First time working with Enthroned Serpent, a black metal band from Athens, Greece.
Just realized I have never posted this mix on the blog. Well… until now. We worked for several months on this EP, as this is the band of Simos, the owner of SoundWay studios and a good friend of mine.
To begin with, real drums were recorded at the great sounding room of SoundWay Studios. The drummer brought a small piccolo snare drum with him, which helped the snare to cut through. Of course, samples were used to give it more body, but more about this later. Managed to capture a great stereo image that compliments the width of the mix.
Guitars were reamped through a Peavey 6505+, a really cool JVM410H Marshall tube head and a massive ENGL 4x12‘ cabinet. Both amps were cranked to death and 2 microphones were used to capture the final sound. A small secret about black metal: ”Turn the Treble frequencies up until the guitar amp sounds harsh, then turn it up some more.” The opposite goes for the bass frequencies. The balance between the 2 mics was adjusted accordingly during the mixing process for rhythm and lead guitar playing.
The singer was really steady and really helped the final result to shine. Among others, Sakis Tolis (from Rotting Christ) gave a helping hand to one of the songs.
Black metal is a unique genre that requires an out-of-the-box approach, and mixing was a really fun procedure. The challenge was to make everything sound big, in your face and, well… black metal, without sounding harsh. APHEX aural exciter was my friend, which gave character to guitars and vocals. Samples were used for drums, (you simply can’t avoid it) blended with the natural kit. Bass was heavily compressed and distorted. A typical old school black metal mix is not complete without TONS of volume. The amount of limiting at the mastering stage was huge, maybe my loudest mix to date.
Really happy to work with Enthroned Seprent, co-produced, mix and mastered during 2017-2018.
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