As in, what kind of production on albums do you prefer most? Personally, I prefer something a bit more raw and lofi. Peak production to me is Morrisound Recordings' late 80s/90s death metal albums, such as "Leprosy" from Death, "Serpents of the Light" from Deicide, "Blessed are the Sick" from Morbid Angel, or on the other hand I love the production in first-wave black metal. Particularly, Venom's the production on Venom's first four albums (although I only really come back to and love the first two), all of the production on Bathory's 80s albums, and Root's debut, and while not first-wave, I love the production on 90s Mortuary Drape's albums. I love raw stuff, but mainly if it's done right. To me, good production can be if it sounds like it would've been hifi for 1988, or if it sounds raw and primitive like 90s Darkthrone.

What do you like the most? Do you like extremely hifi stuff like Revocation or Archspire? Or do you like raw black metal produced in someone's mother's basement?

When it comes to production, I'm somewhere in the middle of the road - not to raw, not to polished. But the most essential ingredient is the organic factor, genuine human feel mixed with a little bit of eerie, mysterious veil. The best way to explain it is through the albums I always looked up high in this regard: Paradise Lost - Icon, Samael - Ceremony Of Opposites, Sentenced - Amok, Tiamat - Wildhoney, Moonspell - Wolfheart, Hypocrisy - Abducted, My Dying Bride - The Angel..., well, you got the picture!

I tend to like organic drum sound, low vocals in the mix and a bit of rawness in the guitars but not too much. I really don't have any examples because it tends to change from band to band.

The bass is a bit too wonky but other than that this album sounds flawless.

https://adnauseam-official.bandcamp.com ... range-dr11

Not only does it vary from genre to genre and band to band, but also album to album. Example: I love the way Master Of Puppets sounds and love the way Reload sounds. Wouldn't want either of them to be produced like the other.

I absolutely love stuff that sounds like it was recorded in a cave in Belarus, and love an Andy Sneap job.

But I guess some of my favourite records have that warm 70's tone. Think Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy (or Born To Run, if we are going with non-metal). I love that tight, compact drum sound.

I like a fair amount of polish and clarity, with a good drum sound. I prefer a sharper, snappy snare, and bass drums that don't sound overly fake. Preferably every hit would have some oomph and a sense of impact (something like Lombardo's drums on South of Heaven).

The Black Album by Metallica is a good example of an album I guess - everything is clear in the mix and it just sounds really, really good. I also like the sound of a lot of albums from the late 90s / early 00s. Stuff like Obsolete (Fear Factory) or Outcast (Kreator), as well as albums from the nu metal / post grunge scene like Dysfunction (Staind), Follow the Leader (Korn), White Pony (Deftones), Chocolate Starfish... (Limp Bizkit), Human Clay (Creed), Silver Side Up (Nickelback) etc.

It's always preferable to have a unified sonic aesthetic, but if there's one element I'd single out, it'd be the drums; I simply can't stand the plastic-sounding kits that have apparently become the standard outside some specific styles. I don't know which one is worse, the clicky, typewriter bass drum or the equally plastic snare, so nah, Archspire wouldn't get a pass from me even if they played less obnoxious music. A band can pair a relatively clean guitar tone, something I'm not too keen on, with a nice organic drum sound, and I'm all for it.

In general, I prefer stuff that's closer (quite a bit, actually) to the "raw" end of the spectrum, but how exactly the sound comes across also depends on the style. I don't expect a power metal album to sound like Endless Wound, but I'd be happy with it sounding kind of like Modus Vivendi (not exclusively, just an example). In terms of mixing, it's also quite important to me that the guitars aren't pushed in the background in favor of the drums or the vocals.

When I read "recorded in Abyss studio". What stillbaffles me is that the album "The other side" by the band The Abyss has such an appealing production.

I cannot stand modern, overproduced, overly compressed garbage like Archspire or 99% of the things that come out of Nuclear blast, Metal blade etc. I also do not understand bands who just won't have an audible bass guitar in the mix. Vocals too high in volume, also bad.

My favorite producer right now would be Colin Marston. Some recent albums that for me have an excellent, crispy production would be; Yellow Eyes - ITR, Ad Nauseam - III, Krallice - PRA, Odraza - Rzeczom

I'm a drummer so I tend to be very picky about the sound quality of the drums on every album.

Therefore, on one hand, I don't like raw-produced works where I barely hear the bass drum, but on the other hand, I don't like the Nuclear Blast plastic sound either.

I have always felt that the first four tracks on the Disgorge "Cranial Impalement" album are the absolute perfect mix of production and tones. While I enjoy all of their albums, they never again captured that production style and sound, those 4 tracks are so perfect.

