I thought I was pretty clear that I think Nolly gets a great sound, regardless of my subjective feelings about how he gets it. If not, I’ll say it straight out: Nolly has a great sound. I actually really like his tone, much moreso than most modern metal Darkglass-using bassists I’ve heard. If I thought the guy sucked I would come out and say so.
Regarding downpicking, guitar and bass guitar are different animals, in no small part because guitarists are usually playing chords; they are literally striking the strings in a different order on their upstroke. That’s why I threw in a caveat for 8-string players. A better comparison would be to Kirk Hammet; admittedly I don’t spend a lot of time studying Hammet’s right hand technique, but I assume he uses double picking. He can do that easily and still sound good because he’s playing single notes. Similarly, for a bassist not playing chords or an 8/12-string the only difference between their upstroke and downstroke is how they attack the string, and IMO theres’ no good reason a dedicated pick player shouldn’t have an upstroke that is, for any reasonably practical purposes, just as aggressive as their downstroke. There’s just no physical reason for it. I can do it and I don’t think I’m a particularly exceptional player. I suppose it may be the case that you could sit down with a recording of me, study it, and pick out the upstrokes, but no one listening to that recording for the pleasure of listening to music would ever notice. I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree on that,which is fair enough IMO.
Inccedentally, Scott Ian has claimed to have just as heavy an upstroke on rhythm guitar as his downstroke. I say that more as an interesting bit of trivia than as a serious point though, as IMO James Hetfield’s tone is better than Ian’s. YMMV, of course.
As far as bouncing the strings off the frets go, your comment about Alex Webster gets exactly to my point; if you’re going to get your aggression and physicality from bouncing the string off the frets (a technique I’ve suggested here on TB to fingerstyle players trying to sound more aggressive) then it doesn’t make much sense to me to use a pick. It seems to me you’d be better off using your fingers and be better able to shift gears to slapping or to a softer fingerstyle tone. I’ll admit though, I’m not 100% sure I’m understanding the exact way he’s attacking the string; I hadn’t really viewed my post as a particularly serious critique so I hadn’t been as rigorous about the details as I would have been if I were claiming that the guy sucks. He clearly doesn’t suck, I personally like his tone, so I see no real need to get super serious critiquing him.
I hope my point of view on this is a little bit clearer now.
How long is this run of shows? 
