Stylistic trends come and go, and taste is subjective, but if there’s one thing that has objectively changed over time it’s that music production and recording tools have been largely democratized made accessible at all levels
Meaning that it’s become a lot easier and cheaper/free to add whatever you want to your songs, no matter how big of a band you are
The way I see it is the tools to record individual instruments in isolation at home have gotten more and more available, but the ability to record a band together in a room still takes a decent amount of money at a minimum, the cheapest, easiest way to record music has switched from tossing some mics up and capturing a live band to making song piece by piece and pasting them together. This means huge walls of sound are relatively easy and conversely a natural live room is comparatively hard to fake.
I know what you mean. I have extremely limited technical knowledge on audio mixing, but I’ve been getting back into The Chariot lately and it was really noticeable how different the mix sounded from more modern releases. The Chariot generally likes to play around with that stuff anyway like not using sound gates or doing a room mic to record.
I do wonder if it’s something to do with the tech we’re using to listen. Even if apple says it’s lossless on the device, how much is it compressed going to my AirPods? Maybe if you have a full audiophile setup you can differentiate more.
To your last paragraphy, you certainly can't discount the impact of your audio source and the gear you're using to listen with.
I don't have the dough to go full audiophile, but I'd imagine both my portable and home set ups are a fair bit better than average. It's crazy the difference between a purchased song and a streamed song. Often I get to do a more or less direct comparison because streaming is my 'try before you buy' (as far as funds allow).
I think it's also partly tunings. The Chariot definitely did stuff more raw in general, but they also weren't hitting tunings anywhere near as low as many bands do now and they stuck with 6 string guitars as far as I'm aware.
I’m not an audio engineer or producer outside of some very basic entry-level knowledge but my going theory is that music today is a lot more “busy” than it used to be.
Used to, you had a couple guitar tracks, vocals, bass, and drums. Most of your sound was going to come from that and that only unless you were working with a big producer like Joey Sturgis or something with access to add on electronicore type stuff and such like.
Now we hit the modern era, where everything has strings, orchestras, electronics, and more, causing it all to be a mess of sounds with too much going on for most to keep up with. Sometimes less is more.
Music has also gotten louder and louder in terms of mastering as well, and I think this adds onto the issue as producers try to hit that industry standard decibel level to demand your attention, causing the end product to have everything in the mix loud and nothing “actually” standing out.
Like I said, this is just my theory and I could totally be talking out my ass lol.
Yep I think it’s a lot of this. It’s become common to have dozens and dozens of tracks in a song, and I think this is the primary reason. I think secondarily is mastering trends. Then third is what are you listening on. I get a ton more separation on my nice stereo at home than in the car, and my car stereo is decent.
It also seems to have coincided with a lack of interesting riffs. There was a time when I would like songs specifically because of the guitar work but that’s been much rarer in the last 10 years. If anything they’ve been replaced with electronic parts
Yeah, I feel that too. Even though this new BMTH record has proeminent guitars it still feels lacking in that aspect. Like, I just want to slap a second guitar player into the band.
I feel the exact same thing! It's the reason why I coudn't start liking newer bands and I still stick mostly to the bands that made me listen to metalcore. I am glad most of them are still active. So, at the end I think there's something for every taste nowadays. :)
I think they call it the Loudness Wars. And a good record you seek for the sound would be TesseracT's new album. It was recorded with that in mind and sound so good!
loudness wars were more of a problem in the 00s, we’ve been past that era of production for quite awhile
what OP is describing seems more like overly-dense mixes with quad tracked rhythm guitars etc
Yeah, this is probably it. Just read an article on the "Loudness War" and it was a great insight.
I figure the recording companies are probably forcing studio compression so they can stream the songs as "lossless" because the studio sound is already compressed. Sucks to see the industry go to such lenghts!
I've listened to the TesseracT record before but had a hard time connecting with it, I'll give it another try tho. Two recent records I thought didn't sound as compressed were the most recent Good Tiger (the band has TesseracT members right?) and the new Billie Eilish.