When it comes to black metal, I've always been a bit of a sucker for raw production. I especially give a black metal release bonus points if it's an old cassette demo from the 90s and the rip itself is noisy and raw. Of course, I do have my limits on how raw a release can go before it ends up sounding like shit, but as long as the band knows how to present the rawness decently, I'm gonna be cool it with.

My preference is for the sound to be as thin as it can possibly be and still have a pounding lower end, I've noticed a lot of 80s and 90s shit has this type of thing everything from darkthrone to disembowelment to pestilence to ripping corpse so on and so forth

Case by case basis for me. I just want something that fits the material and is thoughtful in regards to what the music is trying to achieve. Having said that, most of the albums where I find myself thinking "wow this is a rad production" are ones that are heavily old school and warm in sound.

As other said, it depends on the subgenre. For death metal, I really like the old school sinister atmosphere in these records:



As for power metal, it's hard to describe, but I really like the sound from the 90s and 2000s where it isn't too overproduced, though I also like the raw and intense sound prevalent in many 80s American/German bands. This is from 2013, but it reminds me of those 90s bittersweet Christmas movies (though I do like the modern sound from Ghostlight and Moonglow):



There is a particular flat drum sound from the early 80s that I can't easily describe, but I particularily like:


But yeah, not a huge fan of the modern clean overproduction that's become prevalent in metal. I think it works fine in melodic metalcore (I like the Raven Age), but not so much for other subgenres. For example, it makes power metal more overwhelming with all the synths or orchestration, and death and thrash lose any potential atmosphere. Part of the reason why the 80s and 90s were so special in metal is that each band sound pretty distinct from each other; Metallica's first four albums for example sound pretty unique and different from each other, yet still Metallica.

I guess it's partially why I still am drawn to Iron Maiden; their production is neater these days, but it doesn't sound too heavy or electric.

That's a tough one when it comes to over all sound but drums are one thing which can really turn me off.
If it's clearly too quantized and compressed I do get annoyed rather quickly.
I prefer productions which emphasizes the playstyle of the drummer. Something which a lot of albums coming from the Nuclear Blast factory seem to be missing.

A good example of a drum sound I really, really like would be this


When it comes to guitars... use a real amp FFS.
You're playing metal. Make the studio walls shake. Stop being a Disney princess

I like all kinds of stuff, but I'm always a sucker for a big, clean, heavy sound like Bruce Dickinson's last few solo albums had. Just a big deep guitar and a booming, crystal clear quality.

Wait, wasn't there an entire genre revolving around a frozen sound?

Agree, if it suits the music it works, raw to clean as fuck.

In terms of specific details… distorted guitars that sound filthy and swampy closer to that of a death/doom guitar, the vocals drenched in echo and reverb giving it a more ethereal sound, punchy drum sound with a snappy snare and defined kick, and bass that you can actually hear without being fuzzy and hiding the guitars. If you were to add keyboards or other instruments like violin, it can be matched in slightly lower volume with the guitars, so that you can still hear it without taking over the production no problem.

Examples of this type of production include Eucharist’s 1992 demo, Dissection’s The Somberlain, At The Gates’s The Red In The Sky Is Ours, Anata’s The Infernal Depths Of Hatred, Crimson Massacre’s The Luster Of Pandemonium, and Golem’s Dreamweaver.

Not fussed on the details, as long as the guitars are loud (either the loudest instrument, or at a bare minimum not buried under anything else) and the drums sound like real drums.

This!

It depends on the band, the genre, the time, what they strive to accomplish and a lot of other factors. I can sometimes get tired of a particular sound when it becomes to common, if bands use it by default. As was the case in the 00's with the sterile production. As has been the case in low-fi black metal etc. I think both can work great but it has to be the right sound for the right band and the right release.

In general though I prefer it when every instrument has it's own sonic space. When they are all there for a reason where nothing is overbearingly loud (or the opposite, burried).

Basically, warm organic analog recording qualities of the late 60s through early 80s.

Sabbath’s debut is one of the freshest sounding recordings ever, IMO.
Maiden during the POM - Powerslave years are sonic perfection. Fate’s “Melissa”, and Dio’s “Holy Diver” are close to it.

It's not a huge thing for me, but unsurprisingly, I think that dirty/heavy early 90's production. Garth Richards, Butch Vig, Steve Albini. Probably my favorite production is Vig's work on the at-least-metal-adjacent L7 album Bricks are Heavy.

One thing I really don't like late-90's early 2000's trebly industrial production that is so trebly the hihats and cymbals get this weird "crystaline-sounding" breaking tone. Really hated that style, especially Chris Vrenna's production like that almost ruining the early stuff by Scarling (Jessicka's band after Jack off Jill), especially on "Band-Aid Covers the Bullet Hole."

