Metal Vocal Mixing FAQs: How To Get Pro-Level Vocals

Getting vocals to sit right in a modern metal mix is one of the biggest challenges producers face. You’re fighting against a wall of low-tuned, high-gain guitars, inhumanly tight drums, and a thunderous low end. The vocals need to be aggressive, clear, and powerful enough to cut through that chaos without sounding thin, harsh, or disconnected.

If you’ve ever pulled your hair out wondering why your vocals sound massive in solo but vanish the second the guitars kick in, you’re not alone. The standards for production are higher than ever, and that means your vocal mix has to be flawless.

Let’s dive into some of the most common questions about mixing metal vocals and get you some actionable answers you can use in your DAW right now.

How do I make screaming vocals sound huge and not thin?

A thin, fizzy scream is one of the quickest ways to make a mix sound amateur. The key to a massive scream isn’t just cranking the volume; it’s about adding weight, width, and saturation to give it density and power.

Use Parallel Saturation for Weight

This is the number one trick for adding body. Don’t just slap a distortion plugin on your main vocal track—that often destroys the original character. Instead, use parallel processing:

1. Set Up a Send: Create an aux/bus track and send your main scream track to it.
2. Obliterate the Send: On the aux track, get aggressive. Use a saturation plugin like the Soundtoys Decapitator, FabFilter Saturn 2, or even a guitar amp sim. The goal is to create a heavily distorted, harmonically rich version of the vocal.
3. EQ the Filth: Before and after the saturation, EQ the aux track. High-pass it to remove any muddy low-end rumble and low-pass it to get rid of excessive fizz. You’re often looking to emphasize the low-mids (250-500Hz) and upper-mids (2-4kHz) on this track.
4. Blend to Taste: Slowly blend the saturated aux track underneath your main vocal. You’ll feel the main vocal get thicker and more aggressive without losing its original clarity. It should feel different more than it sounds like a separate distorted vocal.

Layer and Pan Your Doubles

One great vocal performance is good. Three of them are a force of nature. If you have double or triple-tracked screams, use them to your advantage.

• Keep your best take right up the center.
• Pan the other takes hard left and hard right.
• Tuck them in slightly lower than the main vocal—just enough to create width and support without being distracting. Use a tool like Sound Radix Auto-Align to make sure they are perfectly in phase for maximum impact.

What’s the best vocal compression chain for metal?

Metal vocals—especially screams—have insane dynamic range. You have whispers, guttural lows, and piercing highs, all in the same phrase. A single compressor often can’t handle this without sounding overworked. The solution? Serial vocal compression.

This means using two (or more) compressors back-to-back, with each one doing a little bit of work instead of one doing all the heavy lifting. This gives you way more control and a much more transparent sound. For a deeper dive into this, check out our metal compression secrets hub page.

Stage 1: Taming the Peaks with a FET Compressor

Your first compressor is for control. Its job is to quickly catch the loudest peaks and transparently knock them down.

• The Tool: An 1176-style FET compressor is the go-to. The UAD 1176 Collection, Waves CLA-76, or Arturia FET-76 are all killer options.
• The Settings: Start with a 4:1 or 8:1 ratio. Set a fast attack (around 2-4) and a fast release (around 6-7).
• The Goal: You’re looking for about 3-6dB of gain reduction on only the loudest screams and syllables. It should react instantly and then get out of the way.

Stage 2: Adding Character with an Opto Compressor

Your second compressor is for adding vibe, smoothness, and overall consistency. It has a slower, more musical reaction time that glues the performance together.

• The Tool: An LA-2A-style optical compressor is perfect for this. Try the Waves CLA-2A or IK Multimedia T-RackS White 2A.
• The Settings: Opto compressors usually only have two main controls: Peak Reduction and Gain.
• The Goal: Aim for just 1-3dB of gentle, consistent gain reduction. This compressor will smooth out the performance that was already tamed by the 1176, giving it a polished, “record-like” feel.

How do I EQ metal vocals to cut through the mix?

In a dense metal mix, you can’t just boost the vocal volume. You have to carve out a specific frequency pocket for it to live in, which means both cutting and boosting with purpose. If you want to learn more about how EQ applies to guitars (which you’ll be fighting with), our EQing metal guitars hub page has you covered.

Subtractive EQ: Clean Up First

Always start by removing the frequencies you don’t need. This creates clarity and prevents your boosts from amplifying mud.