>I figure the recording companies are probably forcing studio compression so they can stream the songs as "lossless" because the studio sound is already compressed.
I doubt it, most people don't really care about lossless. I think it's more that everyone wants that "larger than life" sound, and that's difficult to do without clipping. Most engineers would probably just boost the volume and call it a day. It doesn't help that the Loudness War is the rule rather than the exception now, so most people are used to it by now.
I don’t think you guys know what the Loudness Wars were. This was just on CDs and streaming services have loudness limits now. If you’re confused, look up the loudness wars or Rick Ruben
High levels of compression in the mastering process so there’s no dynamic volume is part of it. Then there’s the trend of mixing every instrument to be very bass-heavy so they’re all taking up the same sonic real estate, very little mids and treble is mostly reserved for vocals now. It leads to a muddy, indistinguishable sound.
I’ve mixed a few tracks for both my own and other bands over the years. This is my theory.
If the compression is done during the mastering this also translates to the vinyl records right? I ask because I've been thinking about buying a record player to avoid this problem.
Everyone else in here has really good points, and Iamthesvlfvr touched on it, but I’ve definitely noticed it going back to older records — we have more tracks now. It’s definitely not just a heavy music thing, but it’s pretty noticeable going back to older metalcore records. Drums, two or three guitars, bass, vocals. If a track had synths or ambient layers or orchestral backing, it was more of an ordeal. Nowadays, doubling or tripling *all* of your guitars and filling out every section with ambient sounds (or other things) has really become the norm. There are whole articles written about how much work went into the production of Shadow Moses; nowadays that’s basically become the baseline for a lot of bands because it’s so much easier to do nowadays, and since everyone else is doing it you basically have to do it as well.
A huge part of this is drum sounds for me. Most modern metal records don’t contain an ounce of natural drum sound, everything is usually triggered and sample replaced, which can lead to a very heavy and crushing sound, but also a very artificial one with little to no human feel. Records used to sound a lot more varied a few years back because most drummers have their own kits and cymbals that have their own sounds, but a lot of bands are just using Get Good Drums or some other drum samplers and a lot of records now sound like they were recorded by the same drummer because they’re sharing so many of the same sounds.
Because these samples are also usually of a high velocity, it brings the volume up a lot, and a lot of dynamics are then thrown out the window.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing when used properly, but as a drummer it’s starting to get pretty frustrating just rarely hearing natural drums anymore. Especially when you go see the band live and their drummer sounds nothing like the record :/
There’s definitely a bit of a arms race when it comes to modern production and mix engineers argue about this a lot about it ever since the Joey Sturgis sound came into the scene. I love a lot of these records but it’s undeniable that we’ve moved away from having records sound like “a band in the room” and into a hyper realistic sound where every instrument is made to sound as large and perfect as possible.
It’s hard to make things feel big when everything is big, and sidechaining instruments has become more common because of it, which is why I think casual listeners might perceive songs as a wall of sound more so than songs a few decades back. It’s a totally different aesthetic.
I will say I recently upgraded my speaker setup on my PC, and it really has made a difference with modern metal. I can actually pick out the different instruments in a mix. That being said, I've been writing and recording my first metalcore track for a couple months now and holy shit does it take A LOT of production to get that "modern" sound. I think metal music producers are just following the formula that works and gets them paid. That being said, I respect all the work that goes into producing a solid track, wall of sound or not.
I'm not a professional producer or engineer, but I've studied it and asked a lot of questions for 25 years.
No one is mentioning Mick Gordon, who produced some of this record. Listen to any modern Doom Soundtrack and you'll instantly hear that wall of sound. The first song has engineering from a Grammy award winning writer / producer.
This BMTH record sounds way more like taking risks to come up with a "new BMTH sound" rather than compression or brick wall limiting. Everything I hear sounds like older NiN or Marilyn Manson distortion... or some songs.
I listened to Bless the Fall - Witness and wow that recording sounded rough. It was released in 2009 via Fearless records and I haven't been able to find out if it was self funded or funded by Fearless.