Honorable Mention to Ross Robinson. I like his tone on a bunch of stuff. I also found the story interesting in that when Glassjaw was recording "Pretty Lush" he thought that Daryl Palumbo wasn't sounding quite angry enough so he slapped him across the face in the middle of a vocal take, and the sound of the slap and Palumbo's "renewed anger" was audible on the recording.

I knew at that point Ross Robinson had an awesome production sound, but regardless of how big any of my bands/projects ever got, I could never work with him, because if he slapped in me in the middle of a vocal take, the recording would have not recorded the sound of a slap followed by a more intense continuation of the vocals, it would have captured the sound of the slap followed by me loudly refusing to sing another note until there was a new producer.

As the philosphers say, "Know thyself."

Interesting side note to that: I heard the song "Pretty Lush" by Glassjaw, and liked it . . . until I saw the lyrics. So I reacted in the way I normally did at the time. Told my band we were covering the song and planned to sing different lyrics that removed the misogyny and reversed and inverted the straight-edge stuff until the lyrics were to straight-edge as Hellig Uvart was to Satanism. (no, it was never released but unless it was destroyed by a storm, somewhere floating around New Orleans is a practice cassette of my band doing and inverted "Pretty Lush" . . . with me slapping myself in the face at the appropriate point.)

Again, "Know thyself."

For those of you thinking I'm being kinda an asshole, yeah, I kinda am, but there is more to it, spoilered.

I'm generally quite partial to noisy cymbals. Also have preferences that vary from style to style and subgenre to subgenre like others have pointed out, but I seem to like my heavy music best when there's at least a little reverb, a little noise to everything, while instruments still have room to ring out instead of being muffled.

All I ask is for is for an album to actually feel like you're listening to the band playing. The moment I detect digital plug-ins and drum triggers, I'm done. Add some blatant autotuned vocals on top of it and I blacklist the band forever. Life's too short, one strike and you're out.

Like many others have metioned, the drums are the most important aspect for me. They have to sound 'kinetic', like someone is actually hitting something. I don't really care about the details as long as it sounds real, like someone is building up a sweat behind the kit. I like noisy, rattling cymbals. I hate any kind of over-processing on the kit (except industrial metal).

I quite like clean, loud bass tones with the guitar pushed down in the mix.
I don't like the modern, generic guitar tone that everyone has these days.

Seance's "Fornever Laid to Rest" is my ideal production when it comes to death metal.

I'm not too picky I guess, as long as the production fits the music. What I cannot stand over is thrash with thin tiny shrilly guitars that sucks all the power of the riffs, like Destruction's Eternal Devastation. Unlistenable.

Seems like a lot of people don't like how drums don't sound like drums anymore, so why does it continue to be the mainstay and go-to for drum production?

I love a ringing, raw snare drum sound. It's the mark of an exceptional grind album for me.

I like raw, homemade production as much as the next person, but I'm also partial to a big, dynamic sound for metal in particular. Doesn't really happen too often anymore though. The faux noisy digital tools sound in a lot of punk is also a bummer. The trends in both metal and punk are pretty much awful. I don't think anything is changing anytime soon, either.

Triggers. They can cut down on production time significantly, and studio time isn't cheap. It's the same reason so many albums have the "modern metal" sound for the guitar/bass, as it's easier to use a plug-in than it is to find the sweet spot for a mic in front of a cab.

OT, I'm a sucker for that sweet spot of 90s tones. The Black Album probably has the best mix of any metal/rock album I've listened to, as the whole thing sounds considerably heavy but still crisp. Then, on the flipside, I think the raw production on stuff like Toxic Narcotic's We're All Doomed is perfect for that style, so I guess I'm on a case-by-case basis.

I'd liken it to the use CGI for explosions in Hollywood action movies.
I understand it, it is cheaper and makes more sense from an insurance/health & safety perspective.
But it looks fake compared to a real controlled explosion (when special effects experts used to do them).
If an industry can get its audience hooked on 'the new' and convince them that it is better (despite evidence to the contrary) then most of the audience will stop questioning it after a while.

I definitely appreciate all the sounds you mentioned, though I have a bit of a problem with Bathory's, even if I think the debut sounds great.
I should say that I do think this is relative to the kind of music we are listening to, but since we're talking about metal, i will say that, for the most part, in both this and other rock-based music, I like to be able to imagine the band rehearsing the songs in a room when I hear a recording. So, if something is produced in a certain way that sort of takes away from that live feeling, or makes it difficult to imagine, I don't really enjoy it as much, though I can certainly "look past" it if the music is good.

I can't stand muffled and quiet production.

It kills the 80s Overkill albums for me. They're viciously trying to punch my lights out with gigantic foam fists.