The Best Pro Tools Plugins for Modern Metal Production

Mixing modern metal is a different beast. The bar for production quality is higher than ever—what passed for a decent demo 15 years ago wouldn't even make the cut today. Listen to any modern release, from a local band's EP to a new Periphery album, and you’ll hear incredibly polished, powerful, and precise production.

This is because modern metal is dense, fast, and often tuned ridiculously low. It demands clarity in the face of chaos. How do you make an 8-string guitar tuned to drop F sit with a bass guitar? How do you get a kick drum to punch through a wall of sound without turning the low-end into a muddy mess? A big part of the solution is balancing the kick drum and bass from the start.

While Pro Tools comes with some solid stock plugins like the EQ III and Channel Strip, achieving that competitive, professional metal sound requires a specialized third-party toolkit. These are the plugins that the pros rely on to craft mixes that hit hard and sound huge. Here are our go-to Pro Tools plugins for absolutely crushing modern metal mixes.

Surgical EQs for Maximum Clarity

In a genre where every frequency band is fighting for space, a standard EQ just isn’t enough. You need tools that are precise, flexible, and powerful enough to perform sonic surgery. This is especially true when dealing with the low-end chug of seven and eight-string guitars.

FabFilter Pro-Q 3

There's a reason you see Pro-Q 3 in nearly every pro producer’s session. It’s the undisputed champion of surgical EQ. For metal, its power lies in its transparency and incredible feature set.

Why it’s essential for metal:

• Dynamic EQ: This is a game-changer for taming harsh cymbal bleed in your drum shells or controlling palm-mute build-up on rhythm guitars. You can set an EQ band to only kick in when a specific frequency gets too loud, preserving the natural tone when it’s not a problem.
• M/S Processing: Easily carve out space in the center of your mix for the kick, snare, and vocals by EQing the "Mid" and "Side" channels of your guitar bus independently.
• Frequency Collision Highlighting: Pro-Q 3 can show you which tracks are clashing in the frequency spectrum. Seeing that your bass and guitars are fighting at 200Hz takes the guesswork out of finding mud.

Actionable Tip: Use the spectrum analyzer to identify the resonant "fizz" in your distorted guitars (often between 4-8kHz). Create a super narrow (high Q) dynamic band to dip that frequency only when it gets harsh during heavy chugs. This cleans up the tone without making it sound dark or dull.

Sonnox Oxford Dynamic EQ

Another brilliant option for problem-solving is the Sonnox Dynamic EQ. It provides an incredibly musical way to control resonant frequencies that pop out only on certain notes. It's perfect for taming an unruly bass guitar that has "hot spots" up and down the neck, ensuring every note is powerful but controlled.

Dynamics That Hit Hard

Modern metal needs to be punchy and aggressive but also controlled. The wrong compressor can squash the life out of your drums or make your guitars feel weak. The right ones add glue, impact, and excitement.

FabFilter Pro-MB

Multi-band compression is non-negotiable for modern metal, especially with low-tuned instruments. When a guitarist hits a low F# on an 8-string, you don’t want that single note to trigger the compressor and suck the life out of the entire guitar tone.

That's where Pro-MB comes in. Mastering multiband compression allows you to apply compression to just the low-end of your guitars to keep the chugs tight and consistent, while leaving the mid-range and top-end open and aggressive. It’s also a secret weapon on a mix bus to tighten up the entire low end without affecting the snap of your snare or the clarity of your vocals.

Actionable Tip: On your main guitar bus, create a band from 0Hz up to about 150-200Hz. Use a fast attack and medium release to clamp down only on the low-end palm mutes, making them incredibly tight without thinning out the rest of the tone.

Slate Digital VBC (Virtual Buss Compressors)

Getting your whole mix to feel cohesive, or "glued together," is a hallmark of pro production. The Slate VBC plugin gives you three classic VCA bus compressors that are perfect for this. The "FG-GREY" (emulating an SSL compressor) is a standard for adding punch and aggression to your drum bus or the entire mix. Just a couple of dB of gain reduction with a slow attack and fast release can make everything feel more powerful and connected.

If you struggle to get your compression settings just right, our guide to the different types of audio compressors breaks down the fundamentals in a way that actually makes sense for heavy music.

Amp Sims That Actually Keep Up

The days of needing a perfectly mic'd tube amp to get a pro guitar tone are over. Modern amp sims sound incredible and offer a level of consistency and flexibility that's perfect for home producers and pro studios alike.

Neural DSP Archetype Series

Neural DSP has completely changed the game. Their plugins don't just sound like a real amp; they feel like one. They respond to your playing dynamics and handle low tunings without turning into a mushy mess.

