I know the album was meant to have a garage/live rock sort of feel, but I know a lot of people feel like even with that feel it could have used work. Especially ALITS. It's even weirder when you look at the acapella for it. So, I wonder what people's opinions are for the mixing on THP!
The rawness of the sound compared to "Living Things" (and "Recharged") took a little bit of getting used to for me. I don't mind the way that it's mixed but I certainly understand why some people have a problem with it
I don't have a problem with it, other than Chester sounding too weak over the instrumentals here and there, as well as the awful mixing of UIG and the somewhat muddy verses of MTG.
It's definitely one of the charms of the album and something which really sets it apart from the band's previous efforts.
The sound is great on this album. My qualms with the mixing is more the level of certain guitar parts and not the overall sound engineering. Some of the lead parts are just swallowed up.
Aside from UIG and a few parts of AFN I feel the album was mixed quite well. I love the raw sound of GATS and War.
This. The lack of smoke and mirrors makes me a lot more appreciative of the work they put out this time. And on the live stage, the fact that this batch of songs has been arguably the closest representations of sounding like the studio versions since Meteora (Maybe Minutes To Midnight) speaks volumes to me about their decision.
Besides UIG (which I think is a completely different problem), I didn't even think that there was anything to complain about. I didn't see it with GATS as everyone did when it first came out, and I don't see it with the rest of the album. It all sounds great.
I think the problem people had with GATS was less about the mixing and more about the overall sound which took getting used to for most everyone. In terms of mixing for the album, it's an overall better than decent mix throughout. Some songs are better and some songs are worse but none really hit the "it's the best mixing" I've ever heard from a LP record. That still goes to Waiting For The End.
It sounds cool to me. It definitely took me a while to be able to jam out to GATS. My only problem is MTG, I think they went too far on the raw sound there. If it had the "clarity", for lack of a better term, of like Keys to the Kingdom, I think I would appreciate it more. ALITS is one of the best sounding ones on the album imo.
Maybe, but, obviously, the band picked mixers whose approaches to the songs felt most appropriate to them for each project.
LT's mixing is good but this album's mixing is ordinary. The instrumentals are far more louder than vocals
The mixing in THP is the thing that kills it for me. Call me crazy, but it ruins my enjoyment of the album to a huge degree. Everything sounds muddy, everything but the guitars is centre-panned (Kills any sense of depth for me) and the album displays very little dipping into the Trebble and only really gets to a bassy feel with some ridiculous sub-bass (AFN, anyone?), I find that most songs just end up cluttering together into a pile of noise rather then feeling as technical and intense as the rest of LP's work. The vocal mixing is a joke, while Mike sounds pretty OK, Chester's delivery is washed way into the background, especially in the chorus of MTG and ALITS, both of which I feel could have been very powerful songs otherwise. The shame is, I realize they were trying for a raw, garage-band-ish sort of sound, but it seems like they achieved that with digital effects and by dampening the whole album in mixing, rather then achieving it by using more legitimate measures. Never thought I'd say it, I think they accomplished this sound significantly better in Given Up and No More Sorrow, which to me both use lot of the same ideas as this album is built off of. That's my $0.2, honestly, I can see how people might not mind, and all the power too them, but it ruins the experience for me personally. I understand what they were trying to accomplish, but it didn't work for me.