Fallen Tyrant - Black Metal album production

This was the first time I made a music production with a style of music, way heavier before anything else I did. After recording a rehearsal demo already in 2011 we planned recording a whole album in one weekend. They played live in the living room of the bassist's home, a wooden house with nice acoustics. In the upper gallery we made a studio direction. The room had a good size to build up all instruments with sound barriers to reduce crosstalking. We had very nice RME preamps and a good collection of Jorge's microphones, who engineered this project with me.
If you listen to Black Metal, most of the time the production sound like every instrument gets a small specific range of frequencies, like a bandpassfilter... then you mix them all together and you got a so called "necro sound". I would never say this sounds bad! In the aesthetic view of Black Metal it has a charme that makes the concept complete. On the other hand there are productions, that just sound like metal. Less reverb and triggered drums with a lot of attack.
If we just recorded angry music live in a room, it should also sound like that! Sure I didn't wanted it too clean, but also no necro sound. In the mix we tried to find a good balance. Check out this snippet!

Robotnik vocal recording

I just recorded Eike, the singer and guitarist of Darmstadt's heavy punk-metal-hardcore band "Robotnik"! They will release a 3 track tape on Fat&Holy Records soon. Check out Robotnik on facebook and their website.

Facebook
Website

On tour with My Sleeping Karma and Monster Magnet

In the end of 2012 I had the chance to get on tour over Europe as sound engineer of the German Psychedelic Rockers "My Sleeping Karma" as support of Monster Magnet. In 4 weeks we drove a distance of about 11000km! We started in Scandinavia, then Germany, France, England, back to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. A long and exciting trip and I won a lot of experience. Every day I had to deal with different equipment and rooms, digital and analog desks with internal and external effects. Gladly Danny, the soundguy of Monster Magnet was a really good associate and he was cool with questions about acoustics and the handling of some effects and desks. In 80% we had not enough time for a sound check so I always had to be quick with setting all my stuff. Timing is an incalculable enemy as a support band on tour but the Karmas rocked it out every night and I think the interplay between us worked well, that's why every show was a victory. My Sleeping Karma wrote a whole tour diary about this time, you can read it if you klick the link below (yes it's in english!). Also Enjoy the trailer of the upcoming tourvideo!

My Sleeping Karma Tourdiary - http://www.mysleepingkarma.com/index.php/tourbook_2012.html

Mix and Master for Decoy Industry release #6

You should know the label Decoy Industry. It's a DIY project of 3 music lovin' dudes from Darmstadt and they only release split singles. All their 7" are very special in designs and prints. This time they made a wooden case that looks like the back of a bullet with initials of the bands and the label. All 222 cases are made with a rotary cutter machine and coloured by hand to have the real "bullet look". A really awesome product.
The bands on this split single are Bushfire (multicultural stoner band from Darmstadt) and Hammerlock (US Southern Rock underground legends). I arranged the recording for Bushfire and sent my friend Jorge with his whole mobile equipment to Bushfires rehearsal room. This was already in June 2012! The tracks I got to mix were really good. I know heard Bushfire live a countless times so I had a really clear idea how the mix should sound like. So I had one more meeting with Bill to overdub the vocals and another meeting with guitarrero Marcus to give the mix a final cut. Take a look at this nice "making of" video, to have an idea how much work this was and why it took till November 2012 to release it. Both songs of the single are also included in the video.