(brutal death slam worldwide) The master's spectrum is totally butchered, too much subs, but still an impression of thinness with almost no lows or mids, while the snare and overheads are agressively saturating and sizzling. You can even hear the master duck or distort on some transients. The worst is that my ears get used to it :( please dont. The snare is terrible, really muddy and not impactful, sounds like a bongo. I think there's a bass guitar but it's hard to tell. It sounds like the work of an amateur, those you'd find on threads titled "rate my first mix plz", not something I expect to find on youtube. Well my rate : 0/5 not listenable sizzling highs. - it's interesting that in the comments only two people share my thoughts, others are enjoying it... EDIT : it's interesting when you come back a week later and don't agree with what you wrote. It's a bit harsh. Once you tune to it it's fine. All the points stated stay true, but it's ok. It's really that everything is clipping, and the cymbals when they resonate quickly get annoying.

(thrash) I'm bothered by the overheads, overpresent and aliased. On some takes, the vocals have a high airy ringing. The rest is correct 2/5

(thrash blackened speed) This is obviously aiming to sound raw, so despite the dirtiness I have nothing to complain about. I'm just here to point out that on track #3 the instruments are not playing in sync, resulting in a complete rythmic failure. They should have checked. 3/5 for general grade.

(death) Once again a high-end optimized mix, with modern production. Well it's compressed and flat. The guitars have a funny sound but end up being a fatiguing wall of noise, ringing in high mids. The bass guitar got sucked out. These things are industry standard by now, but tipically something I don't want to listen to. 3/5.

(thrash) Instantly horrible, way to much grit over 10kHz, up to 19kHz ! no one does this, it's pure pain. The guitars are overly abrasive and the cymbals have such a tiny space to live in, pushed really far highwards. The mix strictly speaking seems fine, nice dynamic drums and all elements work well together, but this master is completely destroyed. Grabbing an analysis tool, you can see strange notches here and there, confirming the odd feeling that something's not right. 1/5 not listenable. (the bandcamp version seems slightly better than youtube, but it's only because there's a lowpass at 16kHz on it, and maybe better dynamics)

put here because of omne metallum's review. Yes it's somewhat muddy, and the balance is kinda always off. He points out the cymbals may be too loud. It's hard to say because the tracks are not consistent with one another, the most forefront problem may be elsewhere. Frankly, I can fairly accomodate for it, I have a natural tendancy to comply with muddy mixes, and my speakers setup still outputs ok sound. I disagree with the bass being masked, it's pretty present and audible in the lows as well as high mids. I could pick up the bassline well enough on my laptop. Well, 3/5, not terrible, but the lesser bad mix on the list by now.

overcompressed, the kick is lame, the snare sounds like a toy, the vocals are autotuned and overprocessed (multitake+overcomp+chorus+too massive reverb). The subs are badly managed, the bass tom is really annoying. I already said it but it's flat af, just loud with no dynamics and smothered drums. 2/5, I really don't get why this is the standard.

the sound is super raw and lumpy, but this with the sloppy playing is part of the aesthetic I think. Meanwhile, the master really lacks treble, it's rare that I have to push 9dB of treble to get somewhere. Mastered by a pro studio nonetheless... 4/5 once corrected

I'm just bothered by the vocals, which are not present enough in the high mids, while having a weird hiss around 14kHz. The cymbals are hissing too. I whish there could be more treble on guitars, and less extra-treble on the rest. Otherwise it's good, I'm nitpicking. 4/5

agressive highs, no mids at all. The whole spectrum is weirdly scooped. But worst than that is the terrible snare whose compression is completely wrong. I'm lacking a comparison...that's the sound of a flick on a plastic mug. The overheads are quickly tiresome, and the sound is clipping. The occasionnal special effects are very cheap. Honestly if it wasn't so unpleasant, I'd like this raw approach. 2/5

