The Hodgepodge Metal Blog

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2010-11-12T21:45:00.001-08:00

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Woo Hoo! Free CDs!

2010-10-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've been using two search & win sites for the past couple months. I wasn't sure if it would work or not but I received credit for searching on these websites which I then redeemed for credit on amazon. So far, I've gotten Malevolent Creation's Invidious Dominion and the remastered The Fine Art of Murder, Vio-lence's Eternal Nightmare (remastered) and Oppressing the Masses/Torture Tactics without paying anything. If you want more info, check out the link to the right.

The Green and Black

2010-02-15T21:38:00.000-08:00

I have but a handful of bands that I will go out and buy their new album without ever previewing it. Overkill is one of those. I've been hearing rave reviews of Ironbound claiming that Overkill has returned to their roots. I am impressed, but still confused by the constant roar of "Overkill returning". Like most bands, Overkill has eras where a group of albums have a similar vibe. To me, ReliXIV up to Ironbound is an era, so I had a hard time hearing why this album is already considered a comeback. At least during the first listen...

This album is ferocious. I don't think Overkill has had this many fast songs on an album since Feel the Fire. The majority of the album is a whirlwind of thrash; there are few moments where you're given a chance to breathe. Of those passages though, none of them are filler. They make musical and emotional sense when looking at the overall context of the songs. What makes this album different from others is the consistent quality of the songs. Overkill albums usually have a few great songs with some mediocre ones, but here, just when you think you've run into a mediocre one, they pull a great riff out of nowhere and save it.

Overkill has a history of releasing a catchy, energetic, ripping song for the album opener, and while "The Green and Black" is a good one, I think that "Ironbound" would have made a better choice. It has a frenetic energy comparable to "Time to Kill", "Coma", "Where it Hurts", etc. There's a video out for track "Bring Me the Night" and highlights Overkill in their most comfortable enviroment: on stage. Here's a link to it:

"Give a Little" has a great menacing riff roaming throughout the song that doesn't sound like, but has a similar presence to "Electro-Violence". When Blitz's vocals kick in, the bass keeps chuggin' on with this riff, but the guitars change into playing power chords over it and it makes just that much heavier when the guitars jump back into it later with the bass. There are some gang-style vocals here that I didn't care for at first, but have become used to. I wish I could say the same for the gang vocals in "The S.R.C". In "Endless War" there is a vocal chorus done Maiden style that made me do a double take, but actually fits very well with the song. I suspect "Killing for a Living" is yet another sequel to the Overkill song series heard at the end of several of their past albums because of the ominous main riff. There is a break down in the middle however, that introduces a new riff which is great on it's own, but sounds bluesy and doesn't fit well with the dark nature of the rest of the song.

The production is slicker than their past few albums which helps add to the frantic thrash atmosphere. Still, there is a lack of mid-bass, and the guitars suffer a bit being buried in the mix and appear slightly weak. Luckily DD's bass has a tone reminiscent of W.F.O. but much less nasally which makes up for the guitars. Overkill is one of the few metal bands where the bass plays an integral part of their signatory sound.

After my fifth spin, I figured out what has everyone excited about this album. It has nods to the past like, Feel the Fire, Taking Over, The Years of Decay, Horrorscope, W.F.O. and ReliXIV much like Megadeth's Endgame without ever regurgitating old material. It sounds as if Overkill has had their older material in their subconscious and Ironbound is the result. Two things that stood out to me which are a bit unexpected for an Overkill album is the spastic drumming of Ron Lipnicki and the leadwork of Dave Linsk. Ron's drumming has created an unpredictability that I've never heard before on an Overkill album extending riffs longevity making them less repititious. Dave has obviously spent a lot of time and/or effort on these solos as they are well thought out; his style has really developed on Ironbound. All these elements combined create one hell of an album that won't disappoint the hardcore Overkill fan nor any thrash fan.

Orchestrated Metal 1963

2010-02-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

I was gong through some old recordings of mine that I made probably sometime in the late 90's on an analog 4-track. This is before the days of digital recording where you had limited amount of tracks and drums had to be bounced from track to track to make room for other instruments. Having said that, I think I did pull out some good sound quality here considering I didn't use any compression or much of any other effects for that matter. One day I'd like to do a better version, but I can imagine that never happening.

This is from a 1963 Japanese Sci-Fi movie called Atragon (Kaitei Gunkan). Credit to my buddy Brett (R.I.P) who did a great job improvising a tight drum beat for this.

Original 1963 version recorded in 1989

My metal version

Squidoo Article

2009-11-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

Here's an article I wrote for squidoo about using an equalizer to improve sound quality.

