Recording Metal Drums: Lamb of God’s Chris Adler Tracks “Resolution” NYC Style

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS: Don’t take your ears off the drums: Try listening to nothing but the precision ballistics that shoot through every song on Resolution, Lamb of God’s addictive seventh studio album, and life gets almost unbearably exciting.

Chris Adler was in his inimitable metal element at Spin Music Studios in Long Island City.

The source of this rhythmic exhilaration is Chris Adler, whose advanced approach to metcalcore beats is setting him apart as one of the most important drummers going, no matter what the genre. On songs like “Guilty” or “Ghost Walking”, his patterns burst out like calm machine guns, displaying feat after feat of musical dexterity and control, all with a newfound mastery of space.

Adler’s 14 drumming performances on Resolution are as breathtaking physically as they are mentally. As committed to moving metal forward as his bandmates, the Virginia borne-and-bred Adler continued an ongoing tradition of leaving his Blue Ridge Mountains home base for New York City to record the drums.

A Southern gent in every respect, Adler finds his triannual migration to NYC is intensifying his relations to drumming and the studio with each return. He shared his latest tracking experience at Long Island City’s Spin Music Studios, revealing a wealth of inspirational production tips for producers, engineers and drummers alike.

Did the rest of the band record at Spin, or just you?

We also did vocals at Spin, but the guitars were done at Barbarossa, which is at a Virginia beach house. Studios today, other than drum rooms, in my opinion, are mostly a matter of a convenient place for people to meet. The technology allows you to record without big-name expensive rooms, except for drums.

On Wrath, I did my tracks at Electric Lady in Manhattan, which was quite a thrill — it’s good to be the drummer once in a while!

Lamb of God is not an NYC band in any way, shape, or form, so why do you keep returning to NYC to record your drums?

If I were given the option, I would choose NYC every time. I have been asked to record there by the various producers we’ve chosen – that’s where they’re from and comfortable with. That started with Machine, working at Water Music in Hoboken.

But then with Josh Wilbur we worked in Electric Lady, and Spin, and I loved the energy of the city and pulse of the ever-moving concrete jungle there. I would never live there, but two weeks of that energy makes me feel like I’ve got to wake up and get to work. I’m in NYC. I’m going to play on a big metal album: I’d better put my big boy pants on and go to work.

From there, why do you keep coming back to Spin when you can?

Producer Josh Wilbur did drums on (2006’s) Sacrament, and produced (2009’s) Wrath and Resolution. He’s very familiar with the board and the room. It’s a nice room, and I know if he’s comfortable I’ll probably wind up happy with the drum sound.

You worked at Spin’s previous incarnation, also in Long Island City, to record drums for Sacrament. What was the same, and what was the difference between the two iterations of the studio?

The personnel are the same – Pete Benjamin is up there putting everybody at ease. It’s the best drum room I’ve seen on the East Coast. I think the prior Spin worked for that, but this one really achieves it. For what we’re there for, it’s the prime solution.

Spin's 68 channel SSL 4064 G / G+ console, looking inside at Adler's kit in Studio A's spacious live room.

I read that you’ve changed your philosophy on being creative in the studio for “Resolution”. Can you expand on that?

Coming into all of the previous records, we would write the material long in advance, then rehearse it until it was second nature, then go in to the studio and lay down what we had been rehearsing, with no questions or possibilities of mistakes. Coming into the writing process for Resolution, this being our sixth or seventh album, I knew we had the ability go in and spend time with the drums, and make it sound the best we could.

I’m from the old school of doing 10 tracks in a day, then letting the other (band members) come in and do their work. Now I’m being instructed not to do that, and instead to do only two songs a day, and keep the energy fresh.

So if I’m only doing two songs in seven hours, why am I spending months and months memorizing every fill? I can come in, step back, and be more objective about what is really going to sound better for the song, instead of just coming up with the coolest thing on the drums. So this time I wanted to leave myself a little more open to “improv”, and be able to change things on the spot if I came up with something better.

Does that mean you were using the studio itself as an instrument more this time?

Very much so. Believe me, I’m not taking it for granted — when the red light is on, money is flying. So 97% of everything is mapped out. The rest is gray area, and I let the studio lead me to where I’m going.

How did Spin, the studio and the instrument, specifically play into that?

It’s a special place. You walk up about five flights to get in — I’m a runner, that doesn’t wind me — but everyone else is a little out of breath.

