two beatings on that tour. But yeah, one day he just pushed it too far and I lost it, which doesn't happen very often as anybody that knows me will tell you I'm the most mild and meek mannered kind of guy you could possibly meet.

Speaker 2 (01:49:05):

Sounds like that guy needed a perspective shift.

Speaker 3 (01:49:10):

Yeah, I shifted it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:14):

Amazing. Well, Russ, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been excellent speaking with you for the past couple of hours.

Speaker 3 (01:49:23):

You too, man. I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:24):

Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:49:27):

I'm sure I've waffled a load of bullshit, but you can edit it out.

Speaker 2 (01:49:33):

I don't think there'll be much editing on this one. Cool. The

Speaker 1 (01:49:36):

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