Megadeth - Endgame

2009-09-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

I’m not a huge Megadeth fan and this will probably be the most mainstream CD review you’ll see here. I’ve heard the album around five times now which is much too early to tell if it’s good or not. It’s possible my mind will change over time as I’ll have more time for it to sink in.

THE MUSIC

There’s a similarity to the past two albums but enough to separate it to make it a worthwhile album on its own. The intro song is obviously inspired by Into the Lungs of Hell (So Far, So Good... So What?) but with less impact. I was hoping for something like Set the World Afire after that, but was let down by the mediocre This Day We Fight.

44 minutes doesn’t have much to offer either. This is not a good way to start off an album. Luckily Megadeth redeems itself with some goodies like Bite the Hand That Feeds, Bodies (possibly the heaviest?), Endgame and pretty much the rest of the album. It’s just hard to get that bad taste out of your mouth when the first third of the album sounds like filler. Some careful rearranging of the song placement would add some longevity to this effort.

I was very surprised by The Hardest Part of Letting Go…Sealed With a Kiss because I had read some unfavorable comments about it, but I thought it was done quite well. It’s hard to imagine Mustaine sneering with sincerity through some emotional passages, but for some reason it does come together and it makes sense musically. It’s something you just have to hear for yourself.

THE SOUND

The production is similar to the previous two albums but comes up a bit short. There’s too much high end, in particular the high hat. This can easily be solved with some cuts to the 16khz – 20khz on an equalizer.

You can see that the 16-20Khz range has been cut completely and just a tad from the 10khz. Depending on your equipment you may have to add/subtract some of the value from each of the according frequencies.

Unfortunately little can be done for the bass guitar sound…44 minutes is the first time we are invited to hear James’ bass sound which is somewhat reminiscent of Overkill’s D.D. Verni’s, but nowhere as unique. In fact, it’s a bit irritating at first and takes sometime to get used to. While it’s not bad by itself, there is poor sonic chemistry between it and guitars so anytime there is a flurry of palm-muted tremolo picked notes from the guitars, the bass sound blurs the guitar’s distinctive staccato style making it to hard to hear individual notes (This Day We Fight). The high hat also intensifies the blur of noise. Other than these two points, the production should sit well with most people. Thankfully it isn’t overly compressed like most releases nowadays.

WHAT IT REALLY SOUNDS LIKE

I’ve read that Dave has went into his vault and pulled a few riffs out from yesteryear. There’s quite a bit of self-plagiarism going on here, but that’s better than just plagiarism. 1320 sounds like something left over from 502. Endgame’s intro doesn’t sound like any song in particular, the atmosphere is close to Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? Later on this song develops into a counterpart to This Was My Life. I know this next one sounds like grasping at straws but there is about a seven note phrase in Headcrusher that sounds EXACTLY like a passage from the song The System Has Failed. Later on there is a series of descending notes that hints at Hook in Mouth.

This is album is probably closest to the last two in composition, technique and production. What differentiates it is its continual nods to the past while staying firmly in the modern era of Megadeth. Dave may have changed his guitar brand, but his crunchy sound (The Right to Go Insane-think Architecture Of Aggression) and melodic choruses, both of which are vital to the Megadeth signature are still intact.

My headphones are better than yours (maybe)

2009-07-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia, there are 2 kinds of audiophiles: the minimalist and the restorationist. The minimalist believes that “music contains elements which cannot be measured by electronic instruments,[6] so the less one alters the original signal, the more likely it is that this unmeasurable quality is preserved.” A restorationist “desires the opposite by attempting to either restore the original environment or, in some cases, enhance the original rendition”. I am the latter. I don’t have too many albums that I can listen to and say that I wouldn’t change a thing (in terms of sound). That is why the EQ is a tool essential to negating bad choices made by engineers/producers in the studio of your favorite bands. Listen to an album that has a decent amount of low end for a week or two and then switch to another that’s lacking in low end on the same system and you’ll have bass cravings. The EQ compromises the peaks and dips in annoying frequencies.

Meizu M3

I recorded two different versions of the same section of Believer’s Extraction From Morality (poor production). Since the original recording isn't the greatest there isn't a day and night difference, between the original and EQed version, but the EQed one has guitars that stand out in the mix expecially when the vocals kick in towards the end and isn't plagued by an overbloated bass drum giving a tighter sound.

non-eq version

eq-version

On a 10-band EQ I GENERALLY find that in the area around:

60Hz- has little purpose because it only clutters up the sound when listening to metal. Exceptions to this are bands like Nile, Sepultura, Morbid Angel that occasionally use tribal/egyptian instruments where this frequency is useful.

