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The Black Crown: 'Flames'
#1
Discaimer: Not an audio professional, just an amateur audio enthusiast. Take whatever I say with a grain of salt. I just like to write things up after a project, helps me remember what I learned. 
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My version of 'Flames'. To my ears / taste, the biggest challenge was the crowded low midrange. Kick, snare, bass and guitars had lots of content there to the point that I felt they were masking each other as well as everything going on in the core bass frequencies. I used an EQ cut in combination with light (< 1 dB GR) multiband compression to attenuate this range and make it feel more solid. Unfortunately this resulted in the snare vanishing even further back in the mix. I like a fat snare in my rock and metal but in this case, I chose to trade snare punch against increased clarity in this range. (I tried to boost some snare fundamental in the mid channel again but that also brought back the bass mud, so I left it alone from this point on. In real life I would've asked for MIDI or the isolated snare track at this point to add a sample.)
Since a lot of the kick punch was located in the low mids in the OG mix, it felt a bit flat after this cut. So I boosted < 100 Hz to a help its fundamental. After some messing around I chose a tape emulation plugin for this job over a low shelf + rolloff. I have an off-again / on-again relationship with tape sims (I often feel they do too many things at once to be really useful) but here it worked well. It also added some > 10k sizzle to the cymbals which I liked.
Next I looked at the midrange. Small dip around 700 eliminated some honk in the guitars and a wide boost around 1.5 k helped both guitars and vocals cut through. Then I took out some 3k because cymbals and guitars were harsh in this range. Above that, centered around 10k, I added a dynamic EQ band to catch some vocal sibilance and the clicky kick. Again not a lot, mostly < 1 dB GR.
I didn't really do much to the overall dynamics of the track. The tape sim did some light glue compression and I used a transparent bus compressor at the beginning of the chain  to create some movement on kick and snare hits (really only touching the needle, 0.2-0.5 dB GR).
Finally, I did some M/S EQ and volume automation. I boosted the side channel volume during the breakdown to make the rhythm guitars feel bigger and brought up the midrange of the mid channel during the post-breakdown section to make the lead guitar more upfront until the vocals kick in. During the second repetition of the final chorus I automated a wide bell centered around 100 Hz to bring up the bass and subtly increase the intensity in that section. Also brought up the intro tom fill in volume.
Because a lot of the track's energy was focused on the low midrange and the bass-heavy instruments weren't as separated as they could be, this track's natural loudness limit was fairly low (compared to other contemporary rock / metal). Loudness came out around -7 LUFS short term during the loudest section using a combination of clipping and limiting. 

As a summary, I think this track would've profited from another round of mix revisions. Some strategic low mid cuts in various instruments would've really helped separation and transparency of the track and would've likely allowed for a louder and punchier master. I feel that the track was somewhat underproduced in general - some instruments (like the post-breakdown lead) are buried in the mix and would've profited from volume automation and adding some subtle vocal harmonies during the later choruses (esp. the second repetition of the last chorus) would've really helped to increase the energy towards the end and make the track feel less repetitive.
For me, this was a great challenge to practice my critical listening (took about 4 h of work over two days) but I'm afraid I'm not a big fan of the song arrangement and production decisions.


.mp3    Flames - The Black Crown - MST.mp3 --  (Download: 12.44 MB)


Amateur audio enthusiast.
Twitter: @bjoernkmusic
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#2
I had the same experience mastering this song ( give it a listen if you want) and I think you are pretty accurate on what you said. I believe your master is grate given the circumstances and I think that all the things you discribed you did worked well on the mix clearing it from low mids mud and also achieve seperation between the elements.
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