
How Mixing In Music Has Evolved for Modern Metal
Nail The Mix Staff
Let’s be real: mixing in music, especially modern metal, is a completely different game than it was 15, 10, or even 5 years ago. The bar for production quality has been raised to a ridiculous height. That demo you recorded that sounded "pretty good" a decade ago would get you laughed out of the room today.
Even local bands are dropping releases that sound absolutely massive, with production that rivals major label acts. The gap has closed. The bad news? The pressure is on you, the producer, to deliver that hyper-polished, powerful sound. The good news? The tools and knowledge to achieve it have never been more accessible.
From wrestling with 9-string guitars to programming inhumanly tight drums, let’s break down the key areas where mixing in music has evolved for modern metal and what you need to do to keep up.
The Modern Standard: Why "Good Enough" Isn’t Anymore
Gone are the days of charmingly dodgy production. Think back to early albums from bands like Avenged Sevenfold; the raw talent was obvious, but by today’s standards, the production just wouldn’t fly. Today, the expectation is perfection, right out of the gate.
This means you need to understand production on a deep level. Luckily, you can build a studio in your bedroom that can produce legitimately pro-quality mixes for cheap. With amp sims like the Archetypes from Neural DSP and drum libraries like Get Good Drums or Superior Drummer 3, there’s nothing holding you back from crafting a world-class sound. The barrier to entry isn’t gear anymore; it’s knowledge.
The Low-End Warzone: Taming 8-String Guitars and Bass
Remember when Drop D was considered heavy? Bands like Helmet made headlines for it. Now, we have bands like Humanity’s Last Breath tuning to octaves you can’t even hear and then using a DigiTech Whammy to go even lower. This creates the single biggest challenge in modern metal mixing: the low-end. How do you make an 8-string guitar, a bass, and a kick drum all hit hard without turning the mix into a muddy catastrophe?
Defining Roles with EQ
Your first job is to decide who owns which part of the low-end spectrum. The guitars might be tuned low, but their power often comes from the low-mids, not the sub-bass frequencies.
- Guitars: Be aggressive with your high-pass filter (HPF). Start around 80-100Hz and push it up until the guitars start to sound thin, then back it off just a bit. This carves out crucial space for the kick and bass.
- Bass: The bass can own the sub-100Hz territory. But to make it audible on smaller speakers, it needs character in the mids. Use a multi-band distortion plugin like Neural DSP’s Parallax or FabFilter Saturn 2 to add some grit and definition between 800Hz and 3kHz. This helps it cut through without fighting the guitars.
- Kick: The kick needs to punch through right in the middle of all that. Find its fundamental frequency (usually 50-80Hz) and give it a slight boost, then cut that same frequency on the bass to create a perfect pocket.
Sidechain Compression for Clarity
To really make the kick drum cut through, use sidechain compression on the bass. Route the kick drum to the sidechain input of a compressor on your bass track. Every time the kick hits, it will momentarily duck the volume of the bass, making the kick’s transient pop. You don’t need much; a 2-3 dB dip is often enough to create that clarity.
For more advanced strategies, check out our deep dive on metal compression secrets beyond just making it loud.
Building the Inhuman Foundation: Modern Metal Drums
Modern metal drums are a combination of three things: incredibly tight playing, surgical editing, and powerful sample replacement/blending. The goal is a sound that is almost inhumanly punchy and consistent. While legends like Terry Date and Colin Richardson crafted amazing drum sounds back in the day, the modern standard is more polished and powerful across the board.
The Art of Sample Blending
You’ll rarely hear a modern metal record where the drums aren’t sample-augmented. The key is to blend, not just replace. Keep the original overheads and room mics to retain the human feel and cymbal wash, but blend in samples on the kick, snare, and toms to add consistency and punch.
- Tools: Slate Trigger 2 is the industry-standard for this. Load it up on your kick and snare tracks.
- Libraries: The drum sounds from Get Good Drums (especially their P IV Matt Halpern or Modern & Massive packs) are tailor-made for this and will get you 90% of the way there instantly.
- Technique: Phase alignment is critical. Make sure your sample’s waveform lines up perfectly with the original hit to avoid a weak, thin sound.
Programming That Doesn’t Sound Programmed
More and more bands are opting for programmed drums. The tech is so good now that it’s often faster and easier to get the perfect performance by programming it in Superior Drummer 3 than by spending days editing a live take. The trick is to humanize it. Don’t just quantize to 100%. Vary velocities, slightly nudge timings on fills, and use the "humanize" functions in your drum software to make it breathe like a real player.
The New Creative Landscape: Genre-Bending and Production
Modern metal isn’t confined to one lane anymore. Bands like Bring Me The Horizon and Falling In Reverse will flip from a pop-punk chorus to a deathcore breakdown to a hyperpop bridge within a single song. Spiritbox remixed Megan Thee Stallion. This cross-pollination is awesome, but it presents a huge mixing challenge. How do you make all those disparate elements sound cohesive?
Automation is Your Best Friend
Static mixes are dead. You need to use automation to make different sections of the song work.
- EQ Automation: A great trick is to automate your guitar EQs. During a heavy, palm-muted riff, you might want a big low-mid boost around 200Hz. But when an 808 and synth pad come in for a trap verse, you need to automate a huge cut in that same frequency on the guitars to make room.
- Reverb/Delay Sends: Automate your effects sends. Keep the verses relatively dry, then open up the sends for a massive, washed-out reverb on the vocals for the chorus to create a sense of scale and impact.
Carving Space with Surgical EQ
When you’re dealing with distorted guitars, synths, orchestral layers, and electronic drums, every instrument needs its own defined space in the frequency spectrum. This is where surgical EQ comes in. Use a plugin with a spectrum analyzer like FabFilter Pro-Q 3 to identify frequency clashes and make precise, narrow cuts to create separation.
This is a massive topic, and you can get a head start with our guide on EQ strategies for mixing modern metal.
Level Up Your Mixing Game
The demands of mixing in music for modern metal are intense. You’re expected to manage insane low-end, craft perfect drum sounds, and seamlessly blend genres, all while delivering a final product that sounds polished and powerful.
It’s a tall order, but you don’t have to figure it all out alone.
Imagine watching the actual producers for bands like Gojira, Periphery, and Meshuggah mix one of their real sessions from scratch, explaining every plugin, every EQ move, and every decision they make. With Nail The Mix, you get to do exactly that. Every month, we give you the raw multitracks from a massive metal song and a live, 8-hour class with the producer who mixed it. You can see how the pros tackle these exact challenges and apply their techniques to your own mixes.
If you’re ready to stop guessing and start learning the proven workflows that create today’s best-sounding metal, it’s time to see what’s inside.
Click here to unlock your sound and start mixing modern metal beyond the presets.
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