Could you imagine a doom band, like Reverend Bizarre or Spirit Adrift, without bass? That'd be just awful.
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Heavy Metal Without BASS
- Thread starter jeffmensch
- Start date
Yes, it's often more about bottom end than definition, which provides the heaviness. On the early Black Sabbath albums, however, you can hear the bass really well. Less was more in that case. They used fewer tracks and only had one guitarist. By the late 70s, with more tracks and more guitar overdubs, Geezer's sound got buried, too.
I will state and support the obvious, which has been stated before. Bands/songs with distinctive bass lines (like Maiden) are lost without the bass. If the bass is just rooting the chord progression, remixing the rest of the instruments with more low end would probably cover it just fine.
The video is BS. I just listened to the video through my phone using pretty good isolating ear buds. Then I went to Google Play and brought up several of the songs. The bass had clearly been EQed out of the video. Iron Man actually has the bass only iin the left channel with guitars in the right channel. Geezer's Grundy picked bass is clear as a bell in the left channel. It's not Jamerson round but there's plenty of bass there.
As for The Trooper, streaming it via Google Play showed me that even the guitars sounded more ballsy than in that video. Steve is galloping along getting it done.
(Honestly, I should go back and listen to some of this stuff with ear buds. It sounded great. I haven't been into hard rock in a long time....)
But, yeah, the video is BS. They intentionally blended the bass out to make a point that doesn't exist.
Of the metal bands I grew up with in the 80’s, Slayer is the one that comes to mind who had such huge guitars that there is absolutely no room for bass. It wasn’t until the 2000’s when Slayer albums were mixed differently and you can hear the bass more.
Anthrax did something more interesting where the high-mids of the bass guitar were boosted and you actually heard the bass guitar layered on top of the guitars. This studio mixing idea actually shied me away from bass guitar in the 80’s for this reason...the guitars sounded like they had more bass than the bass guitar.
And of course, the Justice album took the cake for no bass needed.
But I was picky with my Heavy Metal. I listened to a select few bands, aside from those mentioned above, there was also Testament, as well as thrash bands like Nuclear Assault and Exodous...both of which had very minimal use for bass guitar. I never got into Maiden or Priest, mostly because I detested that operatic singing.
Then I got into Death Metal like Death, Obituary, Pestilence, Carcass, BoltThrower, etc... the guitar was the bass.
Anthrax did something more interesting where the high-mids of the bass guitar were boosted and you actually heard the bass guitar layered on top of the guitars. This studio mixing idea actually shied me away from bass guitar in the 80’s for this reason...the guitars sounded like they had more bass than the bass guitar.
And of course, the Justice album took the cake for no bass needed.
But I was picky with my Heavy Metal. I listened to a select few bands, aside from those mentioned above, there was also Testament, as well as thrash bands like Nuclear Assault and Exodous...both of which had very minimal use for bass guitar. I never got into Maiden or Priest, mostly because I detested that operatic singing.
Then I got into Death Metal like Death, Obituary, Pestilence, Carcass, BoltThrower, etc... the guitar was the bass.
Hey man what about diggorgio in death you could hear that pretty well. Or what about augury, or atheist.
Plenty of bands now a days where bass is very important. Beyond creation they kind of got famous in a way because of their fretless player Dominic forest lapointe. Obscure is another one that comes to mind where you can hear bass somewhat decently.
I agree that modern mixing styles of death metal have favored guitars in the up front style. I think that the sound where bass guitar and guitar are balanced well and still sounds super heavy in the vein of how people feel death metal should sound has not been figured out yet. There are some bands out there where the bass is paramount to the message delivered by the guitar (counter points, melodies, poly rythms and many other elements the bass can bring to the metal composition). Death metal as a whole was still in its fetal stage around the time it was supposed to be big (right around the time nirvana came out there was going to be a channel devoted to metal and death metal it was called mtv2 then grunge came about and it kinda screwe'd the pooch, death metal was almost a widely accepted mainstream genre). This is why dying fetus named their band as such in reference to death metal dying before it had a chance to be in infancy. I think because of that and other factors it has not been explored to the fullest extent of different mixing styles that would be true to the genre. Not saying any of the engineers who worked on those albums were bad they were just looking for a sound and couldn't find a way to make that sound without making the bass more rumbly/ boom and supportive low frequency nature instead of a driving mid range and tight low type sound. Death metal in particular is still a relatively new thing and is constantly evolving I wouldn't be surprised to find that mixing styles will evolve with it over time and eventually we will see the bass player done justice. It is a hard instrument to mix in the context of the frequency responses needed or wanted with drums and guitar in that genre it is quite tricky to pull off and will take a different perspective or combination of techniques and outside te box thinking to pull off. Just my 2 cents as an audio engineer/ studio tech guy.