The kick and bass constantly make a rumble in the subs, cluttering the lows. The guitars are seriously lacking dynamics, being just a thin texture. The overheads are also messed up, resonating and saturated, too present. Bringing up the mids can help a bit. I can't pinpoint the reason but vocals ain't great either. As a whole, it sounds like a flat muddy sloppy mess, with nothing positively standing out. 2/5

too centered on high mids, no depth

it's flat. Arguably it depends on which source I use, some youtube videos have better of worse sound despite being official. But everything wants to be loud at once, and nothing is loud in fact. Only the guitars win, thanks to the typical boss h2 sound, eating all the high mids, and vocals are weak, kick is weak, snare is weak, bass is weak. Lows are just a rumble. Highs are just saturated overheads. I wouldn't like to insult Dan Swano, the mix is overall good, but rip the dynamics for this one. 4/5

way too much lows, no clarity, muddy snare, muddy vocals, the guitars don't even make a sound that exists, terrible balance, snare too loud, kick too soft. Despite playing a lot of funny stuff, the bass is rarely heard, eaten by the lows and I don't know where they coome from, guitars? kick? shitty take? 2/5

not really a bad mix, I'm quite enjoying it, but I read several complains about it and they are fairly true. The kick and snare are too low, the hihat is too high and sizzling. The guitars are quite rough, not unlike the vocals, not exactly in the right zone. The low end is pretty noisy, and it's really hard to hear the fretless bass when it's not brought forefront by the arrangement. People said it sounds like a demo. Well I'll be glad if I had a demo sounding like this :) 4/5

this is a good example of lifeless drums. You'd be amazed to hear that there's an actual drummer involved, because this totaly sounds like a drum machine. The guitars bring no dynamics to the mix, muffling everything, same for bass. The groove just doesn't spawn. Then you hit song #2 and it's quite the contrary, better arranging, more compression, hitting dynamics, room, texture. ok? and then track #3 is another snore fest like the first one. It seems they are only two with this problem, but the album overall it's pretty unequal, it sounds like they used different bus compression settings on every track. 3/5

We are lacking high end on the master. The snare sounds really dull and drown in an odd reverb choice. Once corrected the highs, it's a bit better. The low end is also unclear, hard to pick up what the bass is doing or even the kick boom. Such dirtyness is inherent to the music style of course. Funnily enough the brain can accomodate to anything, and now that it's been 15 min I'm listening to this, I'd be tempted to call it a good mix. 4/5

Overall very good, I have two minor complains : the bass resonating at 940 Hz, that grabs my attention quite a lot, instead letting the other instruments doing their jobs. It's important to have a distorted bass in thrash I guess, but this one lacks a bit of bottom and really sounds over processed. Resonance. The other thing is the balance of high frequencies, a bit too present, the shirley is really jumping out for me around 15kHz, and frequencies above are also pretty hot. Tame those two elements and suddenly you find out can crank the volume even more before they get too loud, and all the rest of the band is brought to life. 4/5

Slam Worldwide again ? This is completeley muddy, very hard to make out what the guitars or the bass are doing, when they are not playing alone, the snare is weak, the vocals are terribly out of balance. No cohesion, no stereo image. This is the kind of band that confuses 'raw' and 'oldschool' for just plain 'bad'. 2/5

back to back with the previous brutal death album, its quite a different production, but this one is even worse. Despite an obvious processing of the drums and a try for making a bigger picture, the result is plagued by problems I never knew could occur. First and foremost : WHAT IS THIS ABSURB LEVEL OF LOWS ?? The kick is constantly resonating without release, masking absolutely everything. I've never seen such a thing in a analyser, just a +10 dB spike at 80Hz destroying ALL the master balance. Why? How? is that why they tell you to treat your room and have proper monitoring ? The bass is non-existant in the bass region, it plays in higher register I guess, and it's flat af. The notion of balance isn't even relevant in this context. You can hear the master clipping. The voices are goofy and pushed too far in the side. The guitar tone doesn't exist either, muffled, lost in side. On the song 'DeEvolution' the involuntary saturation also reaches unseen levels... "Mixed & Mastered by Mortarch Productions" That's also why you don't do mix and master by the same person in the same place, to avoid doubling the errors. Remark : it's actually better to listen on bandcamp, youtube intensifies the problems, but this is still the worst thing on this list by far. 0/5 what a trainwreck

this is from 2023 but I'm continuing my morbid exploration of Mortarch Productions. Here you have no lows at all. The vocals are 10db above balance. They're all pretty goofy, kinda like donald duck vocals. YOU CAN HEAR CUTS IN THE VOCALS ! like there's just a copy-paste and the track abruptly cuts before it's fully over. For the band, it seems there's only one guitar that is not double-tracked, plays badly, and not even a bass, or could it be that it's so so low in level ?

