Cattle Decapitation

2020-02-14

Australia - Sydney
The Factory Theatre

Version: Core Sounds Cardioids -> Sony PCM-M10

01) Anthropogenic End Transmission
02) The Geocide
03) Your Disposal
04) Bring Back the Plague
05) The Great Dying (Part One)
06) One Day Closer to the End of the World
07) Travis greets the crowd
08) Forced Gender Reassignment
09) Lifestalker
10) Plagueborne
11) The Great Dying (Part Two)
12) Finish Them
13) Travis chats with the crowd some more
14) Clandestine Ways (Krokodil Rot)
15) Time's Cruel Curtain
16) The Unerasable Past
17) Death Atlas
18) Manufactured Extinct

Length: 67:00 min
Source: FLAC
Sourcenotes: Source/Lineage: Core Sounds Cardioids (pointed towards line arrays to minimise crowd noise and phasing from people walking by) -> Sony PCM-M10 (mic-in, 48kHz 24 bit) -> Soundforge 13.0 w/Izotope Ozone 9 Mastering Plugin -> Izotope RX8 Advanced Spectral Repair -> Izotope Ozone 9 Mastering Plugin for touch-ups -> FLAC Level 8
Recorded, mastered and processed by: Yours truly ... Starclassic.

Location: Centre stage, front edge of riser, doing battle with people slamming into me and others realising they didn't want to be on the dancefloor.
Recording Type: Audience
File Size: 888mb

As a long time listener and first time concert-goer, I expected the gig to be ferocious, and the crowd equally so. These guys exude an energy that makes you want to kill something, even if they prefer you didn't direct it at a tasty looking baby cow.

Much like the Fleshgod gig, these guys didn't hold back upon the first pull of the trigger and the crowd was loving every single note of it. The guys were on point, though sometimes I would question if Dave McGraw's kick triggers were having a bad night or if he was. Nevertheless, every millisecond kicked arse. I'd love to see these guys back again and thankfully, they came back to a decent venue, unlike many of the gigs I've recently seen staged at Crowbar.

Technically though, the recording is quite shit:
1) There wasn't enough balls and chunk from the kick drum sound overall, so trying to get a good punch in contrast to the nice and chunky bass guitar was creating more problems than it solved. I tried all levels of dynamic compression, limiting and excitation to breathe some life in but it's a crappy compromise at best.

2) Cymbals were quite out of balance, with excessive top end from the China and hi-hats, while the others lacked a bit of sparkle.

3) Guitars that were in need of some sparkle themselves but because of the excessive levels from some of the cymbals mentioned above, another compromise was set and the result is mediocre at best.

4) Some exuberant folks in the crowd screaming beyond any point of avoidance or fixing it in the mix. Thankfully those moments were few and far between but still very friggin' annoying.

I think the lesson learned here is that I should've found the sound desk like I normally do and work with that but my fear was that being so close to the bar, there'd be excessive foot traffic in front of my mics and that would mean an even worse result than what was obtained closer to the stage. Overall, it was a very muddy mix and trying to breathe some sparkle into it to give definition where it was needed proved to be almost futile, so this is a best-efforts recording. I give it a D-.