• High-Pass Filter: This is non-negotiable. For aggressive screams, you can often filter everything below 120-150Hz without losing any power. For cleans, be a bit more conservative, starting around 80-100Hz.
• Cut the Boxiness: Sweep around the 300-600Hz range with a narrow Q on an EQ like the FabFilter Pro-Q 3. You’ll often find a “cardboard” or “boxy” tone. A few dB of reduction here can instantly clean things up.
• Tame Harshness: Look for piercing, resonant frequencies in the 2-5kHz range. Be careful here, as this is also the presence area, but a surgical cut of a specific whistling tone can save your ears.

Additive EQ: Shape and Define

Once the junk is gone, you can start boosting to enhance the good stuff.

• Presence/Intelligibility (2-5kHz): A broad boost in this range is what helps the vocal cut through the wall of guitars and cymbals. This is where the consonants and lyrical clarity live.
• Air/Clarity (10kHz+): A high-shelf boost above 10kHz can add a sense of “air” and polish, making the vocal sound more expensive. Be careful not to make it sound thin or introduce sibilance. A de-esser like the Waves Sibilance or FabFilter Pro-DS after your EQ can fix any excessive “ess” sounds.

How do I get clean vocals to work in a heavy mix?

One of the hallmarks of modern metal is the seamless blend of brutal screams and soaring, melodic clean vocals. The challenge is making those cleans sound powerful and emotionally resonant, not like a pop vocal awkwardly dropped into a metal track.

• Stack ‘Em Up: A single clean vocal track will almost always sound weak. Record at least two identical takes (doubles) and pan them left and right. Then, add harmonies on top of that. A thick stack of vocals provides its own power.
• Use Subtle Saturation: Just like with screams, saturation helps. But for cleans, be much more subtle. A tape saturation plugin like the Slate Digital Virtual Tape Machine or a gentle setting on a tube saturator can add harmonics that help the vocal cut through without sounding distorted.
• Automate Everything: Don’t just set the fader and forget it. Automate the volume of your clean vocal phrases to make sure they’re always audible. Ride the fader up at the end of phrases to enhance the emotion and make sure important lyrics don’t get lost.

What about reverb and delay? How do I use effects without creating mud?

Time-based effects are essential for giving vocals depth and dimension, but they can easily turn your mix into a swampy mess if you’re not careful.

The secret? EQ your effects returns. Your reverb and delay don’t need a full frequency spectrum.

• For Delay: Send your vocal to an aux track with a delay plugin like Soundtoys EchoBoy or ValhallaDelay. After the delay, add an EQ. High-pass it up to 300-400Hz and low-pass it down to 3-4kHz. This creates a “band-passed” delay that gives you the rhythmic echo without adding low-end mud or high-end fizz that clashes with the lead vocal.
• For Reverb: Do the same thing. Use a plate or room reverb from a plugin like Valhalla VintageVerb on an aux track. Follow it with an EQ and aggressively filter the lows and highs. A good trick is to also add pre-delay (50-100ms) to your reverb. This creates a small gap between the dry vocal and the start of the reverb, which greatly enhances clarity.

My vocals sound good solo’d but get buried. What am I doing wrong?

If this is happening, the problem might not be with your vocal track—it’s with the arrangement of everything around it. Your mix is a zero-sum game; for something to stand out, something else has to get out of the way.

• Carve a Hole in the Guitars: The main competitor for your vocal’s frequency range is the guitars. On your main guitar bus, use a dynamic EQ (iZotope Neutron, FabFilter Pro-Q 3) and set it to cut a few dB in the 2-4kHz range. Now, sidechain that EQ band to your lead vocal track. The result? Every time the vocalist sings, the guitars’ presence frequencies duck down just a little, creating a perfect pocket for the vocal to sit in. The moment the vocal stops, the guitars return to full power. It’s a subtle but incredibly effective trick.
• Process Your Vocal Bus: Route all your vocal tracks (leads, doubles, harmonies, effects returns) to a single “Vocal Bus.” On this bus, you can use a bit of gentle bus compression (Cytomic The Glue is great for this) and some final EQ to treat all the vocal elements as one cohesive instrument. This can help “glue” everything together and make it punch through the mix as a unified front.

Mixing modern metal vocals is a deep rabbit hole, but mastering these fundamentals will put you leagues ahead. Seeing how pros like Joey Sturgis, Will Putney, or Billy Decker tackle these exact problems on real-world sessions is the ultimate shortcut.

At Nail The Mix, you can download the actual multi-tracks from bands like Lamb of God, Trivium, and Gojira and watch the producer who mixed the record rebuild it from scratch, explaining every plugin, every setting, and every decision. Check out our full catalog of sessions and see for yourself how the best in the business get it done.