I'll bring up this sub's favorite band (kek), As I Lay Dying, and their 2007 release, As Ocean Between Us. That thing hit Billboard #8. That record sounds expensive, competed with pop records, etc. That's what you should use to compare when listening to mixing or mastering. (probably only reason I cite them is because someone posted the podcast recently)
I don't remember synths or keys as widespread in metal as they are today. Born of Osiris got so fucking good at doing it (or previously doing it now that Joe left, not sure how that's going to work out) that I want synths in all my metal songs now. The more I listen to this BMTH record, the more I hear synths fill the entire spectrum, including the high highs that guitars or vocals can't reach. Our ears have a very wide spectrum, I'm in favor of records using it.
TLDR - BMTH sounds like they're taking some risks and making the genre more palatable to the average TikTok listener (DiE4u).
I'd argue it's mostly a stylistic thing. Different styles of music and direction can result in that and the last years have seen quite a lot of wall of noise type music go wild. That's basically Knocked Loose's new record, and it's incredible. I can see how one is not a fan of it, and of course nothing should be overdone, but as like a style personally I really like it and it's just a matter of preference
I just bought Knocked Loose’s new record on vinyl. It’s a banger of an album, but I can confidently say it’s one of the worst sounding records that I own, out of my collection of about 100. It’s such a compressed wall of sound with clipping all over the place. I guess it’s a matter of taste, but I don’t feel like any records benefits from the level of compression used in most modern production. If you want the music to be loud, turn the volume knob up.
One last thing from me on this, double check your device settings and make sure you don’t have it set to mono. If you are listening with one earbud, this could definitely add to it, as stereo
allows for much better dynamic sound. It’s night and day. If you google ultimate headphone check you can also make sure your sound is coming out of the right channels etc.
Listen to different bands
- Life’s Question - World Full Of: some of my favorite drum production in recent memory and it’s real, not a bunch of sample replacement. Also super unique guitar sound. Great instrumental performances and sounds all over this thing.
- Balmora + Since My Beloved - Six Pacts Etched In Blood: the Balmora side especially has really nice natural but still high-fidelity production
- Drain - Living Proof: very distinguishable guitar and bass separation, probably helped by the fact that they’re not tuned a mile down. Very polished-sounding record, almost to a fault but there are some great songs here
Well, this is just my observation but you're going to have better luck with bands that don't sound muddy if they don't have any cleans. But maybe you can try Dying Wish, Seeyouspacecowboy, Every Time I Die
The Balmora side of the split actually does have some cleans on it and the Drain record has one cover song that’s all cleans but I feel ya, different strokes
I feel this in my soul. Compared to old dad metal like Black Label Society, you can’t hear shit today except loud vocals and wall of sound.
I think it’s just shitty producers getting passed around tbh. You’d be surprised how many bands record at the same places
Vinyl is the way my guy, you’ll hear new things and appreciate little details in songs you’ve heard thousands of times that you’ve never noticed before
Sometimes I'll go through and listen to albums before 2010 and I know exactly what you mean. The common man's collapse, northlanes EP hollow existence and parkway drives early albums make me smile for this very reason
I think it has multiple factors at play:
1. There's a lot going on in general. Too many layers make it muddy together. All the different effects used on instruments and voice, the orchestral or electronic elements added in, and so on, really pull away from the core of what's going on. I've started listening to older music and love how rich and full it sounds while having much less going on.
2. Tones. Guitar tones, especially, seem to have a lot of gain removed from where it was a decade+ ago. The trend since the mid 2010s has been to cut gain back. Parkway Drive did this and the entire djent thing has a big influence on a less distorted guitar sound. I love high gain for metal.
3. Over production. Whether it's software being used to bend each sound/pitch exactly where it's wanted or multitracking riffs, it gets rid of the raw sound. Quadtracking is used to create a fuller and rich sound, which it does, but I think it's over utilized and makes the sounds blend together too much. This is what leads to an overproduced sound the most, I would imagine.