let's end the Mortarch arc here. The musicians are not playing together, the drums are only a drum room, it clips, the overheads are 15db over balance, the guitars are 10db under balance, no it's only one guitar, placed in mono, the kick is inaudible... well... that's a good place to stop

rather flat dynamic-wise, with guitars and overheads a bit too constant. Vocals are a tad too loud (well not just a tad). Overall it's a bit lifeless. Do I even need to nitpick these kind of things ? you know my taste by now. 4/5

This is overly wide and barely has a center. Just an observation. I don't know how it would translate to headphones, maybe well in fact, but for mono systems the guitars won't exist. Otherwise good 4/5

I consider Balls To The Wall to be one of the best produced heavy metal album, so this one is really irritating me. The guitars are rather flat and pale compared to the original. The bass is completely burried, major flaw when the og was so massive, the drums are modern but too laid back, while og were purposefully loud and dynamic. The highs are a little too loud and that makes for very thin and bothering overheads. The duet of singers alternating their parts is gooffy at best. Typical of modern mixes with insane layers of compression and limiting, the chorus ends up being quietter than the verse, while of course in the og we had enough headroom to intensify the masters volume with a couple of dBs. The choirs (I'm still on the opening song) are shapeless and only bring noise. Bad use of reverbs and rooms, no ambiance. No breath, I just have an ugly wall of noise with just this hihat above that won't shut up. - London Leatherboys, the mood is completely changed by these choices of reverbs on voicals and drums. I'm not sure the guitars are in sync with the rest, but it's hard to tell since they have no attack at all. - Fight It Back, not even the opening scream ??? And you dare to call this version 'reloaded'. Badly dosed pitch shifter, an ill granpma trying to sing. The heavy edit does nothing to help, I like the voice crack at 0:42 for instance. Ping pong grunting at 1:12 is lacking any sort of aggression and sounds like a cat trying to vomit. 1:54 wtf ? that wasn't even inhale, did he forgot how to pull out this scream ? - Head Over Heels, I will only compare the first second. Here we have a lazy bass di with a lazy amp simulation, completely dry and lifeless and lacking punch. On the og, in the same first second, you had a real bass, a real attack, a lot of chorus on it for the color, the space, and trick you into thinking it's a piano, and also the room reverb that puts you into some other world. Some more competent singer on this track, plus it's the correct tonality. - ... - Losers And Winners. This guitar tone, dry, and the bass lacking presence in the mids. Yes the original is old, dusty, vintage whatever but it's not a bad thing. It was beautiful. Listen, I get the purpose of this album is not to replace its source, just to have fun and invite singers, but do you really think I would like to listen to that ?? - Guardian Of The Night, the og is less loud ok, but had so much more groove. You could turn the volume up and be pumped and headbang. Here it's just a wall and it's boring. Nice Udo impersonnation by Tim Owen, if only he had more than four sentences to sing. 3/5 just sad.

So boringly flat. The snare sounds nice but is completely glued to the wall of noise. The overheads are just an annoying resonance. The overall image is a bit sidey. It really needs a big scooped EQ curve to get alive, +treble -mids +bass, a now most of the problems above don't really matter. But we went a long way 2/5

It's good, but a bit unbalanced frequency wise, the overheads and bossHM2 grit a giving a strong high-end, while the bottom is lacking. Plus it's very noisy, boosting the lows would only reveal how undefined the bass and kick are. 3/5

Sometimes I really don't understand what happens... It sounded nice and now it's underwhelming. Take 'Into Catastrophe', why do I end up with giutars and voice under balance, masked by the grit of the bass, and only the hihat is jumping out of this bizarre wall of noise? Some breaks have odd volume changes. I don't know how they set up their compressors/limiters but it's acting weird. The intro of 'Wallenstein', when the singer comes in, it's completely buried. Later you have the bass too loud, and guitar too quiet. Then guitar too loud and bass too quiet. It's like everything is constantly competing and trying to survive. 3/5

Master is lacking treble and is muddy, like Avulsed today. I can tweak my knobs, but it's not sounding great anyway. Balance is off, tracks don't blend together. The mud from the vocals and giutars can't be cleaned now. The kick has no bottom end and is overly bright compared to the rest. The bass has no shape. There's like a sweeping solo in 'A Sanctuary...' and it's hidden beneath everything.

