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Posted by: Mudbone Dec 4 2010, 02:54 AM

To me, this is one of the greatest metal tones of all time. When I think of Heavy Metal guitar, this is the tone that comes to mind Software emulators have their purpose, but they can never recreate this tone.

Posted by: Nielzsz Dec 4 2010, 09:38 AM

Sounds awesome man! thanks for sharing

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Dec 4 2010, 05:30 PM

great voice!

the tone is really metal yeah. I like that first song! I hadn't actually listened to Anthrax apart from that famous one

Posted by: Mudbone Dec 4 2010, 08:46 PM

You should check out the whole album, called "Spreading the Disease", theres a lot of great metal tracks on there. Heres another song from that album. Maybe a do an Anthrax lesson perhaps?

Posted by: The Uncreator Dec 4 2010, 08:47 PM

I miss this Anthrax, Scott Ian is one hell of a riffer.

Posted by: rokchik Dec 4 2010, 09:41 PM

LOVE Anthrax!!! These bring back memories LOL!! Thanks for sharing man

Here is my favourite... well one of my favourites

Posted by: Ben Higgins Dec 4 2010, 11:05 PM

Wow, forgotten how good 80's 'Thrax is ! Got Spreading The Disease & Among The Living on vinyl.. gonna have to get a player to listen to them again !!

But you're right about the good old cranked Marshall tone, Mudbone... I think the guitar sound on Metallica's Ride The Lightning has that savage edge to it !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEstfISDogs

Posted by: Mudbone Dec 5 2010, 02:24 AM

Ride the Lightning has got to be my favorite Metallica album, great tone on that record. But isn't it funny how bands like Anthrax pretty much disappeared? They used to be a pretty big band back in the day, its only with the past shows with Metallica did they come into the spotlight again.

Posted by: Kael Dec 5 2010, 04:16 AM

I feel ashamed that ive never listened to them before just now...im loving the sound they had going on back then

Posted by: Ben Higgins Dec 5 2010, 10:28 AM

Yeah.. I personally think people get tired of the 'who's in the band/ who isn't in the band' saga that they've had going on since the We've Come For You All album... but yeah, even before then they went down off the radar a bit. I reckon Metallica were the only metal band to keep a high profile throughout the anti-metal 90's, mainly just by stature rather than musical output. It is totally unexpected but a nice surprise that Metal is probably more popular now than it's ever been though.. who'd have thought it ???

I think one of the heaviest tones Megadeth ever achieved was on the 'Go To Hell' single. Weird how they've never captured that feel and sound again on any of their records. It was such a good sound I'm surprised it slipped through the net.

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Dec 6 2010, 01:50 PM

oh man, this track is great! somehow it reminds me of Contra. The NES video game.

Posted by: Zsolt Galambos Dec 6 2010, 02:50 PM

It is said that Scott Ian has one of the strongest attacks. This is what I lack in a lot of new guitar players. Madhouse rules

Posted by: audiopaal Dec 6 2010, 05:48 PM

YES YES YES!!!

Anthrax is one of my all-time favorite bands!
Great songs on every album.

And that is the best Trash Metal tones!

Scott Ian is also one of my favorite guitarists,
he don't get enough credit in my opinion...

Posted by: The Uncreator Dec 9 2010, 12:50 AM

You guys should check out these newer bands that are doing some old school 80s thrash stuff.

Posted by: Fre Dec 9 2010, 05:25 PM

Awesome thread!
@Uncreator:
I think the vocals aren't heavy metal enough compared with the others mentioned.
Nevertheless I find it good.

Posted by: Todd Simpson Dec 9 2010, 06:01 PM

Very cool thread Mudbone You have a great point here. Amp Modeling is handy but yeah, trying to recreate that type of crushing tone is software is all but impossible. So many factors go in to making killer chunky tone.


1.)The Player - Scott Ian has an incredibly strong right hand and his attack is monstrous. The harder you hit the strings, the more punch/attack/drive you can get out of it, especially with a tube amp.

2.)The Amp/Gear - Having high end gear certainly doesn't hurt.