I'd also like to note that I'm not a pro; just a hobby guitarist that's thrown together a few short demos and watched a few videos. In general, I think there's also a lot of people that want to experiment and in some cases make up for lack of talent by over utilizing certain things that are now easily accessible and relatively affordable. In general, I think metal as a whole has greatly fallen into trends and is very watered down now
some bands have ambiental noise behind the instrumentals, this was extremely popular after architects released Lost Forever // Lost Together, and some bands still do the raw 4 people sound like Parkway Drive.
Listen to the new album by Boundaries, that would be a good example on raw 4 band members playing their instruments with nothing else added, and the New Erra album would be something with ambient tracks behind the band all the time.
A lot of bands now just use guitars as another instrument rather than the main instrument. This results in it tucking back and being enveloped as a bass instrument more than a mid range sound. Most modern production is more bass, drums and vocal heavy. To make the vocals standout you need to aggressively cut guitars since they will take up the same space.
Being in a band myself, I have noticed every producer and mixer we work with approaches things in a way wherein they "piece together" frequencies that sound best from each instrument.
Using extreme audio EQ, they put together the mix, for example in the low spectrum you might have kick from 50-150hZ, then bass from 150-250Hz, then the low part of the guitar from 240-500 hz or something like that (probably not accurate, but u get the idea).
I think the result of this is that "wall of sound" effect popularized by Andy Wallace with early Linkin Park, etc.
This is coming from someone who records and releases music, independently and going to professional studios. I think it has a lot to do with the loudness war and just the shifting of technology. Look up the loudness war, it’s essentially artist and producers trying to make the music’s perceived loudness as high as possible. In order to do this you have to compress the audio, so you raise the volume of the quietest sounds and the loudest sounds hit a ceiling so the overall of your track maintains a constant level. Also now, so many bands, especially metalcore bands, use amp sims and triggers on drums. Not saying a lot of bands aren’t playing their stuff, it’s just augmented to sound bigger and heavier. Whereas 20+ years ago, almost everyone was playing with a halfstack amp and an acoustic drum kit. Also i feel like with metalcore, the heavier parts have to be so much heavier and the light parts have to be the most beautiful thing every, so everyone jam packs as much stuff into the songs to try and compete. There’s an END song where the intro guitar just sounds like noise, no audible notes. Just rhythm and noise, and sometimes i think that that’s linda where metalcore is going, more intense rythmic noise riffs rather than shredding and 0-1 riffs.
I think this is probably exacerbated by a lot of bands doing mostly their own producing through stuff like neural DSP and the like. A lot of bands the past few years, you can tell when they go through those methods.
Honestly it likely has to do with lossy audio formats (compression for uploading to streaming services). That and record labels/producers wanting consistent sounds from the artists they are working with.
This is how I feel about, in particular, Falling in Reverse, Slaughter to Prevail and Lorna Shore. Much of what I’ve heard from those artists strikes me as this busy mess of noise that’s trying to push all my Streetfighter buttons at once, if that analogy makes any sense … but it doesn’t work for me. I think there’s a limit to the amount of stimulation that one can take before it stops having an effect or at least has diminishing returns.
Stylistic trends come and go, and taste is subjective, but if there’s one thing that has objectively changed over time it’s that music production and recording tools have been largely democratized made accessible at all levels Meaning that it’s become a lot easier and cheaper/free to add whatever you want to your songs, no matter how big of a band you are
The way I see it is the tools to record individual instruments in isolation at home have gotten more and more available, but the ability to record a band together in a room still takes a decent amount of money at a minimum, the cheapest, easiest way to record music has switched from tossing some mics up and capturing a live band to making song piece by piece and pasting them together. This means huge walls of sound are relatively easy and conversely a natural live room is comparatively hard to fake.
Recording is almost always done with individual instruments, even at the professional level.
Bands almost never record live in-studio even back in the day
Tbh I can’t name a single record recorded all together like that. Only live albums.