Some bands come back from the grave to jump on the oldschool hype train, but most of the time, what we refer to as oldschool is a special sound, which is rarely properly met. Here we just have a modern subpar production. The bass is completely made up, clanky, overcompressed and muffling the whole master with constant low end. The guitars are dry and tasteless. The drums struggle to contribute in any way to the dynamics. The kick drum is just a bothering resonance around 100hz. It's rather like a USPM production, badly executed, while I recall Quartz is a NWOBHM band. I always wonder how bands with experience like this just agree on the product made. Do they think it's nice and modern? do they have no money no choice and have to go with it? do they have no clue? 3/5

a good example of the "lemme fuck your ears" mixing style. There's obviously a harsh resonance, which is wanted for art reasons. Usually it's used in black metal, where the noise is purposefully masking everything. You can find it with a browner sound typically in swedish death metal with the boss HM2 pedal. Sometimes in thrash to get extra grit. And here it's done too, but way too much, and there's just the resonance piercing yours ear, and the music is actually too quiet below it. My only wish right now is to grab an eq and notch that down. 3/5

nice cover art - but the prod is not on par. It lacks treble, the vocals sound stuffed and out of balance, the overall image lacks density... 3/5

just to say that there's some cymbal which sometimes annoyingly rings out at 15kHz in the left channel (obvious in the intro of Nowhere To Hide) and sometimes just cuts out, it's super disturbing. Like a ciccada somewhere. I'm not even sure it's a cymbal, it may be hiss from a take. 3/5

a bit flat and vocals are really off mix 3/5

Where are the lows? these poor overheads sound like when I'm stuffing cutelry in the dishwasher. I like that it sounds raw, but this is a bit too much... no instrument was even cleaned a little bit 3/5

hum, I think this is supposed to be music akin to Carbomb. But it's really saturated and just a whole of noise, lacking the impact. The next odd thing is that there's numerous layers and samples coming back and forth, and they seem really badly integrated into the music, too loud, too quiet, you just wonder if you mistakenly opened another tab. 2/5

what's wrong with this? because there's obviously something wrong. It's really raw and dirty, the balance may not even be done. The guitars have a terrible tone and bring nothing to the music but their resonating grit. The kick is too forefront and doesn't sound great. The vocals are buried. I think there's not the least master processing and the whole sounds too uncompressed, lacks cohesion. It's not consistent across tracks, the second is more glued than the first. But very often, you lose engagement, you feel the music boring and empty. This is like a take straight out of the mics with hardly anything done to mix it, even the most basic moves. 2/5 - It's interesting because it teaches what mixing is worth. Here you have all the music, you can understand all the notes, but it doesn't create its image in your head, you have to do it yourself. You're not a listener enjoying the music coming through you, you're just someone bothered by some noise and left busy trying to imagine how it should sound if it were good.

the transition from previous entry to this one is harsh, because this one is indeed mixed and more immersive, but it is really really flat and I already miss the raw kick and snare somehow. The most bothering element is this harsh guitar on the right. It masks a lot of the sound, like a vacuum cleaner, and it's unbalanced with the left side. The bass is very much audible but lacks impact, no dynamics in the lows providing the base. - All of this is minor complaints 4/5

Boomy and muddy, terrible balance, shitty tone, guitar too loud, drums loo quiet, bad singing... they didn't even tried. OMG "la soupe aux choux" ???????????? terribly interpreted. This guys got an article in the local news for this... they say it's "funny". They forgot to say "don't buy the album though, it's complete shit". I wonder how things like this get released really... Close contender for worst entry in this list 1/5. - I browse their fb, they had trouble finding a drummer and bassist, they had trouble with the mix... but all their albums are like this one, they just have no standard of quality. But they dare make merch out of their 'music'. Well I didn't find the name of culprit..

instead of a loudness meter, we should create a flatness meter. It's been leveled like a crepe and I just have a constant noise of cymbals, constant noise of guitars, a muddy snare, and buried vocals. Resonant 800hz or so. No this is not an "Headbangers Heaven", this does not slap the least. 3/5 - (Manigance | L'Âme De Fond) This is also super flat. In fact if you measure the crest factor it's even flatter. But, at least they mixed the frequencies in a way that keeps good characteristic for all instruments. What bothers me here is rather how compressed and smothered the drums are, you can really hear the heavy processing. Part from that I wouldn't even call that a bad mix, 4/5 I'm just pointing it out as a comparision for previous entry