Plenty of bands now a days where bass is very important. Beyond creation they kind of got famous in a way because of their fretless player Dominic forest lapointe. Obscure is another one that comes to mind where you can hear bass somewhat decently.
I agree that modern mixing styles of death metal have favored guitars in the up front style. I think that the sound where bass guitar and guitar are balanced well and still sounds super heavy in the vein of how people feel death metal should sound has not been figured out yet. There are some bands out there where the bass is paramount to the message delivered by the guitar (counter points, melodies, poly rythms and many other elements the bass can bring to the metal composition). Death metal as a whole was still in its fetal stage around the time it was supposed to be big (right around the time nirvana came out there was going to be a channel devoted to metal and death metal it was called mtv2 then grunge came about and it kinda screwe'd the pooch, death metal was almost a widely accepted mainstream genre). This is why dying fetus named their band as such in reference to death metal dying before it had a chance to be in infancy. I think because of that and other factors it has not been explored to the fullest extent of different mixing styles that would be true to the genre. Not saying any of the engineers who worked on those albums were bad they were just looking for a sound and couldn't find a way to make that sound without making the bass more rumbly/ boom and supportive low frequency nature instead of a driving mid range and tight low type sound. Death metal in particular is still a relatively new thing and is constantly evolving I wouldn't be surprised to find that mixing styles will evolve with it over time and eventually we will see the bass player done justice. It is a hard instrument to mix in the context of the frequency responses needed or wanted with drums and guitar in that genre it is quite tricky to pull off and will take a different perspective or combination of techniques and outside te box thinking to pull off. Just my 2 cents as an audio engineer/ studio tech guy.
I know I'm hijacking an old thread, but this kinda pisses me off. So many people think metal would be less than poopie without a quality bass player. That's crazy.
If we're going to be particular and only talk about "heavy metal" as in old school stuff, I guess I can understand why you might think that but you're still wrong. Any band without a bassist blows chunks. Now if were referring to all metal including prog and tech death and whatnot, then that's just total ********. The bass is necessary to any metal act. Beyond creation, obscura, blotted science, ingested, first fragment, inferi, spawn of possession, and any other quality band would not be what they are without a bassist. You cannot make an 8 string guitar sound like a 6 string fretless bass or any bass for that matter. The scale length is too different and the pickups they use are completely different. Furthermore, any band worth a damn is going to be more creative with their harmonies. Its the bassists job to follow the chord progression as is (mostly), but the guitarist is going to be going for guide tones (probably). Or they might switch in their solos or whatever, but the guitarist cannot fill all roles. Now bands like liquid tension experiment wouldn't be what they are at all without the bassist, in this case a stick player, which I'm going to call an extended range bass in this situation because of the scale length, and percussive effect. Tony Levin would be greatly missed if he was not in that band.
I think its narrow minded to make statements like heavy metal would sound OK without bass. Heavy metal bands would sound like crap in my opinion without a bassist. If you think it would be fine , then you have never heard a talented bassist play.
The double bass drums do not drown the notes out if setup properly, only a garage band would screw up like that. And even if the guitar plays the same exact notes as the bass, they still sound different. I digress. I personally wouldn't mind hearing a heavy metal band with 2 bassists.
If we're going to be particular and only talk about "heavy metal" as in old school stuff, I guess I can understand why you might think that but you're still wrong. Any band without a bassist blows chunks. Now if were referring to all metal including prog and tech death and whatnot, then that's just total ********. The bass is necessary to any metal act. Beyond creation, obscura, blotted science, ingested, first fragment, inferi, spawn of possession, and any other quality band would not be what they are without a bassist. You cannot make an 8 string guitar sound like a 6 string fretless bass or any bass for that matter. The scale length is too different and the pickups they use are completely different. Furthermore, any band worth a damn is going to be more creative with their harmonies. Its the bassists job to follow the chord progression as is (mostly), but the guitarist is going to be going for guide tones (probably). Or they might switch in their solos or whatever, but the guitarist cannot fill all roles. Now bands like liquid tension experiment wouldn't be what they are at all without the bassist, in this case a stick player, which I'm going to call an extended range bass in this situation because of the scale length, and percussive effect. Tony Levin would be greatly missed if he was not in that band.