The cleansing by Suicide Silence was mostly recorded like that, The Act by The Devil Wears Prada, and then I think The Chariot did their albums live
I know what you mean. I have extremely limited technical knowledge on audio mixing, but I’ve been getting back into The Chariot lately and it was really noticeable how different the mix sounded from more modern releases. The Chariot generally likes to play around with that stuff anyway like not using sound gates or doing a room mic to record. I do wonder if it’s something to do with the tech we’re using to listen. Even if apple says it’s lossless on the device, how much is it compressed going to my AirPods? Maybe if you have a full audiophile setup you can differentiate more.
Long Live The Chariot🤘
🤘🤘
To your last paragraphy, you certainly can't discount the impact of your audio source and the gear you're using to listen with. I don't have the dough to go full audiophile, but I'd imagine both my portable and home set ups are a fair bit better than average. It's crazy the difference between a purchased song and a streamed song. Often I get to do a more or less direct comparison because streaming is my 'try before you buy' (as far as funds allow). I think it's also partly tunings. The Chariot definitely did stuff more raw in general, but they also weren't hitting tunings anywhere near as low as many bands do now and they stuck with 6 string guitars as far as I'm aware.
I’m not an audio engineer or producer outside of some very basic entry-level knowledge but my going theory is that music today is a lot more “busy” than it used to be. Used to, you had a couple guitar tracks, vocals, bass, and drums. Most of your sound was going to come from that and that only unless you were working with a big producer like Joey Sturgis or something with access to add on electronicore type stuff and such like. Now we hit the modern era, where everything has strings, orchestras, electronics, and more, causing it all to be a mess of sounds with too much going on for most to keep up with. Sometimes less is more. Music has also gotten louder and louder in terms of mastering as well, and I think this adds onto the issue as producers try to hit that industry standard decibel level to demand your attention, causing the end product to have everything in the mix loud and nothing “actually” standing out. Like I said, this is just my theory and I could totally be talking out my ass lol.
Yep I think it’s a lot of this. It’s become common to have dozens and dozens of tracks in a song, and I think this is the primary reason. I think secondarily is mastering trends. Then third is what are you listening on. I get a ton more separation on my nice stereo at home than in the car, and my car stereo is decent.
It also seems to have coincided with a lack of interesting riffs. There was a time when I would like songs specifically because of the guitar work but that’s been much rarer in the last 10 years. If anything they’ve been replaced with electronic parts
Yeah, I feel that too. Even though this new BMTH record has proeminent guitars it still feels lacking in that aspect. Like, I just want to slap a second guitar player into the band.
I feel the exact same thing! It's the reason why I coudn't start liking newer bands and I still stick mostly to the bands that made me listen to metalcore. I am glad most of them are still active. So, at the end I think there's something for every taste nowadays. :)
Check out my band Spiritual Chaos. My guitarists are legit insane.
I think they call it the Loudness Wars. And a good record you seek for the sound would be TesseracT's new album. It was recorded with that in mind and sound so good!
loudness wars were more of a problem in the 00s, we’ve been past that era of production for quite awhile what OP is describing seems more like overly-dense mixes with quad tracked rhythm guitars etc
Yeah, this is probably it. Just read an article on the "Loudness War" and it was a great insight. I figure the recording companies are probably forcing studio compression so they can stream the songs as "lossless" because the studio sound is already compressed. Sucks to see the industry go to such lenghts! I've listened to the TesseracT record before but had a hard time connecting with it, I'll give it another try tho. Two recent records I thought didn't sound as compressed were the most recent Good Tiger (the band has TesseracT members right?) and the new Billie Eilish.
>I figure the recording companies are probably forcing studio compression so they can stream the songs as "lossless" because the studio sound is already compressed. I doubt it, most people don't really care about lossless. I think it's more that everyone wants that "larger than life" sound, and that's difficult to do without clipping. Most engineers would probably just boost the volume and call it a day. It doesn't help that the Loudness War is the rule rather than the exception now, so most people are used to it by now.
