Our beloved metalhead.club Guru Thomas asked for a little behind the scenes from the production of the MetalHeadClub Anthem.
First of all: here you can hear the masterpiece!
So this is a quick wrap up of what was going on. There will be a blog post and/or video about the more nerdy mix stuff eventually. This is more a “how we made it happen” thing.
How it all started
So back in April 2024 (very handy to be able to look up old mastodon posts) MiseryPath came with the idea of doing a song for the metalhead club server.
I know how to play guitar, have been in bands, produced some projects and could offer mixing/mastering services so i voluntered. Thankfully MiseryPath took care of assembling the “band”. Anrichter was one of the members and delivered a Nextcloud where we could share our ideas and discuss all things discussable.
lets get “creative”
Then we threw around some ideas. F.e. i offered an “anime intro style tec-synth-core” thingy that was a little too out there to get chosen, haha. A first prob… thing was that we all agreed to work in the limits of our skillsets. So a 300bpm 16th note blastbeat was not an option. Again Misery had a solid riff progression and lead melodies that we could build upon.
Also there were several members who did an excellent job in the beginning but who sadly were forced to discontinue the contributions due to individual IRL situations.
At this stage we relied on TuxGuitar, a programm to note down riffs, melodies and arrangement parts in a midi format. So everyone had the correct note and position on the fretboard.
We have something
The first draft of the song came together. We discussed the possibility to add some synths. This was handed to me and i first wanted to have a song to add something rather than add another layer of complexity in the songwriting. So now it was time to record stuff.
Everyone had some kind of recording gear so this was not a problem. I simply laid out some “pretty pleases” like sample-rate, bit depth aso. All recordings were uploaded to the Nextcloud.
We had Anrichter and MiseryPath doing guitars so back then i held back because mixing+mastering was a big enough task to do. Guitars came in (and played pretty solid, thumbs up to both) FrankyFire did some nice vocal work. VirtualWolf had “just” an electric drum kit so he sent in his takes as midi and i added a drum sampler for proper metal BAAMS. For reasons i still don’t know the bass parts didn’t come. I hope the lad is fine and alive but for the project something had to be done. To have “something” to work with i did a bass take so now i also have the bass credits.
we’re screwed … are we?!
Having the recordings together i now could start mixing. There were a bunch of “rough mixes” to give the band something to listen and to discuss sound options aso. A major issue was that i only could work on the MHC song in between my other duties. Therefore it took a while to implement all the feedback.
In that phase we figured that we need “more” vocals. FrankyFire sent a guide track with the state of then but there were several rather long parts in the song that missed something. Unfortunately Franky wasn’t in reach anymore also because of IRL duties. So we had a guidetrack that had several takes rougly merged together. Good for a guide but for the final mix i would have liked to get access to the individual tracks instead of this “stem” that also already had effects which was not optimal for me to mix. And we needed more vocals to fill in the space.
For the record, this is not unusual. Some points just come up when everyone has delivered their parts and one can listen a bit. Normally you go a step back and rewrite/rearrange the parts. But how, if the singer is kind a gone?
We now had three options.
- Go with what we have which we knew was ok but not the ANTHEM we reached for
- Find a new singer
- Bury the project
This was not a fun period. F.e. i came to a point where i had to tell the band that i can’t “waste” time i need otherwise for a project that’s not going to happen.
In a desperate last attempt MiseryPath called out again for a new singer to help us out.
And as a miracle Caeri found us and agreed to step in. She took the vocals in her hands and went on a slightly different direction than Franky. She did an incredible job and also left enough room to keep some of FrankFire’s takes. So we could do him some credit, have an interesting duo going and finally a structure that started to work.
making it THE song
In that stage i also had to start to do something synthwise. In that time i had a major crush on the Electric Callboy Live Tour video so i was all about the woop woop woop. But “synth” could mean many things. I reached out to the verse to get some opinions.
There was one very important comment:
“Amaranthe“. I knew they existed but never really heard them until now. Exploring them helped me a lot to not go full german techno and balance female vs. male singers against some frickely metal chugga chugga. Thanks a lot aymm!
Gang shouts
In that same time (march 2025 meanwhile) we figured there is a vocal part of FrankyFire repeating “METAL HEAD CLUB” and this is a damn good part for gang shouts. At first i asked the band to give me something to make that part a litle thicker. And then it klicked … “guys, we have a whole server! Let them do this!”
It started slowly but in the end and with some help of Thomas spreading the word we got a good bunch of performances from the crowd.
can we get it better?
Slowly the song came together. But we had trouble to get the intro right. We had a decent verse, a good chorus, all the parts were there. But the beginning of the song didn’t kick as we felt needed. Again arrangement discussion started. I tried to do a mix for every possible idea to give the band something to hear to check if it works. That again did cost a good amount of time. It’s maybe still a bit long until the vocals start but with the given chord progression we found a nice way to get attention and variety.
“i got an idea guys … you CAN say no!!!”
Naturally, mixing the thing i was the one spending the most time with all the details of the song. I could play with the different parts and as mentioned i was still messing around and adding the synth parts. So i had a bunch of stuff that i thought was cool but didn’t fit in the structure we had … so in a very narcistic move i changed the structure. I wanted to repeat Caeri’s “No Nazis no Bullshit” and i wanted to have more gang shouts AAND there was an idea for a nice build up AAAND i’m a sucker for a “big pathos wall of sound everything in” ending.
To have even more epicness i took the chord progression and transposed that in the “four chord” structure.
While i was “destroying” the song anyways i added a cheesy solo just for kicks on top of everything. And yes, i really sent that to the band preparing myself to get roasted for it. Luckily the band thougt the part was cool (at least that’s what they were saying. Could be they’re afraid of me or just to polite. I still just half get that i got away with this.). So now i have guitar credits on top, phew.
Finally
From there it was “just” to get a good mix. Having the gear i reamped the guitars.
and then somehow we finally had a finished song.
looking back
This took way too long. That has to be said. Nextcloud helped a lot coordinating everything and everyone but still there was a lot of waiting for each other (and again, i take a good amount of blame here). Also i ended up doing a lot more than i initially intended. As said at first i just wanted to focus on the mixing thing. Well that worked out great … doh! Switching back and forth between songwriting and handling the tech stuff and give the band mixes to check was a huge time sucker for an “yeah, i can throw in a little time for mixing here and there” in between.
But more importantly … we really did it! A couple of people that never met (one dude even from Australia!) got their shit together and made a pretty neat song happen. So we’re better than many bands that rehearse endlessly but never release something. And we managed our limited setting not to limit the quality of the song.
What was most impressing: We learned that we had some pretty varying opinions on several points. So of course there was discussion. But we never got angry at each other. Things were talked through, we got a result, lets move on and work with it. I wish the bands i work with had this professional attitude!
Cheers
eighty
Leave a Reply