My band have a new recording.

[Chicky]

And we're bloody happy with it! Please take a listen, add us, comment us and generally send us some love.

www.hatekills.co.uk

Most of you know but it's me on drums and backing vocals. 'ohhh, lets go' and the like.

[Helm]

Hello. Congrats on the new record. Points of interest:

If there's time, I'd suggest remixing the record without so much reverb wetness on the drums. Especially the snare should be snappy for the speeds you're playing in!

Personal preference, but I dislike good cop/bad cop vocals a lot. That your death metal vocalist doesn't have that 'something' to set him apart from a throng of similar ones also might hurt this approach. I love good death vocals, either of the anguished variety, or of the extremely posessed and convicted kind. Your guy is a bit cookie-cutter in my opinion. Usually a screamer vocalist is a bit of an one-trick-pony, but if you can get him to alter his approach towards the more idionsynchratic (perhaps more human strain in there? Perhaps less? Perhaps go Demilich?) would benefit you lots.

The composition is strong! Stronger than a lot of faux 'metal' going around. But the small guitar leads are both not in good intonation (the guitar is just off. Tune perfectly for recording!) and their sound doesn't sit very well in the mix.

These comments are all just imo stuff, mind you, others may not have any issue with the reverb and vocals and stuff. But probably anyone with a good ear will catch the out of tune leads. So if you have a very strong individual vision and aren't looking for stylistic critique, keep only the lead guitar bit and perhaps the less reverb from my comments.

Good luck.

Editing: now listening only for the drums, so perhaps I can give a valuable pointer to you directly: your kicks seem good, but they're a bit swamped in the mix. Though I wouldn't know, depends on the mp3 compression. It's possible you could go with a 3db lift in the kicks, and take the prevailent overheads down by the same amount... The crash overpowers everything. The toms sound tuned well and their sound is full, the reverb helps them, but not the rest of the set.

Some of your rolls are predictable series, which is fine, but if you want them to survive in todays extreme metal scene, I'd suggest rolling 16ths almost exclusively when doing straight rolls, not 8ths, unless you want to play NWOBHM or something.

Which would be awesome, but you seem to be going for 'modern metal'. I do like the triplet snare rolls mostly, though.

Use the ride bell for accents on the 3:00 fast part like a metal drummer would, hehe!

[Sylpher]

I agree with Helm about the drums. A lot of reverb is useful when you want a big booming full drum sound and the style you are playing needs a lot of attack with quick decay and as little messing with that as possible. The intro and perhaps a few spots you could mix it in a bit heavier, but I would suggest being very selective of where and as more and more is going on (just in the drums) the less and less reverb, just as a general rule... break it at will.

As far as the "Let's go!" there are so many songs out there that start with the whole slow strumming/plucking and cymbal accents building up to an explosive verse or chorus. Throwing a "Let's go!" into the build up is just the frosting on the cliched cake. Not to say it is a bad thing. People wouldn't do it all the time if it didn't work, it is just my opinion that it works too often.

On to the more positive and less critical, the drumming is quite solid. There are a lot of things here and there you can do, as Helm suggested, to bring out or stengthen certain parts, but as a whole I would say your drumming skills are quite formidable.

[Chicky]

Thanks for the comments guys but (all be it they are very valid points) i'd appreciate less of the criticism. I guess i did ask for peoples opinions but a lot of the critique is beyond me being able to help, i'll show the chap we recorded with your comments but as far as drums goes we don't have the chance to add any extra.

And we're going to have to pay extra for any extra mixing. Heh.

I will let the guy know what you, Sylpher and Helm have said and see what he can help. Remember that myspace compresses the files to 92kbps (iirc) and its own file format so there's some compression there.

Also on another note, we're not really going for any conventional sound, we don't want to sound like anything else out there. And none of us have any real technical knowledge so our songs are written how we've developed to be the best way of writing. Its worked for the past two years or so. I don't mean to sound bitchy or cocky in any way, if anyone got that impression.

[Klytos]

Sounds good Chicky. I like it.

[[Cameron]]

Neat man. I really liked it. Better than your other stuff I reckon.

[nulluser]

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