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Not much dynamics on there, but if that is what the band wants then fair enough. I know some people think it's gone too far with loudness as people try to stand out on the radio, but don't they limit it anyway? On Soundcloud it looks a little more varied.

Rock on!

Hey @steevc , yes , you are correct but still the loudness war is not really over. Most streaming services will turn down your mix if you exceed -14 LUFS . This was actually caused by Metallica on their Death Magnetic album , which was so loud it didn't sound good anymore , the amount of artifacts and distortion in there is a little too much. Nonetheless , the mixing engineer behind the album is one of my heroes : Andrew Scheps , and a trademark of his mixes is that they are very loud . He is very versatile though , he goes from Metallica to Adele and everything in between hahaha.

Now , perceived loudness is a thing and now mastering engineers have their tricks and trades to sound ''louder'' than others as they will get turned down to -14 LUFS anyways if they exceed that.

I honestly don't pay much attention to loudness in my mixes , in the end that's the job for the mastering engineer . I just go as loud as I think it feels fine if using my analog summer , if I stay 100% digital , it even matters less.. in a floating point enviroment , as long as you stay away from digital 0 , the volume you print the final mix makes almost no difference

So, if I am printing and the meters are kind of in the ballpark of -3db to -6db on the master fader .. it's all fine and ready to get to mastering.

This particular track I ''pseudo mastered'' myself so I just pushed it as hard as I could , and honestly I feel i went a little too far :P

With my recordings I just try to ensure nothing distorts that shouldn't. I have not got into the intricacies of mastering, but I know that is an art in itself. I remember the controversy over the Metallica album.

!LUV

There's usually not a lot of dynamic variation on this kind of music unless the band purposely puts in a relatively quiet part...

I know :) I don't mind a bit of metal, but I need more variety.

Hey Amber , yup , that's quite true , Heavy metal tends to abuse compression , and it's getting worse with more modern bands . I have a love/hate relationship with that approach of mixing , you can get it nice and aggressive but might sacrifice other subtle things . It's always trying to find a happy medium for me .

I think that's why I prefer progressive metal and symphonic metal, there's a lot more dynamic variety in those types of music, while still being heavy.

It seems to have the presence of heavy metal that you would expect from this genre of music, as best my ears can tell. The drop tuning low end is out where you would expect it, and the vocals are out in front where you can hear them.

Thank you Amber , I think I mixed it a little too dry , not much of a fan of reverb in this particular style . It was more of a practice for a contest , I did not place anywhere near the best mixes hahahaha