Magician's Nephew - Get Out Of Bed [OctoOnFire]

[OctopusOnFire]

Hi OOF, I think I get the attitude you're going for here, and it's a cool approach for this type of track...

I think the issue overall might be that there is a bit too much of a buildup of energy in the 5-6k region. To my ears, this is making the mix sound harsh and a little fatiguing. I think it may be partially caused by the generous use of saturation and distortion on the drums and vocals. One suggestion that may help is to low pass some of the distorted elements so that the upper harmonics of the mix can remain a little cleaner, whilst still maintaining the aggressive attitude in the midrange.

Another thing I'm hearing in the drums is the loss of transient impact. Even in commercial mixes that have a lot of obvious compression/distortion on the drums, I notice that the transient "punch" remains intact. However, in this mix the vital energy those transients contain is being lost by the compression/saturation. Sometimes maintaining a sense of transient attack requires some parallel processing - that might be worth investigating since you're exporing the potential of this type of sonic approach.

You have a generous amount of low end in the mix, which I like a lot. However, it comes across a little on the boomy side. You may want to try controlling the bass a bit more in that critical 80hz region, as that will tighten the low end up quite a bit.

This is the kind of feedback I'm looking for, thanks!

I'll check back the session. It's kind of a mess because I was trying a whole new suite of plugins, so I don't know to what point I have stuff on parallel and inserted in the chain. I know I have a combination of both, at least in the vocals. I'll see what I can do without messing up the tone and energy of the mix.

And thanks again, please do not hesitate critiquing my mixes and don't pull any punches!