# Getting that Bathory sound!



## Dragonperil (Jul 5, 2011)

Ok, so i've grown quite bored of my current black metal guitar settings, and my usual mixing techniques are getting contrived and dull. So here's my question...

How do i get THIS sound?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d2oSJS8QAs#t=1m15s

Generally the guitar and bass, i'm familiar with layering - so i'm asking for a focus on the guitar tone (settings) post EQs and the like. I'm using Podfarm for my guitars and bass and Reaper as my DAW. 

Sorry if this isn't exactly appropriate to this forum, but you guys are pretty unpretentious and know your stuff damn well.


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## maraskandi (Jul 5, 2011)

You may already know more about it than I, but I throw this in off the top of my head:

3-4 layers of sound design
double tracked banjo, ukelele or mandolin
Double tracked overdriven guitars.
vocals in the middle
harmonies panned left and right

With doubletracking you have two passes of the same material panned hard left and hard right. 

You'll need to compress your material heavily to squezze in all that sound and judge what frequencies are most important to keep for each instrument, then filter out those that are unneccessary or ugly, or that cause phasing with other sounds with the same frequencies as they cancel eachother out if they are in phase so it sounds quieter rather than louder.
Just leaving room for all the parts basically, you have to get surgical with this at the mixing stage, playing with compressor attacks and releases, threshold, to your taste.

There must be some tutorials about the more chuggin stuff, check out the tutorial thread, perhaps throw in a request there see what poeple say. 

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1827

I guess you just strum away, arrange your song according to form/composition. And post it up for feedback, there are indeed plenty knowledgeable folk here who could help.

I did a sketch of music somewhat like that with a producer friend of mine some time ago, it's intended as a mockup to guide a future re-recording with real instruments so no particular fancy production work has gone into it once it was recorded into the template, forgive any dodgy bits. 
It's in the genre so perhaps it'll interest you. It's double-tracked guitar, vsti drums and me doing some vocals and harmonies about zombies and tough love, or somesuch:
http://soundcloud.com/maraskandi-produc ... mited-ammo

Gd luck on your quest!


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## Dragonperil (Jul 5, 2011)

cheers mate, you're a top bloke. I had a feeling it was somewhere in the compression and getting those frequencies tightened up. I'll have a bash and post it up. 

Added you on soundcloud btw!

cheers!

p.s. this tune reminds me of Bob Catley... i dunno why...


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## maraskandi (Jul 12, 2011)

Cool, and no worries, what's yer soundcloud add? 

Compression is certainly a staple of the audio production toolset. 

You can also overdo compression, which would result in homogenous dynamics, lack of variation in levels leaving no discernable rhythmic interplay in the sounds, so play around and read up and experiment, sometimes having non compressed material alongside compressed material helps distinguish certain elements from eachother as well.


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