Trying for a clean and balanced mix of grungy rock

[funknickels]

Evening!

My current project involves gainy guitars and effected leads, and I'm after punchy and clear drums. I'm so far pleased with the results, but your ears would help me a lot. I'd love to know what you hear, what's good and what isn't (matter of taste or not).

It may be important to know that I've refrained from really squashing the mix -- yet (and I'm not sure how much I want to). I also have yet to record vocals.

Thank you for your feedback!

https://soundcloud.com/jbkr805/dhi822/s-W6xjs

 

[Anders Erisian]

Hey funknickels, just some observations/opinions, the drums seemed ok to me as far as 'punch' goes, the cymbals seemed very washy, and dominating any sense of clarity, soundcloud probably didn't help that. The lead guitar tone seemed a bit harsh in the upper mids too, but it was hard to tell through the cymbals.
The bass sounded a bit lost in the sections where it was there by itself, it sounded good behind all the distorted guitars, but when they dropped out it just didn't seem to carry the song through those sections, and it fell apart a bit too much to me. Maybe some automation on the tone or effects on it during those sections or a bassline that defined the beat a bit more through those sections would work. A lot of people would probably say the guitar had way too much gain and fizz, but I think it was ok for the genre, reminded me a lot of Swervedriver, a band i always quite liked. Once you put a vocal on this i imagine most of what i said might change, except for the bit about the cymbals, and you implied it was not intended as an instrumental. Don't think this needs any squashing as you said, stuff like this is already loud without it.