Trying to record and mix a grindcore LP at home

T

TheUndisclosed

New member
I'm laying down tracks for my 3 person "band" who have never all been in the same room together before. I write and record all the music at the moment, as well as track my own vocals until our main vocalist can make it over to my house to record his parts. So if any critiques are aimed at the musicians, they should be aimed at me, since I'm the chucklehead who did it.
We play all sorts of metal, but this LP is aimed at grindcore, so I want it to sound crunchy, noisy, and aggressive. I want it to be listenable, but not squeaky clean like a djent album.
I want a Trap Them/Rotten Sound/Converge/Pig Destroyer/Nails sound for this LP, and here is the mix I am working with right now- both with and without vocals.

The main problem I'm noticing is I can't get the guitars to sound nasally and mean (gotta love those mids, BOSS HM-2 <3) without sacrificing the actual notes being played. It gets especially bad when there are vocals, which reduces the notes on the guitar to static. There is some distortion on the vocals to get that awful, screeching sound that we desire.

Anything jump out to you immediately that I could start- or stop- doing?

P.S. I guess I should mention we are poor, so we can't really afford to take this to a real audio engineer.

View attachment Eyelashes With Hands Vocals.mp3
View attachment Eyelashes With Hands No Vocals.mp3
 
The first thing that jumps out at me is that there's a lot of compression. The guitars duck on those drum hits at the beginning really hard.

With really heavy music like this, it's easy for things to turn into a muddy mess right away. I'd recommend turning everything way down while you're mixing. Try to get it to sound the best you can with the least amount of compression and the most headroom you can. You can always turn up the volume later.
 
Agreed on the over compression. Its pumping pretty good hear. Hard to understand vocals, but I know its the genre of music. Good start, cool song just needs tweaking
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.

I'm finding it difficult to get the HM-2 to sound really gritty and nasally- but not clip- without lots of compression. Is there something else I can do to get a really mean Trap Them sound without compressing it?
My chain in Pod Farm 2 goes: Deity Lead amp head>4x12 Brit Celest V-30s with 57 Off Axis mic>Console preamp.
I'm going DI straight from the HM-2.
 
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