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Kurt Ballou mixes "Electric Messiah" by High On Fire
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High On Fire’s “Electric Messiah” is a punishing wall of tone that won a Grammy and pushed the limits of what stoner and doom metal can sound like. With unrelenting drums, snarling bass grind, layered tube-screamed guitars, and Matt Pike’s guttural roars, this is a dense, high-octane mix that doesn’t sacrifice clarity or impact. It’s one of the band’s most aggressive and complex sonic statements, and a benchmark for heavy production done right.
This Nail The Mix session is helmed by Kurt Ballou, the guitarist of Converge and founder of GodCity Studio. His engineering and mixing work sits at the cutting edge of extreme music, blending analog grit with surgical modern punch. What sets Kurt apart in projects like this is how he creates definition in chaos — managing tracks that are sonically thick and rhythmically busy without losing a sense of space or tempo.
The “Electric Messiah” mix presents unique technical challenges: recording and blending multiple guitar layers with balanced harmonic saturation, achieving low-end separation between bass and kick without thinning out the tone, and managing Pike’s aggressive vocal dynamic against a full-frequency mix. Drums pound but breathe, with extreme transient control and parallel processing used for explosive energy that still reads on the stereo field.
Download the multitracks and load this session into your DAW to see how you stack up. If you’re serious about heavy music production, this session offers rare access to a landmark track from one of metal’s most respected bands, mixed by one of its most innovative producers.
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