Mixing Allt’s Demon Voice: Buster Odeholm’s No-Reverb Vocal Trick

Sometimes the most unsettling and powerful sounds in a mix come from breaking the rules. That creepy, in-your-head demon voice from the Allt session with Buster Odeholm is a perfect example. While your first instinct for a massive, evil vocal might be to drown it in dark reverbs and delays, Buster went in the complete opposite direction.

The result is a vocal effect that feels disconnected from the world, intensely personal, and downright menacing. Let’s break down the cinematic inspiration and the simple-but-effective plugin chain he used to pull it off.

The “Sauron” Concept: The Power of No Reverb

The whole idea for this effect came from a pretty epic source: the sound design for Sauron in The Hobbit films. Buster pointed out a scene where a character is standing on a massive cliff, speaking to Sauron. The environment is huge and should be full of reverb and echo. The character’s voice reflects that.

But when Sauron speaks, his voice is bone dry. There’s zero reverb. It’s completely disconnected from the space he’s supposedly in, which makes him sound less like a physical being and more like an omnipotent presence speaking directly inside your mind.

This is the key to the Allt demon voice. By taking a vocal that sounds like it should be massive and epic and stripping away all spatial effects, you create a disorienting, claustrophobic feeling. The voice doesn’t sit in the mix; it floats unnaturally on top of it, demanding your full attention.

Building the Demon: A Simple, Aggressive Vocal Chain

Of course, a “dry” vocal doesn’t mean an unprocessed one. The raw vocal performance needed to be shaped and twisted to get that demonic character. Buster built a short but powerful chain to get it there.

Taming Dynamics with Aggressive Compression

The first step was to control the super-uneven performance. To make the voice consistently aggressive and forward, Buster reached for a classic FET compressor modeled on a UREI 1176–in this case, the Waves CLA-76 (the “Blacky” version).

He slammed it with the fastest possible attack and release times. Why?

• Fast Attack: This immediately clamps down on the start of every word, crushing the transients and creating a very controlled, in-your-face sound.
• Fast Release: The compressor lets go almost instantly, which brings up all the low-level details, like breath and room tone, creating a sense of suffocating intimacy and energy.

Putting this aggressive compressor at the start of the chain ensures that the plugins that follow receive a consistent, leveled signal to work with. For more tips on how to use compression to add punch and power, check out our complete guide to the audio compressor.

Adding Grit with an Overlooked Gem: Waves LoFi

Here’s where the real texture comes in. To give the voice its weird, distorted character, Buster used a seriously overlooked plugin: Waves LoFi. Instead of a typical saturation or distortion plugin, LoFi adds a specific kind of degradation and harmonic content that sounds… well, broken. It thins out the sound while adding a layer of dirty, digital-sounding grit that is perfect for this kind of unnatural vocal effect. It’s a great reminder that sometimes the “wrong” tool is exactly the right one for a creative effect, much like his other creepy vocal FX chains.

Cleaning It All Up with a Gate

All that insane compression and distortion brings up a ton of unwanted noise. Every little breath, lip smack, or bit of room hum between the phrases gets cranked up to an audible level.

To fix this, Buster employed a simple noise gate. By setting a precise threshold, the gate ensures that you only hear the vocal when it’s supposed to be there. The second the singer stops, the gate slams shut, creating dead silence. This sharp contrast between the aggressive vocal and absolute silence makes the effect even more jarring and impactful.

Why Breaking The Rules Works

This “no-reverb” vocal trick is a masterclass in creative sound design within a mix. It works by playing against the listener’s expectations. Our brains are hardwired to associate sounds with spaces, and when that connection is deliberately broken, it creates an immediate sense of unease.

While you’re often focused on the details of equalization and compression to make everything gel, don’t forget the power of psychological tricks like this one.

These are the kinds of next-level production techniques that separate a good mix from a great one. Learning how the pros think is the fastest way to learn how to mix music and start making truly memorable music.

Want to see exactly how Buster Odeholm dialed in this effect and built the entire monstrous mix for Allt’s “The Deepest Blue”? You can. By joining Nail The Mix, you get to download the actual multi-tracks from this session and watch Buster mix the entire song from scratch, explaining every single move.

Get access to the Allt session, plus multitracks from Spiritbox, Gojira, and dozens more, right here.