Jamie King’s EQ Blueprint for Mixing The Contortionist’s Metal Drums

Getting your drums to punch through a dense metal mix without sounding thin or muddy is a constant battle. We’ve all been there—endlessly tweaking EQs, boosting and cutting, only to find our ears are fatigued and we’re not sure if we’ve made things better or worse. What if there was a way to get your drum tones 90% of the way there in minutes?

We got a masterclass from legendary producer Jamie King (Between the Buried and Me, The Contortionist) on exactly that. While mixing The Contortionist, he revealed a killer method for dialing in drums fast using a simple frequency analyzer as a guide. It’s less about “cheating” and more about giving your ears a reliable, proven starting point.

The Power of a Reference EQ Curve

Instead of starting a mix completely from scratch, Jamie uses a tried-and-true shortcut: a visual reference. Over years of mixing, he has found specific EQ curves that consistently work. He developed these by analyzing killer-sounding pre-processed drum samples, isolated hits from his favorite records, and his own most successful mixes.

He saves these ideal EQ curves and uses a frequency analyzer to display them behind the EQ of the track he’s working on. This isn’t about blindly matching a curve; it’s about context. If you’ve been listening to a lo-fi indie track all day, your perception of “good” high-end might be skewed. A visual reference gets you in the professional ballpark instantly, acting as a sanity check before you even start making major adjustments.

Applying the Technique: A Kick & Snare Breakdown

This workflow is all about speed and accuracy. It takes the guesswork out of those initial, crucial EQ moves and helps you build a solid foundation for your drum mix.

Taming the Kick Drum

Here’s how Jamie puts this into practice on a kick drum. The goal is to get the live kick to align with his proven EQ shape.

1. Load up Your Tools: He places an EQ plugin, like the FabFilter Pro-Q, on the kick drum track. Many modern EQs have a built-in frequency analyzer that can show a reference spectrum.
2. Compare and Contrast: With the reference curve visible, he plays the kick drum and immediately sees the differences. In the session, he instantly noticed his current kick had more high-end than his typical go-to sound.
3. Make Targeted Cuts: The analyzer also revealed where the kick was muddy. He zeroed in on the mids and made a significant cut around the 700-740Hz range. This wasn’t a random guess; it was a quick, surgical move guided by his proven reference.

The result isn’t the final kick sound, but it’s dramatically closer to a mix-ready tone in a fraction of the time. This kind of precise control is fundamental to modern metal production. By understanding these core EQ strategies, you can make your tracks punchier and clearer.

Dialing in the Snare

The same principle applies to the snare drum. Jamie has a saved EQ curve that represents his ideal snare tone. This method is especially powerful for salvaging problematic source tracks.

Imagine getting a snare track from a band that’s completely waterlogged with boxy, ugly midrange. Instead of spending an hour sweeping frequencies and trying to guess where the problem is, the analyzer makes it obvious. You can see the huge buildup of mids compared to the reference curve and know exactly where you need to cut to counteract the bad processing. It removes the guesswork and helps you fix issues at the source with confidence.

From Technique to Intuition

You might be thinking, “Am I just supposed to stare at an analyzer all day?” Not at all. This is a training tool.

Jamie compares it to learning to type. When you first start, you have to stare at the keyboard to find every letter. It’s slow and tedious. But after enough repetition, your fingers just know where to go. You’re on autopilot.

This frequency analyzer technique works the same way for your ears. At first, you rely on the visual guide to learn what a balanced kick or a snappy snare looks like. Over time, you internalize that information. You’ll start to hear a frequency and know, “That’s a bit too much 400Hz,” without even opening a plugin. It’s a powerful way to accelerate the learning curve that trips up so many producers. Getting a handle on these foundational skills is the first step to developing your own professional workflow.

See The Full Pro Mix in Action

This EQ trick is just one small part of building a colossal drum sound. Imagine seeing the entire process—how this initial EQ gets blended with samples, shaped with powerful compression techniques, and glued together with bus processing and automation to sit perfectly in a final mix.

At Nail The Mix, you get to be a fly on the wall for exactly that. Every month, you get the real multi-tracks from a massive song and watch the original producer mix it from scratch, explaining every single move.

If you want to see precisely how Jamie King took these drum tracks and built the final, polished mix for The Contortionist, you’re in luck. You can dive into his complete Nail The Mix session and get access to the very same multi-tracks he used. Check out Jamie King’s full session on mixing The Contortionist here.