I've written tunes on and off, mostly for fun (my heavy metal rock star days are behind me, sadly) but it's something I've tried to get back to. Influences are Wumpscut, Depeche Mode, Skinny Puppy, Pitchshifter, Spineshank... that kind of thing.

Here's a track I recorded recently.

All compliments, criticisms, put-downs, and snide remarks are encouraged

Pretty good. I'm getting a Manson vibe.

I wish the vocals were centered at some points in the song. Having a left and right pan accompany the main center vocal helps it feel more meaty, but having just a left and right pan has almost the opposite effect for me. Hollow. I think this works well for the verses, but it seems monotonous to have the vocals mixed that way the whole song.

I like the instrumental. The synth/guitar that comes in during the verse really picks the song up during a time that otherwise could have become stale. The strings during the chorus were a nice touch.

I'm a sucker for any type of industrial though. I can listen to Nine Inch Nails 24/7. Within the last few years I got into Coil and Throbbing Gristle, and I'm taken to a new planet whenever I listen to them.

Thanks for the listen. I will fully admit that mixing vocals is for sure my biggest weakness. Being an instrumentalist for 20 years, and a vocalist for only about 3, I have zero clue as to how to best record them. I usually do two tracks raw, add a slight delay, multi-band compression, and then either pan both 50/50 or leave them centered. In this case I panned.

The part in the verse is a synth lead patch from a Yamaha MM8 with a little post distortion. I had originally tracked it on guitar, but didn't dig the vibe of it, so attempted to recreate it via my synth. I think it worked out, but was unsure how much of it to put in the mix.

I'm with you on NIN. I can listen to everything from Pretty Hate Machine to The Fragile non-stop. They lost me after The Fragile though. I tried to get into Hesitation Marks but just couldn't. Maybe I should give it another listen.

Throbbing Gristle is out there... Rad. But out there. Lol

I thought you did a pretty good job. Portions of it sound really lo-fi, though (the vocals and guitars are brighter than the drums, which makes me think this might not be a compression issue as much as elements you're using that need help). What is the compression rate on the youtube clip? Is it a mp3, or a .wav file? If it's mp3, what's the rate (like 128, 192, 256, 320, etc.)? Are the drums a loop or do you have all of the elements separate? If you have them separate, the snare's too loud, and the mono nature of the drum kit and some elements really bugs me. Also, a lot of stuff feels like it's pulling to the left (the doubled guitar and vocals are the biggest offenders).

tz is right about the vocals, too. They actually work well in the song, but you should be using the doubled style as an enhancer, not as a whole song type thing. You can get the same basic effect (except with the vocal in the center) by using a technique similar to what I list below.

1. Take the vocal(s) that you have coming out of the left, and make two exact copies of it (it would just be duplicating the whole channel in your DAW).
2. Take the vocal(s) that you have coming out of the right, and make two exact copies of (same note as above applies)
3. Pan one of the tripled left vocals in the center, one to the left, and one to the right. Turn down the ones coming out of the left and right 6dB, and then adjust the image by raising or lowering both of those in unison. For more of an "effect" put the sends for the reverbs for the left and right tracks in "pre" and play with the sound of the reverb until you get the desired effect.
4. Repeat above for the tripled right vocals.

When this technique is executed properly, it gives space to the vocals above any kind of mix, and doing this with having the vocals in the center will allow you to anchor the mix further.

I'm not really a fan of industrial music, but I listened to plenty of it in the late 80s/early 90s (some of which I loved). I think you did pretty well with it, but the mono drum kit and mono string type keyboard (add a good stereo reverb to this, and it will have so much better of an impact) took away from it a little. If you're adding reverb to the drums, which it sounds like you were at the end, it's not good technique, and is probably defeating the purpose of what you were trying to accomplish.

What DAW are you using? Once you fix the minor issues in this, I actually wouldn't mind having a crack at the mix for free, if you're interested and I have time.

Oh, this is also really compressed, but it's not as big of a deal in industrial as it is in other music, and it still sounds okay. You made good instrumentation choices, and your mix is really the only place it lacks a bit. If you wanted to fill out the drums a bit more (if it's a loop and you can't separate it), I would actually add a secondary stereo percussion track that should always play underneath. If you can separate it, the percussion type sound playing along with the drums should have a nice reverb to give it a stereo space. That would probably solve the drum kit problems, though I'm guessing that's probably a loop for the full drum kit.

Great write-up Nunnehi. Thanks for the vocal tips. I'll definitely give those a whirl. To answer your questions:

It's an mp3 at 160 bit rate, which was the default (I'll admit, I really have no clue what to use when it comes to mp3 mixdown). Not sure what the compression rate is for the Youtube clip.

As far as the drums, there is a main loop that I exported from Reaktor, but I wanted to beef it up a little so there are individual kick and snare tracks going on beneath it. There was no added reverb to the drums besides any that might have been pre-recorded into the loop.

I use Cubase 5 for recording and Ozone 5 for mastering.

I would be more than thrilled to hear another mix of this, if indeed you have time and are interested. If you want the stems, shoot me a PM.

PM sent.

The mp3 being 160kbps is part of what's hurting it for sure. Whenever you make a mp3, avoid making them below 256kbps, and if you can make them 320kbps it will be even better. 160kbps is doing significant damage to the sound quality, and that's absolutely part of why it sounds so lo-fi. It probably means a lot of the rest of your elements were too bright in the mix, since they came across pretty close to being a good EQ in this compression. On that type of compression, the high end is being grossly compressed, and will make a well mixed song sound duller than it really is (the drums sounded dull, but the rest didn't really, which means that the drums were probably close to being a good EQ before you made the mp3, but the rest was probably too bright).

The loop being separate from your second kick will probably give me a little flexibility toward making it more stereo, but I won't know until I receive the stuff. I'm looking forward to taking a shot at it to see if I can mix that kind of music.

New track! ... It cuts off towards the end for some reason I blame Youtube.

Finished a new track, with a "music video" to go along with (it's not much, windows movie maker lulz)... I know there's not many fans of industrial in this forum, but felt like sharing anyway.

Sorry I'm late but I liked them