150Hz- accents/minimizes the bass drum

300Hz- can accent/minimize the thickness of the guitars

550Hz- can accent/minimize the bass (I know it sounds strange as the bass should be at a frequency lower than the guitars)

1khz-10khz-influences the tonality and color of the guitars. 5khz in particular, will create a saturated, warm and "syrupy" guitar sound. Decreasing it results in a dry, rough one.

16khz~20khz- can accent/minimize the high hats/cymbals of drums which often interfere with the guitars. Cutting this by a significant amount will accent the guitars to stand out in the mix.

If when you make a gain or a cut though in a frequency, as a general rule never do it by more than +/- 5. This often tends to lead to an unnatural sound and can sound cheap. The exception being the extreme low and high of the EQ band, like the 60hz and the 16-20khz areas.

You may be thinking that the above audio clips don't justify buying an EQ for the purpose of improving sound quality, but I can guarantee that when you use it in conjunction with some serious audiophile equipment, the difference is night and day.

Denon 2000

This is even more important than the EQ and will without a doubt give you a sound you’ve never heard from your music before (it doesn’t have to be a Denon, any kind of high end audio gear you find to your liking will do) Since having this, I’ve found small nuances in the instrumentation and samples from albums I’ve had for 20 years that went unnoticed because I had been listening to them on average music systems. Bands whose albums were just OK due to poor engineering became more than decent and I ended up finding a new desire to listen to them because of the change in sound quality. High end gear is also more forgiving with an EQ allowing the manipulation of the frequencies to sound more natural.

My band members hated me (hate me??)

2009-06-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

When's the last time you've been to a concert you thought was horrible? Try to recall the sound of that concert-too boomy? too much reverb? instruments lost in the mix? I often hear people complain of such things and then proceed to blame the band, when they should be focusing on the sound engineers who are at fault. If there were a battle of the bands and Dream Theater was given a garage band's gear and Kiss the finest equipment money can buy, you MIGHT be prone to say that Kiss was the better band because it SOUNDED better, when any musician (or non for that matter) knows DT performs on a level of musicianship that supersedes most others.

I grew up playing in a few bands. As a guitarist, I was constantly worried about my sound. Is it thick enough? crunchy enough? is it being blown out by my overzealous drummer? I would put my speaker cabinet up on crates, turn it 1.5 inches to the right to see if the reflection of sound was to my liking, put acoustically absorbent material on the wall, anything that would result in the kind of sound that I heard on my favorite albums. My band members were quite annoyed with me and now that I think about it, maybe rightfully so...

In any event, my point is that sound influences one's perception of the quality of music. It sounds like a vain attempt to justify my audio neurosis but you have to agree there is some truth to it. Of course there are those who will say that punk, and others of that ilk, thrive off of a raw, amateurish sound, but that is punk, not metal. Metal becomes brutaler (this should be a word!) when the production is strong (there is such a thing as over-producing but we'll save that for another blog). ...And Justice For All is one of the first great sound production albums in metal history and became the bar for which heaviness was measured while Pantera took that ball and ran with it in the 90's. I cringe when I hear people say that Kreator's best album is Pleasure to Kill. Really? I haven't been able to make it past the 2nd song. Now if they re-recorded it...

But even for the neurotic audiophile such as myself, there are exceptions. So Far, So Good, So What! is my favorite Megadeth album (I've often theorized that this is due to nostalgia as it was the first album I heard by them) despite its piss poor production (guitars don't get much weaker sounding than this). If you can't stand the original but love the music, I recommend the remastered version; it's not night and day but there is a difference.

Next: How to make poorly produced albums sound decent

What is this place?

2009-06-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

The birth of one's love for metal coupled with a neurotic obsession for sound quality.

What makes heavy? or who makes heavy? Everyone has their own definition of it when it comes to metal, but that definition is completely dependent on sound more so than the music itself.

When I don't have something I need to get off my chest, it’ll probably be reviews of metal albums that you should have (or at least I think you should have), from the perspective from an old-school metalhead audiophile with an emphasis on production (or lack thereof) with general thoughts on metal and how it has evolved and will continue to do so.

And while I may be old-school, it doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate anything new. On the contrary, I’m ALWAYS looking for that next band that make my hair stand on end like my current favorites do. I recommend http://death.fm/. I'm not saying it's the be all end all, but every once in a while you'll find a diamond in the rough that you had no idea was there.

Next: The Audiophile