14-11-2012, 02:09 PM
I like a lot of your balance decisions with the backing track, although the verse sections do have a habit of making the choruses sound a bit small -- careful in particular that the bass doesn't get pushed down in the mix when all the guitars come in.
The main criticisms I'd make are to do with the lead vocals. For a start, they're very sibilant, so I'd certainly get busy with at least on de-esser here. Your compression might also be exacerbating this common problem, so if you can stick an HF boost into its side-chain that might help reduce the problem too. I also wonder whether you've over-egged the top two octaves of the frequency spectrum on this vocal too. I agree that you need lots of detail and HF cut-through for this kind of style, but I think you've tried to do too much of this with vocal EQ boost, so the rest of the track sounds a bit dull by comparison. Some distortion might help you here, simply by packing the 2-8kHz region a bit more densely with harmonics so that the vocal can compete with the guitars at a lower mix level. In general, the vocal is also too loud in the mix for me, again making the backing sound small.
The main criticisms I'd make are to do with the lead vocals. For a start, they're very sibilant, so I'd certainly get busy with at least on de-esser here. Your compression might also be exacerbating this common problem, so if you can stick an HF boost into its side-chain that might help reduce the problem too. I also wonder whether you've over-egged the top two octaves of the frequency spectrum on this vocal too. I agree that you need lots of detail and HF cut-through for this kind of style, but I think you've tried to do too much of this with vocal EQ boost, so the rest of the track sounds a bit dull by comparison. Some distortion might help you here, simply by packing the 2-8kHz region a bit more densely with harmonics so that the vocal can compete with the guitars at a lower mix level. In general, the vocal is also too loud in the mix for me, again making the backing sound small.