3.)The Room - A big part of the tone comes from how the amp interacts with the room it's being recorded in. A nice big room such as the drum room found in big studios can make a big guitar sound in to a HUGE guitar sound by putting more mics in the room, additional stereo pairs, mics inside the cab/behind it, more mics off axis etc.

4.)The Engineer - An even bigger part is the sound engineer. Today, most folks (myself included) have become defacto sound engineers as we are recording our own stuff. This is different from a pro audio engineer that does nothing but record audio 8-12 hours a day for a living. They develop a bag of tricks that comes from years of experience.


Anthrax has truly killer tone. I'm also fond of the "Carcass" type sound such as found on HEARTWORK for it's dense layering and thickness.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Dec 9 2010, 06:28 PM

Totally ! I can't believe how under estimated the role of an experienced engineer is these days. Why do people think all those Martin Birch produced albums from the 70's and 80's sound so timeless ? I think I've said this somewhere before on GMC.. but an experienced engineer can look at the gear you've brought into a studio and know right away what mic will work best with that etc...

Of course, all the other factors mentioned are just as important.. but a good engineer will really make the difference. Compare any recent Maiden album with an 80's one.. Kevin Shirley himself even said he didn't think the engineering side was that important...! Can you believe that ? Might go some way to explaining why the recent albums sound like mud...

Posted by: MonkeyDAthos Dec 9 2010, 06:56 PM

what about these guys

Posted by: tonymiro Dec 9 2010, 08:00 PM

Absolutely. A world class engineer will get good results regardless of the gear. A poor engineer will not get good results even if they use the best equipment. (A world class engineer and world class equipment and it's .)


If you want a great sound -then get the tracking/recording and mixing sorted out. Don't think that a bad mix will be saved by the mastering engineer.

Might just be me but back in the 70s and 80s we relied much more on EQ and simple compression to get results. Nowadays people throw too much and too many different effects on to a mix. A lot of it doesn't help and actually makes the mix worse.

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Dec 9 2010, 11:11 PM

speaking of 80's, I know this is not the greatest tone, but that makes it even sound more raw, I like it a lot

Posted by: Azzaboi Dec 10 2010, 01:45 AM

"It's time for your medication, Mr. Brown."

Madhouse: The Very Best Of Anthrax is a great album to get, but I never really got into it.
It's a bit like Iron Maiden, I like it. However, it sounds a bit weak (being old) compared to the newer soundz.
Turn it up and it still doesn't have the "umfffffff" factor like today's stuff.

It's still great voice and guitar playing!

Posted by: Mudbone Dec 10 2010, 02:34 AM

Now that you mention it, it actually does I love that game



Its amazing how people don't realize how important the acoustics of the room are. Whenever I watch youtube demos of amps I always prefer when its done with a cheap camera mic over being mic'ed up with one SM57 up against the cone. Whats the point of having a 412 cab if you're not going to utilize the fact that it can push some serious air? There's a reason why a stack of Marshalls with T-75's sounds different than a 1x12 with the same speaker.



Old music sounds better turned up really loud, its more dynamic and less compressed than todays production. It seems like music today is produced for use with ipods and the like. In order to get the big bottom end on tiny ear buds the bass needs to be boosted. But when you play the same stuff on a regular stereo system its too bassy and compressed. If you can't get an album produced in the 80's to sound good, you're not turning it up loud enough

Modern amps have plenty of saturation and lots of low end punch, which I totally dig, but they're missing that strong midrange crunch, which is what defined the 80's thrash metal tone.

Posted by: tonymiro Dec 10 2010, 12:54 PM

In part.

The increase in volume for commercial CDs goes back before I-Pods albeit that it's gotten worse in the last few years. Very few MEs master specifically for I-Pod reproduction, what we do is master to maximise translation across systems. WRT I-Pods often the problem is caused by poor format conversion by the digital re-distributor including compression caused by poor conversion, distortion from intersample overs and not turning off the various options that Apple provide for format shifting a CDA to AAC.

