Here's the result: the Pneuma cover on my youtube channel

My main focus here was getting the fenomenal sound Joe and Danny achieved for the drums on Fear Inoculum (2019). Other than that, getting a nice texture between the guitar tone and the bass, like in the album; and get as close as possible to the mixing and the sound effects Joe used, specially on the vocals.

I think it has turned out pretty nice, although the end result is kinda weak on the vocals and maybe the snare, both lacking personality (the vocals, obviously, because it's not Maynard singing, it's just me; and the snare because I couldn't get that ringing tone they have on the album, so I sticked to no ringing at all).

Now, for the stuff I used:

- Mainly Reaper, my DAW of choice for everything; and some of its stock plugins, such us reaEQ and reaComp, which I use frequently throughout every stage of the process since they achieve good results with little use of the CPU.

- EZ drummer 2: starting from the Progressive library in the rawest setting (Original Mix), and substituting bits of the kit with stuff from Dark Matter, Death Metal, Made of Metal and Metal Machine. Here you have the preset in case you wanna try it out. Basically I ended up with Paiste cymbals, Sonor kick and snare, and Grestch toms (which Danny doesn't use, but the ones in the Death Metal library sound amazing).

- My Epiphone Les Paul Standard through Archetype: Nolly, from Neural DSP, for the rhythm guitars; and Archetype: Gojira, from Neural DSP, for the solo. I find Neural DSP's ampsims to sound the best and most natural among those I've tried so far.

- A cheap bass from Vision (MSA), that I don't actually own, I borrowed it from a friend for a while. I ran it through POD Farm 2 (Line 6) for the heavyest parts, and actually through Archetype: Nolly again, for the main riff of the song.

- The single most cheapest condenser mic there is on the universe. Naturally, made by Neewer. Which is just bad in general, but does the job if you're willing to butcher the vocal EQ for hours on end. Specially if you're recording in a regular, untreated room, like I am.

- A wide array of plugins, some free, some not, of which I will mention a few that I have either recently found and fallen in love with, or I just use them everywhere because of how reliable I find them to be:
Variety of Sound Density mkIII (a great free compressor I use mainly on drums), VladG Molot Compressor (another great free compressor, this time for the bass), Waves Brauer Motion (which I saw Devin Townsend use, and it's a great natural sounding way to put ear candy in the background. Or in this mix: to substitute a Leslie cabinet), Eventide Blackhole (the only reverb I've seen capable of droning every sound in this way), LiquidSonics Illusion (a great find, it sounds so good!), good old EchoBoy, and iZotope Ozone 9 for the master. Oh, and the tablas are samples from a Kontakt library, forgot which one though :/


Hope you enjoy it, and if you have any feedback on how it sounds or how you would have done it, I'd appreciate it very much!

 

Last edited: Feb 9, 2021

Nice work, I think the guitars are a little high, but it's a good job