The first thing I want to trace back to is 1997 and Another Lesson in Violence by Exodus. That was recorded live at the Trocadero [in San Francisco], correct?
I didn't actually record the live bits. The first album I did in America was The More Things Change… by Machine Head. I was the mix engineer on that. I tracked the guitars with Robb [Flynn] in San Francisco and then mixed it in L.A. After that I did Skinlab for Century Media, and then I did Exodus. They had the same management, Debbie Abono. I got linked in with Exodus then and never looked back.
There's a whole Bay Area connection there with Skinlab, Machine Head, and Exodus.
Testament, also. I've done a lot of work in the Bay Area. It was done at Hyde Street, which used to be Alpha & Omega [Recording]. I did loads of work there. A lot in rehearsal rooms. What's that main one?
Soundwave Studios.
We've done loads of recording at Soundwave. Testament's got a room in there. We also had Craig [Locicero]'s old room upstairs, which we called Flabby Road Studios.
On some of those early albums, like The More Things Change…, that was the mid- to late-'90s, when Pro Tools was starting.
We were still on multitrack tape, running two 24-track Studer machines on that. I remember I was running Cubase on a PC for triggers, moving kick drums around. It wasn't until Nevermore [on Dead Heart in a Dead World], which was one of the first albums where I used Pro Tools for pretty much all the tracking. I was still using a lot of outboard gear on that. Pro Tools slowly crept in toward the end of the '90s. In fact, the first album I used Pro Tools on was the first Blaze Bayley [Wolfsbane] album [Silicon Messiah]. I bought my first blue and white [Apple Macintosh] G3 with Pro Tools 4.3 on it. I had one [Digidesign] 888 [I/O] and an ADAT bridge. I was using my ADATs as interfaces, transferring onto ADAT with the BRC, and linking it all up like that. That would have been '98.
You were talking about using triggers in Cubase. Were you using hardware triggers?
I was just triggering into Cubase using an [Alesis] D4 [drum module] to create MIDI. We used an Atari ST [computer] before that. I think it was [Emagic] Notator [Logic] to do a MIDI note, using SMPTE off the tape, and MTC [MIDI time code] to sync it up. It worked pretty well. I used the D4 and an Akai S1000 [sampler] for sounds. When we couldn't do the MIDI side of it, we'd go off the sync head, delay it, and put it back in time. There are ways around it, but it was very basic back then.
The collection of kick and snare samples that you had must have been a lot more limited, right?
Oh, it was totally single-shot. That's why those albums do sound a bit machine-like at times. There was no real variance in the sounds. That's come a long way since back then, but it worked. We blended it, and it gave us that consistency in the sound we were after to help get clarity on the mix.
With a lot of those thrash bands – and I'm sure [Andy's first band] Sabbat –didn't get the clarity of the kick drum back in the '80s. Plus, there were no high-gain guitar amps yet.
In the '80s I was using [Marshall] JCM800 [guitar amps]. On our second album [Dreamweaver] I was using the [Marshall] Silver Jubilee with a Boss GE-7 [graphic equalizer stompbox] and a noise gate to tighten the front end. But on the third Sabbat album [Mourning Has Broken], we did trigger the kick drums on that. We triggered it live off the recording; there was probably one or two mis-hits on that. That was the early '90s. Some of the other albums that were around, people were using the old TC [Electronic delay] units to trigger. You could store samples in that and fire off it.
When I listen to that first Testament album [The Legacy], I hear this little tap on the kick drum; but when Louie [Clemente] gets into the big triplet [double bass drum] parts, it loses it all.
I know, right? You listen to those Slayer albums. The faster kick sound is there. You can tell it's there, but it's a blur, isn't it? It's that rumble. It's kind of nice, in a way. It's a bit more natural. But if you keep it like that – more natural – for a drummer now, they expect to hear the kick drums more.
Albums like Violent Revolution by Kreator or The Gathering by Testament were coming to you. I'm putting myself in Mille [Petrozza] or Eric Peterson's head and thinking, "This is the way we wish it would've sounded when we were 19."
I know! It's funny. I'll listen back to The Gathering or some of the work I was doing in the late '90s. People say, "Oh, it's a benchmark album." Blah, blah, blah. But I don't think it actually sounds that good now. It does sound a little dated to me. It's not got the clarity and natural feel. Mind you, saying that, we did that in the rehearsal room on ADAT, bouncing it back through the Soundcraft Ghost [console] onto two tracks of the ADAT. It was pretty primitive. We did okay, for the time. Obviously, if we were doing that album now, it'd be a bit more refined.
People complain about music being more digitized and less natural sounding as years go on. You're talking about your productions becoming more natural sounding.