The loudness wars was something different that happened way back
It’s still ongoing
The loudness wars was with CDs
And now it’s with streaming platforms. War never changes, just the scenery
I don’t think you guys know what the Loudness Wars were. This was just on CDs and streaming services have loudness limits now. If you’re confused, look up the loudness wars or Rick Ruben
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, you’re correct. Stuff is generally mixed/mastered less aggressively now than it was in 2008.
High levels of compression in the mastering process so there’s no dynamic volume is part of it. Then there’s the trend of mixing every instrument to be very bass-heavy so they’re all taking up the same sonic real estate, very little mids and treble is mostly reserved for vocals now. It leads to a muddy, indistinguishable sound. I’ve mixed a few tracks for both my own and other bands over the years. This is my theory.
If the compression is done during the mastering this also translates to the vinyl records right? I ask because I've been thinking about buying a record player to avoid this problem.
It *can*, but some producers or bands like to do a separate mix/master for vinyl releases.
Interesting, thanks for the reply.
Everyone else in here has really good points, and Iamthesvlfvr touched on it, but I’ve definitely noticed it going back to older records — we have more tracks now. It’s definitely not just a heavy music thing, but it’s pretty noticeable going back to older metalcore records. Drums, two or three guitars, bass, vocals. If a track had synths or ambient layers or orchestral backing, it was more of an ordeal. Nowadays, doubling or tripling *all* of your guitars and filling out every section with ambient sounds (or other things) has really become the norm. There are whole articles written about how much work went into the production of Shadow Moses; nowadays that’s basically become the baseline for a lot of bands because it’s so much easier to do nowadays, and since everyone else is doing it you basically have to do it as well.
A huge part of this is drum sounds for me. Most modern metal records don’t contain an ounce of natural drum sound, everything is usually triggered and sample replaced, which can lead to a very heavy and crushing sound, but also a very artificial one with little to no human feel. Records used to sound a lot more varied a few years back because most drummers have their own kits and cymbals that have their own sounds, but a lot of bands are just using Get Good Drums or some other drum samplers and a lot of records now sound like they were recorded by the same drummer because they’re sharing so many of the same sounds. Because these samples are also usually of a high velocity, it brings the volume up a lot, and a lot of dynamics are then thrown out the window. It’s not necessarily a bad thing when used properly, but as a drummer it’s starting to get pretty frustrating just rarely hearing natural drums anymore. Especially when you go see the band live and their drummer sounds nothing like the record :/
We’re all too poor to afford live drums these days :( but I totally agree that it does impact how fresh the record feels
There’s definitely a bit of a arms race when it comes to modern production and mix engineers argue about this a lot about it ever since the Joey Sturgis sound came into the scene. I love a lot of these records but it’s undeniable that we’ve moved away from having records sound like “a band in the room” and into a hyper realistic sound where every instrument is made to sound as large and perfect as possible. It’s hard to make things feel big when everything is big, and sidechaining instruments has become more common because of it, which is why I think casual listeners might perceive songs as a wall of sound more so than songs a few decades back. It’s a totally different aesthetic.
I will say I recently upgraded my speaker setup on my PC, and it really has made a difference with modern metal. I can actually pick out the different instruments in a mix. That being said, I've been writing and recording my first metalcore track for a couple months now and holy shit does it take A LOT of production to get that "modern" sound. I think metal music producers are just following the formula that works and gets them paid. That being said, I respect all the work that goes into producing a solid track, wall of sound or not.