I think its narrow minded to make statements like heavy metal would sound OK without bass. Heavy metal bands would sound like crap in my opinion without a bassist. If you think it would be fine , then you have never heard a talented bassist play.
The double bass drums do not drown the notes out if setup properly, only a garage band would screw up like that. And even if the guitar plays the same exact notes as the bass, they still sound different. I digress. I personally wouldn't mind hearing a heavy metal band with 2 bassists.
Is it possible to make music without bass? - Techically yes. (But if we dont't consider downtuned guitars and kick drum as bass range instruments.) In that case it's a mixing tech thing. To compensate, we adding more bottom from guitars, keys, kick, etc.
Why we "don't hear bass" or it's leading part of a heavy track? 3 moments:
1. Arrangment. Octave (guitar doubling) track tends to be more like pillow for overdriven guitars without much cut through going on. Other way, harmonically separate bass line may appear more distinct to ears.
2. Setup, playing style, effects chain have a huge impact on bass tone in a mix. More overdriven, with bright punchy transients bass track cuts Guitar mud better.))
3. Mixing. Somewhat similar to p.2 but based more on sound engineer decisions during tracking/mixing/mastering process. How loud is the bass track, what freq range it has, EQ, compression, etc compared to other tracks on a song.
Why we "don't hear bass" or it's leading part of a heavy track? 3 moments:
1. Arrangment. Octave (guitar doubling) track tends to be more like pillow for overdriven guitars without much cut through going on. Other way, harmonically separate bass line may appear more distinct to ears.
2. Setup, playing style, effects chain have a huge impact on bass tone in a mix. More overdriven, with bright punchy transients bass track cuts Guitar mud better.))
3. Mixing. Somewhat similar to p.2 but based more on sound engineer decisions during tracking/mixing/mastering process. How loud is the bass track, what freq range it has, EQ, compression, etc compared to other tracks on a song.
I know that this is hard to take for several of us, but bass isn’t really an instrument...it’s a function.
Most music has bass, including heavy metal. But the bass doesn’t always come from the instrument called bass. More and more, in heavy metal and other genres, bass comes from how the bass drum or keys or guitars are mixed or featured in the track.
This isn’t a death sentence for our instrument. But the first step is to recognize this. Bass exists in most music. It doesn’t help to say that it isn’t there at all.
Most music has bass, including heavy metal. But the bass doesn’t always come from the instrument called bass. More and more, in heavy metal and other genres, bass comes from how the bass drum or keys or guitars are mixed or featured in the track.
This isn’t a death sentence for our instrument. But the first step is to recognize this. Bass exists in most music. It doesn’t help to say that it isn’t there at all.
There is the '...And Justice For All' where the bass was edited out. It is a heavy metal album that did well.
Not exactly heavy metal, but I've been to a Pro Pain concert a while back and both guitarists were playing 7 strings. There were parts where Gary Meskill (singer/bass) spread his arms while singing for dramatic effect.
The bass player stopped, but the low end stayed. I was glad that he's also the singer because playing bass in Pro Pain is quite redundant at times.
You can't have metal without bass, that much is clear. However, no one ever said it has to be an electric bass guitar doing that job. When you downtune your seven string guitar, you've got the bass covered.
Not exactly heavy metal, but I've been to a Pro Pain concert a while back and both guitarists were playing 7 strings. There were parts where Gary Meskill (singer/bass) spread his arms while singing for dramatic effect.
The bass player stopped, but the low end stayed. I was glad that he's also the singer because playing bass in Pro Pain is quite redundant at times.
You can't have metal without bass, that much is clear. However, no one ever said it has to be an electric bass guitar doing that job. When you downtune your seven string guitar, you've got the bass covered.
I knew a guy that played death-metal guitar through a bass amp. “There’s so much bass, I like how it makes everything rattle…Don’t stand under the ceiling lamp, it may come down one day…”
No basses.
Two 8 string guitars.
Tuned EAEADGBE.
The first two are an octave below the regular E and A.
JeezyMcNuggles
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- Feb 23, 2018
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Bass is what holds metal together, and drives it forward. Even though you can't hear it, or you think it's a guitar.
Yes.
Javier will often do "basslines"while Tosin plays counter lines.
Some "basslines"are prerecorded.
