Mixing My Bands Album - Final Revisions (Need Feedback)

[AngstRiddenDreams]

Hey there,

My band Self-Deprecator has been recording our debut full-length and I've been balls deep mixing it for the last month in my free time. I think I'm finally approaching satisfaction with my mixes and am getting ready to send it off for mastering. There's minimal auxiliary recording left (shakers, piano) and I was hoping to share two finished songs for feedback.

Hopefully these links work.

Thank you!

 

[AngstRiddenDreams]

Looks like one of the songs posted twice. I tried. Forgive me.

 

[fantom]

I'd be happy with that mix. I'm not an expert mixer by any means... So take this as just a random listener.

Guitars, vocals, leveling, etc..all seem really good to me.

Some minor critiques (more the first song, the second track seems slightly more balanced)

* The cymbals are too loud. They are distracting.

* The snare sounds fatiguing. It's too loud and some of the frequencies seem off. Almost reminds me of the Skeletonwitch EP (in a bad way), I'd suggest trying some adjustments there.

* The bass tone is is too distorted. This is probably subgenre specific. I don't mind the highs being distorted, but the low notes are too much grind.


The second track, the cymbals are still too loud, but the snare and bass seem to fit the mix better (but still stand out to me). Are these the same levels and plugin settings?

 

[AngstRiddenDreams]

Thank you for checking it out. I’ve been gradually taking the drums down more and more over the revisions, but suspected it needed to be even further down.
Do you have any thoughts regarding which frequencies are bothersome to you in the snare? Even just a general range would get me started.
The snare my drummer elected to use over his usual brass snare has really a horrible resonance around 200hz that I’ve tried to kill.
I’ll toy around with bass distortion some, less is definitely more oftentimes.

Also, every song is slightly different mix wise. Lotta variation in tempos / feel / sub-genre throughout and it doesn’t seem super fitting to have everything 100% the same throughout. That being said, I’ll try to address the problems you brought up.

I appreciate your time!

 

[fantom]

I'm not sure which frequency on the snare. It's definitely the drum part, not the snare wires. 200 sounds reasonable. Not sure if this is still common, but I remember in the mid 2000s studios used to wholesale apply drum replacement when a kit was out of tune or hard to mix. You could take more of the lower frequencies out and blend in samples as a compromise.