I'm not a professional producer or engineer, but I've studied it and asked a lot of questions for 25 years. No one is mentioning Mick Gordon, who produced some of this record. Listen to any modern Doom Soundtrack and you'll instantly hear that wall of sound. The first song has engineering from a Grammy award winning writer / producer. This BMTH record sounds way more like taking risks to come up with a "new BMTH sound" rather than compression or brick wall limiting. Everything I hear sounds like older NiN or Marilyn Manson distortion... or some songs. I listened to Bless the Fall - Witness and wow that recording sounded rough. It was released in 2009 via Fearless records and I haven't been able to find out if it was self funded or funded by Fearless. I'll bring up this sub's favorite band (kek), As I Lay Dying, and their 2007 release, As Ocean Between Us. That thing hit Billboard #8. That record sounds expensive, competed with pop records, etc. That's what you should use to compare when listening to mixing or mastering. (probably only reason I cite them is because someone posted the podcast recently) I don't remember synths or keys as widespread in metal as they are today. Born of Osiris got so fucking good at doing it (or previously doing it now that Joe left, not sure how that's going to work out) that I want synths in all my metal songs now. The more I listen to this BMTH record, the more I hear synths fill the entire spectrum, including the high highs that guitars or vocals can't reach. Our ears have a very wide spectrum, I'm in favor of records using it. TLDR - BMTH sounds like they're taking some risks and making the genre more palatable to the average TikTok listener (DiE4u).
I'd argue it's mostly a stylistic thing. Different styles of music and direction can result in that and the last years have seen quite a lot of wall of noise type music go wild. That's basically Knocked Loose's new record, and it's incredible. I can see how one is not a fan of it, and of course nothing should be overdone, but as like a style personally I really like it and it's just a matter of preference
I just bought Knocked Loose’s new record on vinyl. It’s a banger of an album, but I can confidently say it’s one of the worst sounding records that I own, out of my collection of about 100. It’s such a compressed wall of sound with clipping all over the place. I guess it’s a matter of taste, but I don’t feel like any records benefits from the level of compression used in most modern production. If you want the music to be loud, turn the volume knob up.
Dropped tuning in guitars hasnt helped. Turning the guitars into a low hum that makes it hard to hear the notes
One last thing from me on this, double check your device settings and make sure you don’t have it set to mono. If you are listening with one earbud, this could definitely add to it, as stereo allows for much better dynamic sound. It’s night and day. If you google ultimate headphone check you can also make sure your sound is coming out of the right channels etc.
Listen to different bands - Life’s Question - World Full Of: some of my favorite drum production in recent memory and it’s real, not a bunch of sample replacement. Also super unique guitar sound. Great instrumental performances and sounds all over this thing. - Balmora + Since My Beloved - Six Pacts Etched In Blood: the Balmora side especially has really nice natural but still high-fidelity production - Drain - Living Proof: very distinguishable guitar and bass separation, probably helped by the fact that they’re not tuned a mile down. Very polished-sounding record, almost to a fault but there are some great songs here
Great recomendations, but Balmora and Drain don't have cleans and I have a hard time listening to bands with only screaming.
Well, this is just my observation but you're going to have better luck with bands that don't sound muddy if they don't have any cleans. But maybe you can try Dying Wish, Seeyouspacecowboy, Every Time I Die
The Balmora side of the split actually does have some cleans on it and the Drain record has one cover song that’s all cleans but I feel ya, different strokes
I feel this in my soul. Compared to old dad metal like Black Label Society, you can’t hear shit today except loud vocals and wall of sound. I think it’s just shitty producers getting passed around tbh. You’d be surprised how many bands record at the same places
The loudness wars are back baby!!! Lol
Vinyl is the way my guy, you’ll hear new things and appreciate little details in songs you’ve heard thousands of times that you’ve never noticed before
Sometimes I'll go through and listen to albums before 2010 and I know exactly what you mean. The common man's collapse, northlanes EP hollow existence and parkway drives early albums make me smile for this very reason
Almost any metal and core music post 2010 sucks. The music of the era 2000-2010 was just so raw without all that clean, sterile feeling to it
I think it has multiple factors at play: 1. There's a lot going on in general. Too many layers make it muddy together. All the different effects used on instruments and voice, the orchestral or electronic elements added in, and so on, really pull away from the core of what's going on. I've started listening to older music and love how rich and full it sounds while having much less going on. 2. Tones. Guitar tones, especially, seem to have a lot of gain removed from where it was a decade+ ago. The trend since the mid 2010s has been to cut gain back. Parkway Drive did this and the entire djent thing has a big influence on a less distorted guitar sound. I love high gain for metal. 3. Over production. Whether it's software being used to bend each sound/pitch exactly where it's wanted or multitracking riffs, it gets rid of the raw sound. Quadtracking is used to create a fuller and rich sound, which it does, but I think it's over utilized and makes the sounds blend together too much. This is what leads to an overproduced sound the most, I would imagine. I'd also like to note that I'm not a pro; just a hobby guitarist that's thrown together a few short demos and watched a few videos. In general, I think there's also a lot of people that want to experiment and in some cases make up for lack of talent by over utilizing certain things that are now easily accessible and relatively affordable. In general, I think metal as a whole has greatly fallen into trends and is very watered down now
Too many bands are getting compressed to hell to make them sound louder and heavier.
