So Rick Rubin is softening down Linkin Park? Or am I misunderstanding?

He's commercialising them. So yeah, you could say he's softening them down.

So he is essentially doing a Bob Rock with Metallica?

To be fair, their original sound was what was 'commercial' at the time, so yeah.

Not in the same way that U2 are. It's a very different sound he's given to Linkin Park compared to how they used to sound. I don't think their old sound was as radio friendly as it is now.

I find it ironic that Rubin is softening down Linkin Park while he recently produced D.Mag which was significantly more heavier than their past albums.

ludacris feat the game- call up the homies
biggie - me and my bitch

I agree that their sound is different now, that's obvious. So it's whether you see them as going more commercial, or simply changing their sound to follow the commercialism. Because their original sound came at the peak of the nu-metal era, so really, it's not so much going more commercial, as it is simply changing their sound to a more easy on the ears sound.

He was an associate engineer on Linkin Park's album, but he had nothing to do with the engineering process for D-Mag as far as I can recall.
I see he's working on Slayer's new album and Linkin Park's one that they have in the pipes...this troubles me somewhat.

no afro im not forgetting them i thought slipknots album was good not great but i really do like mudvaynes the new game really did follow on from where they left off with lost and found but i still rekon in flames takes the cake

The Whole Script Album
You Found Me - The Fray
Bounce - The Cab
Decode - Paramore
Dont Trust Me - 3OH!3
My President - Young Jeezy

Edited by morgan234: 4/1/2009 02:43:04 PM

I think a lot of their old (not older, but old) fans liked that brutal, sort of almsot greating on the ears kind of sound.

I think I'm a bit over InFlames, I'll give it another spin to see if I can grasp your point of view though. Did you buy the ltd ed of The New Game though?? It ties all the songs together with the murder mystery aspect of the album and makes it BRILLIANT beyond belief almost.

Highway star by Deep Purple. Great old song.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and put forward what's going to be the cause of some fun arguments.

ST.ANGER ISN'T ALL THAT BAD.

Yep. That's right. Yes, I am a Metallica fan boy, but honestly, while there are some huge flaws with the album, there are only a couple of them, and when you fix those, it's actually a rather solid record.
-Yes, The snare is horrible.
-Yes, There are no solos
-Yes, the production is a bit off.

But really, that's all that's wrong with it. There's still some strong lyrical content, there's still some excellent song writing, so really, at the base of it, the album would have been a solid return to form for the band, had those 3 things been fixed.
BUT, they weren't. That said, I still think the album doesn't deserve a lot of the shit it gets.

St Anger is good but in comparison with past albums it is pretty weak.
But it was a fresh new feeling IMO. I liked it despite it being a bit dissapointing.
I never thought you were a Metallica fan Funky. #-o

That's the kicker. A band like Metallica are always going to be living up to earlier albums, and it's unfair to think they can reach those heights again. And yeah. Big fan. When they tour here, planning on doing the full country.

The thing you need to rememeber with St Anger is that they had plenty of opportunity to fix its shortcomings but chose not to. The album was that heavily produced that they could have easily fixed many of the probelms you mentioned in post-production, but they didn't. Sure, Metallica had a behemoth reputation to live up to and copped a fair bit of unfair flak for not beign able to. But this is the type of performance post-production wise that I'd expect from a band like Good Charlotte or MyChem, not Metallica. Reputation is no excuse for shortcomings in editing and post production. Same goes with their new album.

The production isn't that bad on St.Anger though. It's liek that because that's how they wanted to record it. They wanted to record it heavier, and down tuned. Fair enough, credit to them for trying, it didn't work out.

"they could have easily fixed many of the probelms you mentioned in post-production"
I only mentioned 3 problems:p...and I don't see how they could have fixed the lack of solos, or a poorly tuned snare, so that just leaves one problem:p

I know a lot of people who think every Metallica album should be as good as the Black Album. Thats the problem that surrounds bands after they release a monumental album. Everyone thinks they wil follow up with another one. Which is near impossible as that album was just amazingly epic.
And you have to remember that Metallica wanted St Anger to sound like that. It wasnt caused by any mistakes or shortcomings.
DMag sounded like their oldd stuff, which was good I loved their old stuff. But again it turned people off who were fans off the Bob Rock type of Metallica becuase it was too heavy compared to old albums.

If they toured I would only go to the Sydney concert. They are banned in Newcastle IIRC. Cant wait fro them to come.

I'm not talking about the production. I'm talking abotu post-production. AFTER the band leaves the studio and the editing begins. It was terrible on St Anger and where most of the shortcomings came from. Metallica could entirely have pulled off the down-tuned element of the album, but it would have helped if they picked a key that actually worked (ie drop D instead of drop C)

Lack of Solos should have been fixed pre-production when they were laying out their concepts.
poorly tuned snare could have been fixed with processors like EQ, compression and a bit of reverb and balancing that right.

Not really.
-While the snare could have been fixed in post-production, the problem originated because that's what Lars wanted to do.
-The solos, again, that was decided before then. And again, While the lack of solos was a bad idea in hindsight, they were trying something new.
-And like you just pointed out, the down tuning was a problem from before hand too, again, part of the experimentation.
So really, the problems of the album don't really come from the post-production, but the concept the band had in mind. Had they just changed those few things, either in post-production or when creating the album concept, it would have been a very solid album.

And they could have sounded that much better my compressing the transients of the snare more to bring them up on the mix and EQ-ing it better.
The Solos, there isn't a lot that can be done about that.
The down tuning could easily have been fixed. What gets me is that they probably tried several keys and went "yep, this one sounds the best" if that's their opinion, they're obviously going tone-deaf. If they didn't try different keys then poor from by them.

Yes, they could have fixed them in post-production, but my point is that they didn't stem from there.

The question isn't where a problem stems from, but whether it's fixable and whether the engineers/band DO actually fix it. And it WAS fixable, but they didn't. Hence the problem and the poor raport.

It is, because if the band hadn't of created those problems in the first place, there would have been nothing to fix, yes?

There's always a problem that needs to be fixed, whether it's drum beat that's slightly out or what. And it almost always stems from the band. The question is whether it's fixable, whether it needs to be re-recorded or whether you should just give up.

But they didn't fix it, because that's what the band wanted...It has nothing to do with post-production, it has to do with the fact that the bands concept for the album was poor.

The band's concept for the album wouldn't have been poor if it had've been produced properly!

Yes, but why wasn't it produced properly? Because of that concept. So the problems, and the lack of fixing those problems, all stem from the bands concept for the album.

You can't say that the album wasn't produced proplerly because of the band's concept. Plenty of bands have tried that concept and pulled it off. Their problem was that the engineers et al didn't do their job properly or weren't allowed to do their job properly in post-production and everythign jsut spiralled out from there.
It is entirely possible to have an album sounding good with that concept. So it's not the fault of the concept that it was poorly produced, it's the result of the production team that it was poorly produced.