What you're describing regarding bass is due to the Fletcher Munson effect, where how well people hear low and very high frequencies in comparison to the high mid is dependent on volume. The ideal production of the full frequency spectrum however does not occur at high volume but at @84dB. Above and below 84dB the low bass and high end actually appear psycho-acoustically to recede in comparison to the high mid.

The better, albeit expensive, solution here is to have good full range speakers that are flat all the way down to 20hZ. Most speakers, including home stereos and monitors for mixing however start to roll off from @60 Hz between 3-6 dB per octave. Many start rolling off even as high as 100 Hz. Every 6dB drop is equivalent to halving the volume of that frequency. The end result is that you lose most of the low end because the speakers can't reproduce it accurately.

It's possible to add a sub to a speaker system to try and reproduce the low bass. However many subs are not properly integrated with a net result that you do not re-produce the spectrum accurately and you create phase and timing issues along with stereo smearing. Moral of that is if you use a sub set it up properly or you will do more harm than good.

Pro-end mastering monitors reproduce accurately to below 40Hz without a sub. However they also cost over 10k dollars.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Dec 10 2010, 07:41 PM

Wow this is amazing.. my monitors are cheap and have a very limited frequency response.. mostly mid, hardly any bass at all.. and a lot of the time I'd burn stuff onto a cd and play it in the stereo and BOOM ! Too much bottom end - horrible ! However I've just learnt to mix with that in mind, and a little more research into cutting certain frequencies and EQ-ing more effectively has also helped me there. But a 6db cut resulting in halving the volume of said instrument...? That stuff blows my mind !

Posted by: Ben Higgins Dec 11 2010, 10:38 AM

Hearing this last night made me think about adding it to this post.. it's not 80's.. 1991 I think... but it's got that guitar tightness that would make Metallica and Anthrax green with envy !

It really gets going at 2:37 after the long intro...



Then there's these nutters...



If the Beatles actually sounded like that last song, maybe I'd listen to them

Posted by: tonymiro Dec 11 2010, 01:15 PM

Not quite Ben . It cuts the particular frequency by 6dB and other related frequencies proportionally. Every 6dB gain is an approximate doubling of apparent volume and vice versa. Essentially though if you have speakers rolling off at 6dB per octave from 100Hz down you pretty much will not hear most/any of your sub bass. An instrument will cover a range of frequencies and some of those other frequencies will be affected noticeably, some not. A guitar has very little below 100Hz so you won't miss much. A piano, organ, bass or kick drum however will be affected.

Again and related to Fletcher- Munson there is also an issue with the volume that you mix at. The curves are flattest at @84dB, if you mix louder or more quietly then the curve becomes more pronounced and you will hear more apparent bass and high frequency. That can lead to you having an inaccurate perspective of the integrity of the mix: if you change the volume the mix starts to fall apart. At mixing the better solution is to mix at 84dB in order to hear the frequency range as accuartely as possible and if necessary check it at a higher and a lower volume.

BTW there's a related but different issue with a lot of studio monitors for mixing. Very few are flat across the whole audible frequency spectrum 20Hz to 20kHz. A lot of them will attenuate or add gain at various points, often because they are deliberately designed and tuned to do so. Many are tuned specifically to 'sweeten' up or add 'warmth' to a vocal. People like this because the effect often is to make the sound more 'musical' etc but too often it can lead to mixes that have a high mid that are unbalanced on other playback system i.e. the mix doesn't translate well.

One possible solution to this is to use more than one monitoring chain to check translation. However what can and does occur here is that the mix engineer loses confidence in their own ability to make decisions if the mix sounds different on different chains. One of the big parts of the job for a mastering engineer is having the experience and confidence to be able to decide what to do to ensure that a mix translates.

To a great extent if you know you're monitoring chain well you can take some of this in to account to an extent whilst mixing. The difficulty remains however if you need some fine tweaking - if you can't hear it you won't even know you need to do it never mind be able to do it. That's why us mastering engineers invest a lot of money in their monitoring chain and room acoustics.

It's also a major reason why you should use a mastering engineer if you can for a commercial release rather than try and master yourself. But I would say that .