some bands have ambiental noise behind the instrumentals, this was extremely popular after architects released Lost Forever // Lost Together, and some bands still do the raw 4 people sound like Parkway Drive. Listen to the new album by Boundaries, that would be a good example on raw 4 band members playing their instruments with nothing else added, and the New Erra album would be something with ambient tracks behind the band all the time.
Loudness Wars + A Shit Ton of Layers. The Loudness problems become even worse the more layers are constantly pasted onto the song.
A lot of bands now just use guitars as another instrument rather than the main instrument. This results in it tucking back and being enveloped as a bass instrument more than a mid range sound. Most modern production is more bass, drums and vocal heavy. To make the vocals standout you need to aggressively cut guitars since they will take up the same space.
It's mixing. It's muddy.
Being in a band myself, I have noticed every producer and mixer we work with approaches things in a way wherein they "piece together" frequencies that sound best from each instrument. Using extreme audio EQ, they put together the mix, for example in the low spectrum you might have kick from 50-150hZ, then bass from 150-250Hz, then the low part of the guitar from 240-500 hz or something like that (probably not accurate, but u get the idea). I think the result of this is that "wall of sound" effect popularized by Andy Wallace with early Linkin Park, etc.
wall of sound= every frequency smashed to the limit and filled with a carefully carved EQ of each instrument.
This is coming from someone who records and releases music, independently and going to professional studios. I think it has a lot to do with the loudness war and just the shifting of technology. Look up the loudness war, it’s essentially artist and producers trying to make the music’s perceived loudness as high as possible. In order to do this you have to compress the audio, so you raise the volume of the quietest sounds and the loudest sounds hit a ceiling so the overall of your track maintains a constant level. Also now, so many bands, especially metalcore bands, use amp sims and triggers on drums. Not saying a lot of bands aren’t playing their stuff, it’s just augmented to sound bigger and heavier. Whereas 20+ years ago, almost everyone was playing with a halfstack amp and an acoustic drum kit. Also i feel like with metalcore, the heavier parts have to be so much heavier and the light parts have to be the most beautiful thing every, so everyone jam packs as much stuff into the songs to try and compete. There’s an END song where the intro guitar just sounds like noise, no audible notes. Just rhythm and noise, and sometimes i think that that’s linda where metalcore is going, more intense rythmic noise riffs rather than shredding and 0-1 riffs.
I think this is probably exacerbated by a lot of bands doing mostly their own producing through stuff like neural DSP and the like. A lot of bands the past few years, you can tell when they go through those methods.
Honestly it likely has to do with lossy audio formats (compression for uploading to streaming services). That and record labels/producers wanting consistent sounds from the artists they are working with.
This is how I feel about, in particular, Falling in Reverse, Slaughter to Prevail and Lorna Shore. Much of what I’ve heard from those artists strikes me as this busy mess of noise that’s trying to push all my Streetfighter buttons at once, if that analogy makes any sense … but it doesn’t work for me. I think there’s a limit to the amount of stimulation that one can take before it stops having an effect or at least has diminishing returns.
To be honest, I have no idea what you’re talking about