How does Lars Ulrich record such a massive drum reverb sound for The Black Album?

stringbender05

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5TnPjOd_To


A soloed drum kit with reverb can sound beautiful but when it comes time to sit with bass and guitar tracks I find the drums quiet down. Which is weird because you could mix drum tracks to sound just like The Black Album by adding reverb but it has the opposite effect when there is a bassline and guitar tracks. I would actually like to do my first album like this. No samples just a really loud, bad ass, drum sound. It kind of has to be to sit with my monsterous bass and guitar tones. Adding the reverb over saturates things and causes more problems than it is worth. I can get away with using a small amount on the snare but I would like to give the entire kit a huge reverb and make it sit with the rest of the instruments.
 
It's been so long since I heard that album, I had to look it up on YouTube to hear what you're talking about. The drum reverb works on "Enter Sandman" and "Sad But True" because the vocal and all of the other instruments occupy a frequency range that's higher than the kick drum and lower than the snare. Notice how the snare and lead guitar sound unusually trebly compared to most pop/rock recordings. That's the case on a lot of heavy metal recordings. The snare on some metal songs actually sounds like banging on plastic Tupperware lids to me. The engineers carve out space for the drums by aggressively EQing everything. So that's likely what you need to do. When you do this, each instrument will sound like crap when soloed, so EQ for the mix and not to make everything sound good separately.
 
Another neat metallica trick - don't use the bass guitar tracks.

Lars is a fucking douche bag. Justice would have sounded great with Jason actually turned up. This is a bit much but if they re-released that record somewhere between this and the original it would have actually sounded great.

 
To be fair, with the exception of Justice and St. Anger, Lars drum tracks do sound good.
 
Jason sounded really good on the $5.98 ep. I don't know why they had such little faith in his contribution.
 
Another neat metallica trick - don't use the bass guitar tracks.

That was the justice album, he's talking about the black album...

The answer to the question is they had a bunch of different sets of room mics. The closer ones give shorter reverb, the farther ones give longer reverb. They also found other spots in the room that were 'brighter' or 'warmer' and stuff like that. As the song progresses through the parts, they are bringing those different room mics in and out of the mix.

The live room at the studio they recorded the drums at is a huge, live room. There is no artificial reverb on the drums. It is all from the different room mics.
 
You don't think Justice's drums sound good?

Do you?! The snare sound like a paper bag, the kick has no punch, just highs and sub that is an octave below where it should be. If you don't have a well tuned subwoofer, it will fart out your system.

That album sounds like crap, they even admit it.
 
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