I went to a point where I realized how much you could edit something. [In the] early 2000s, a lot of people – including myself – fell into this thing of getting parts so tight, so precise, and so mechanical. We'd be going in and editing everything, so it was sucking the life out of it. It was perfect, the performance, and we'd be looping parts. It got to the point where I was like, "This is so boring to listen to!" We want to hear a bit of that rawness there, and a bit of movement. A more mature approach is to try and get the best performance, refine it a little bit, and get it tight. But you've also got to know when to stop with that and know when you are actually killing it. When I listen now to what I'm doing, I think it's tight and it's in tune. It's got a good vibe. That's part of the thing about being a good producer. I'm keeping the energy in there, keeping that vibe, the tightness, not killing it, and I'm getting the clarity out of it as well.
How does that translate to your guitar mic'ing? I know you've been a [Shure SM]57 guy for a long time.
I still always use a 57. I try a few other mics now, even some room mics. I was always thinking, "It's gotta be close mic'd and really direct, in your face." I've come away from that a little bit, and now I try to get it a little more vibey. Nothing drastic; I try to get a fullness with a different sound left and right to widen the mix. That's something I was never doing back in the early 2000s; trying to mix it up a bit and make it more fun, rather than the same thing every time.
How do you keep it fun for yourself when you're working on thrash and death metal albums regularly?
I don't really work on that stuff all the time [now]. When you look at what I have been working on, it's been a lot more classic metal; something with a bit more melody to it. I'm a bit more selective now. I'd rather have a couple weeks off than sessions back to back all the time. It wears you out. This job really does; it beats you down after a while. And a project will always take longer. If I've got the extra time there, I'll use it. I'll eat into it.
Are bands coming to you more for your role as a producer rather than as an engineer? Are they looking more for your musical input rather than just a knob-twiddler?
It still varies. Something like Judas Priest; I'm there in a production role. Thinking about recently, for John Petrucci [Terminal Velocity] I was just the mixer. It's still across the board, really. The fact people know me as a producer and a guitar player, especially as a guitar player now, they realize I've got something to put in on the production front. But with the COVID thing, there've been a lot more mixes happening. People have tended to record their own tracks and have been getting in touch to get them mixed.
Is re-amping playing a big role in that?
I try not to re-amp. If an artist has got a sound that they particularly want to use, and they've tracked with it, then I'll go with it. I'll try to work with it as far as I can. If something's really not working, or I think it could benefit them, then I'll talk to them and see what we can sort out. But I'm not one of these guys who is dead set on re-amping everything he gets. Again, going back to John Petrucci, he's very particular. He's got his MESA/Boogie [guitar amp] that he wanted to use. It was a little dark for me on his solo album, but I thought, "Right, I'll get what I can out of it with EQ." It pushes me. I usually find that we can reach that balance where they're getting what they want, and we can make it work. We had three EQs in the chain trying to dig some more top end out of it; but it worked well, and it ended up as something different than if I would have re-amped it. It was cool, in a way. I always learn off every project that I do.
In mixes I've done, the high end of the bass [guitar] seems to be in a constant fight between the click of the kick drum and the presence of the guitar.
I never had that problem. If I'm using a bass amp, I'd be using a [Shure] Beta 52, which has less of a high end click to it. It's got more of that rock knock to it when you use it for a kick drum. I'm looking around 800 Hz to 1 kHz for that small, nasal frequency. A hair of it can help you on small speakers. Sometimes I'll throw the [bass] DI back to a SansAmp and filter it, so it's just a narrow band and blend it in. You can be 10 dB down on this in the mix. It gives the bass that extra little space. I find that DI and the mic blended, as long as it's in phase, it'll set the bass where it needs to be and not get in the way of the guitar. I'm looking at the mids; that 1 kHz area. I call it a "pig hunting for truffles." You'll get that "snorting" to the bass sound. I remember Shane [Embury] from Napalm [Death] used to run into a SansAmp. It sounded like a digger; like some mechanical device grinding away in the background.
I always think back to [Metallica's] Master of Puppets; the gold standard for the original heavy metal bass tone.
It's got scooped guitars, and the bass fits in that hole. You can almost see it when you think about it, where everything's sitting.
We're using our ears, but at the same time the mix almost becomes visible. It's like a puzzle.
You're slotting everything together. When I've been on a mix for two weeks, I'll get a bit lost and can't see the wood for the trees. I've been mixing Exodus. Gary [Holt] contacted me the other day and said, "Are the guitars too quiet?" I listened to it again with fresh ears and they weren't too quiet, but they were lacking something in the mids. There was a bit of a hole under the vocals. So, we recalled it, recalling the desk and the outboard gear. Straightaway I could hear what it needed to be, and what should be dialed in. At the time, we were focusing on all this other stuff and couldn't hear it. Sometimes walking away and coming back, putting another project between myself and the mix I was doing, is so valuable. I've got instinct when I first hear it, "Ah! I hear what's missing now." I always try and do that. I try to walk in in the morning and listen to it, and then, within the first 30 seconds to a minute, make a call on where levels need to be. Then usually I'm in the right place.
Are there certain times of the day when your ears are going to be working better for this pretty up-tempo and energetic music?
