ON METAL PRODUCTION

It’s a sad state of affairs indeed when a line like this is actually news, from producer Tue Madsen about recording The Haunted’s new album:

“No click tracks, no triggers, no faking it… just good old making music the way it used to be back when you had to actually be able to play your shit to do it.”

Metal production itself has become a pretty sad state of affairs. Pro Tools has been both a blessing and a curse to the recording profession. The benefits are obvious; increased fidelity (though this is debatable), unlimited tracks and buses, precision mixing through advanced automation, and the ability to record as many takes as you’d like until you get it right. But it’s a double-edged sword; some might argue that these assets actually remove the “human” element from the recording process. After all, no one is perfect every time.

Which brings us to Madsen’s statement. What exactly qualifies as “faking it”? This is where the lines get very blurry. I, for one, do believe in click tracks — they make the performance tighter and make editing later in much, much easier. But what about triggers? Just about every metal band these days uses drum triggers (Roadrunner Records is even rumored to have a “triggers only” policy.). Are triggers cheating? If you argue that they are, then how is running an electric guitar through an amp and distorting the fuck out of it NOT cheating? What about mic’ing an amp with three different mics and recording each part multiple times for that “wall of sound” guitar effect, as most metal bands these days do?

What about “fixing” errant drum hits of an otherwise pristine performance? Vocal overdubbing? Sequencers?

Lots of folks argue that all this should be done away with and that recording should be live with the band members all standing in a room together to get the “true” sound. But it gets tricky here, too. Because the minute you plop a mic in front of an amp or a drum, that mic shapes the sound to something different than what it actually sounds like to stand in that room. And so does the mixing board and other cabling. There is no such thing is a “true” recording.

So where does that leave production for metal in the year 2008? Triggered, cut, layered and fake? I say why the hell not.*

-VN

*Just turn the bass up, please. Bass players have been getting the shaft mix-wise for years.