The newest album by Raw Nerve Endings is out now. I handled recording, mixing, and mastering it for the entire two and a half year long process. We recorded it at CHOMS in Vancouver. The album can be purchased on Bandcamp. Working with the band has been a fantastic experience as they’re all voracious songwriters, very adept at creating exciting song structures and enticing melodies. The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered using Bitwig Studio, with no external plugins, running on Arch Linux (although I’m planning to move to Fedora for future recording projects).

The mic choices were as follows: a Sennheiser e602 II for the kick mic, SM57 for the snare and toms, and a Rode M5 matched pair stereo mic for the room. The bass was usually recorded with a DI, but we did experiment with using the e602 II on a bass amp. The guitars were primarily an SM57 dead center on a VOX practice amp that was set to mimic an AC30. Vocals were all handled with an SM58 with an additional pop filter, as I feel like it compliments Kabir’s voice more compared to some other mores standard choices for a studio vocal mic. All of these were run through a second generation Scarlett 18i20 audio interface.

Since the album was recorded slowly over such a long period, mixing and mastering also progressed slowly. However near the end of the process both myself and the band were growing exhausted by the time commitment, and decided to pursue an aggressive deadline to finish the album. My general philosophy towards mixing involved measured use of Bitwig’s built-in distortion effect, as well as a focus on stereo doubles for the vocals and the guitars wherever I felt it was appropriate. Overall I’m fairly satisfied with how the album turned out, but there always could have been more time to fine tune everything and make it perfect.

Please consider listening to it if you haven’t had a chance to already, and if you’re ever able to see Raw Nerve Endings perform in person I highly recommend it. I’m excited to find out what they end up doing next.