Whether you're after the djent-defining tones of the Archetype: Gojira, the versatile aggression of the Archetype: Nolly, or the all-out brutality of the Archetype: Petrucci, you can’t go wrong with the Neural DSP suite. They include everything you need in one window: pre-effects, multiple amp heads, a great cab sim with Impulse Responses (IRs), and post-effects.

STL Tones – ToneHub & Amphub

Another titan in the amp sim world, STL Tones offers a massive library of perfectly captured amp tones from legendary producers. With ToneHub, you can access signature presets from guys like Will Putney, Howard Benson, and Lasse Lammert. It’s like having their entire signal chain at your fingertips. This gives you an amazing starting point that you know is already mix-ready.

Mastering the EQ for these tones is crucial. Getting guitars to sound massive but clear is an art, and we’ve compiled a ton of pro techniques on our guide to EQing modern metal guitars.

The Foundation: Modern Metal Drums

Modern metal drums are often a combination of perfectly recorded acoustic drums, precise editing, and sample replacement. This hybrid approach delivers the inhumanly tight and punchy sound we expect to hear, but it starts with choosing the right drum software for the job.

Get Good Drums Libraries

Founded by Periphery’s Adam "Nolly" Getgood, Misha Mansoor and Derya "Dez" Nagle, Get Good Drums (GGD) libraries are designed from the ground up to sound like a finished record. The samples come pre-processed and ready to drop into a dense mix. Libraries like Modern & Massive or P V Matt Halpern Signature Pack give you that polished, aggressive drum sound right out of the box, saving you hours of processing.

Toontrack Superior Drummer 3

If you want total control, Superior Drummer 3 is the ultimate tool. It's an incredibly deep and powerful drum production studio. You can build your own kits, blend multiple mics on every drum, import your own samples, and program MIDI with an insane level of realism. It’s perfect for producers who want to craft a truly unique drum sound from scratch.

Slate Digital Trigger 2

For sample replacement, Trigger 2 is the industry standard. It makes it dead simple to blend samples with your live drum recordings to add punch and consistency. Got a kick drum that sounds a bit weak? Blend in a punchy sample. Snare getting lost in the mix? Reinforce it with a sample that has more body or crack. It’s fast, accurate, and essential for modern drum production.

Oeksound Spiff

This one is a transient-shaping secret weapon. Unlike a traditional transient designer, Spiff allows you to boost or cut transients in specific frequency bands. You can use it to add more "click" to a kick drum around 4-6kHz without making the whole drum sound harsh, or tame the piercing attack of a cymbal without dulling the whole thing.

Creative FX & "Secret Weapons"

Sometimes a mix needs a little something extra—a touch of grit, a massive sense of space, or some genre-bending flavor.

Soundtoys Decapitator

When you need to add warmth, harmonics, and straight-up aggression, you reach for Decapitator. This saturation plugin can do everything from subtle analog warmth to full-on distorted destruction. Try it on a parallel bus for your snare to make it smack, put it on a bass DI to help it cut through on small speakers, or even use it on vocals to add some aggressive bite. Understanding what saturation is and how it works is key to using it effectively.

Valhalla DSP ValhallaVintageVerb

For massive ambient textures and lush reverb tails, it's hard to beat ValhallaVintageVerb. It's affordable, sounds incredible, and is super easy to use. It's perfect for creating those huge, atmospheric lead guitar tones or adding epic space to a vocal track without cluttering up the mix. Knowing what reverb is and how to apply it in a metal context is crucial.

Xfer Records OTT

Once a niche "secret weapon" in electronic music, the OTT (Over The Top) compressor is now a staple for adding that hyper-compressed, aggressive energy you hear in a lot of modern metal and metalcore. It’s a free multi-band upward/downward compressor that, when blended in subtly on a drum bus or synth group, can add an insane amount of excitement and detail. It’s a key part of the sound for bands that draw influence from outside of traditional metal.

Want to See These Plugins in Action?

Knowing the right tools is one thing, but mastering them is another. The best way to learn is by watching the world’s best producers work.

At Nail The Mix, you can watch legendary instructors like Jens Bogren (Opeth, Arch Enemy), Will Putney (Knocked Loose, Fit For An Autopsy), and Dan Lancaster (Bring Me The Horizon, Blink-182) use these exact plugins to mix real songs from start to finish. You get the raw multi-tracks so you can mix alongside them and apply what you've learned. Check out our entire catalog of past sessions and see for yourself how the pros build those crushing, polished mixes you hear on your favorite records.