I don't know why I listen to shit like this in the first place, but the exercice is to describe why it's bad. Every instrument is recorded poorly, there's noise, saturation, sounds like a crappy mic. Everything feels off, it's strange. Is it only because of mud ? is it a dynamic problem, I can't tell... The bass doing too much masking... ? Are the drums MIDI ? can't tell for sure but it might be. (? no let me think, this kick is not MIDI it wouldn't sound like that) Terrible performance by the singer. Or so it feels like, he globally sings well, but the recording brings forward all the overdone grit, and some of the over the top moments feel even more stupid. The arranging is pretty drafty, things are jumping left and right, stupid instruments (harmonica, synth, organ...). All the red flags were raised from the start, I knew the music would be bad, but I don't know why I expected a good production 2/5

these cymbals are so annoying, thin, flat, and oppressively "air" boosted. 3/5

muffled, lack of treble and every track is masking one another 3/5

absolutely atrocious sizzling trebly overheads, totally out mix, while the rest of instruments is overly bland and muddy, the vocals being the most masked. Even the youtube comments agree with me. It's painful to listen too. 1/5

a new entry after some months of pause. Instruments have been hipassed a little too much, especially the voice, which sounds really weird with only the sibilliance and reverb audible. It's so thin it's strange, nobody heard a problem? The rest is correct, except that the image is not that well crafted, some stuff grab too much attention. 3/5

talk about a harsh guitar tone. Unlistenable if you're not masochist. 2/5

ah, the boss HM2, my worst enemy. It's always funny when I just wake up and that's the first album I pick for the day, "I am crazy ?", "Is it a technical problem ?", no it's the mix. So we obviously have a constant wall of noise in the mids, but it also comes with a disturbing lack of low end. The bass is extremely distorted and flat, which normally works for this kind of music, only if it wasn't so off-balance. The vocals are quite low in volume too, while the ride is super forefront. I don't know if I get acustomed to it the more I listen, or if the low end problem is mitigate since there is more double kick on following tracks. 3/5

very sibilant overall 3/5

laid back guitars, instrumental is a flat wall of noise, and now for a problem which didn't arise in this list yet, the over-compressed snare. It's so impactful, it's diverting all the attention, and is not really pleasant to listen to. It's also not quite pertinent to have it go full blast on more relaxed songs. 3/5

vocals are way above balance and quite muddy. All instruments sound very distant and quite. The master is quite dark and low. It still manages to create an atmosphere which I like, but there are obviously problems I can't pinpoint... yes overall muddiness, drums solely existing as a fast transient and getting masked immediately... 3/5

The bottom of the mix is floor tom resonance and boomy snare instead of kick and bass. The high end of the mix is fizzy guitars instead of cymbals. So spectraly, it's rather lacking. Poor guitars, I happen to make them like that sometimes, only conveying a noisy texture and no music, no weight, no rhythm... The vocals have a weird chorus effect on them. They sound under balance. The snare sounds above balance. Well, everything is weird but actually one can get used to it. It has vibe. The music gets through. To quote a youtube comment "This Bad quality gives so much space for imagination." 4/5

Why are the vocals so above balance? and guitars under balance? and the master so dull and dark? it's like when I'm trying to pay attention to the quiet radio while someone else is loudly talking over it. 3/5

I don't think the singer has a lisp, I think the whole piece is a tad overproduced, and somewhere in the vocal chain there might be a de-esser or comp or saturation that's not working as intended "loft in the verfes of a neverending fading thong ... a fymphony of momentf, that never won't ftay long"... Well, if he has indeed a lisp, I apologise, I wouldn't like to denigrate someone for that, but my bet is on the overpushed de-esser. 4/5

The harsh 4 to 5kHz gets in the way of the music. It feels I just have the compressed overheards and saturated vocals forefront, while the bass and kick are pretty quiet. Strangely enough if I try to boost the lows I only raise noise. It still sounds ok but quite unbalanced 4/5

guitars are too dark and under balance, while the overheads are over balance. As a result, the master sounds really void. Until the vocals kick in, are they are far to bright, dry, and lacking technique from the singer. 2/5

nasty buzzing guitar tone. The vocals are not that great, and hidden by a copious dose of chorus and saturation, way over balance. They don't fit the the mix really well. A shame because part from that it sounds pretty solid. But the video clip and cover art being AI generated, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the music was too. 4/5