There’s a weird laundry place nearby, a shipping department downstairs — you’re tucked away in a block in an industrial area. You’re kind of in an Area 51, where some serious business goes down. Even to leave, there’s five flights down to go out. So once you’re in, you’re committing. You are in the hot seat. You are going to work.

Adler's Mapex Deep Forest kit, fully miked.

It sounds like that really improves your focus.

Yes. It’s not a situation where you can say, “I’m not feeling creative now. I’m going to Smoothie King.” You’re in there, there’s no escape, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

There are studios, places like Bob Rock’s in Hawaii, that are super-relaxing places. But I don’t want to be able to go outside in the back, sit in a hammock, and have a drink with an umbrella in it. I want everybody to know we can go to work. I’m Type A – it works for me, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everybody.

How does that affect your approach to getting drum sounds? Has that changed? How would you characterize the drum sounds you got for “Resolution”?

I have a Mapex Deep Forest all-walnut kit. The first time I used that was on the Ashes of the Wake album. Since then, it’s turned back every attempt to beat it. When I first got my endorsement with Mapex, that was the one I thought sounded the best. After touring with it once, I put it into storage and pulled it out only to record, and so far it’s been on Ashes of the Wake, Wrath and Resolution.

Both Josh Wilbur and Machine had drum kits they thought would sound the best. I always said, “Fine. I can play anything, but why don’t I bring this kit? Because I think you’ll like it.” Three times in a row this has surpassed anyone else’s best kit.

From Sacrament on, we’ve achieved the sound I thought was unattainable or unaffordable on our earlier albums (1999’s Burn the Priest, 2000’s New American Gospel, and 2003’s As the Palaces Burn). We got it again on this album. We didn’t change the tuning, although we would open up the room mics to get a big wash if we wanted it. But sound-wise it’s been about staying on the same walnut kit that’s been kicking ass in the studio.

How would you characterize the signature sound that kit has helped you to capture?

I’ve always had a slightly characteristic sound of my snare drum. I like it tuned up high, almost a timbale-like thing that’s a signature sound. Also incorporating splashes is a signature sound of mine – if people listen to the drum tracks, they may know it’s me from that that.

But I’m in a metal band. You want everything to sound good when it’s going 100 MPH, and the way to do that in a live setting is to make it as down-tuned and quick as possible. Things have to come and go very fast. Parts are pretty intricate, but at the same time I don’t want to sound like a typewriter, and I think a lot of bands do.

I’ve been insistent on not using triggers in the studio, so we may spend a lot of time EQing on toms because I won’t go back into a sample library. I want an acoustic natural sound, and the more that technology allows everyone to make a song at home, the less natural drums you hear. The more I record, the more I hope I can keep that natural sound – and that can become my sound, I suppose.

In a time where spending days to get drum sounds is no longer considered cool, are you nonetheless doing just that?

We’re not sitting at home collecting vinyl and telling people the merits of audio quality. But we do it old school, you might say, so yes we spend the time to get it right the first time. We won’t fix it in the mix, we’ll spend days on a kick drum.

I know the guys spent a week on guitars before recording, trying new amps, new strings. If you’re not careful, you do spend time getting fanatical, and you have to keep an eye on the calendar, but we are lucky to have some money to spend to make it right. So instead of spending the money on Maseratis, I’d rather make sure it still sounds good to my kid in 30 years.

Fresh drumheads...ready to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Likewise, how has your working relationship with Josh Wilbur evolved? What was the same about the way you worked together on this album, and what’s changed since Wrath?

Significant change. In Wrath, Josh came in and it seemed as though his main focus was to somehow outdo and distance himself from the work that Machine had done on our previous two albums, Ashes of the Wake and Sacrament.

So Josh ‘s primary objective was to know how Machine had done it, and find a better way. There wasn’t as much of a focus on arranging and writing, as fine-tuning the sound of the band, and going in a different direction.

On Resolution, from Day One, we didn’t even have a song together before Josh came in. Before we wrote a song, or even put a riff together, we allowed him to have opinions. He would record us every day, and come back with different comps of what we had done and different arrangements, asking things like, “How would this change the vocals?”

This was the first time we had allowed anyone in beforehand. We had always been like, “We’ll find the best guy to turn the knobs and make it sound good.” But this time he helped us make all the decisions.

Is there a song you can point to that illustrates the updated workflow?

A prime example is the drum solo on the first track “Straight for the Sun.” Josh plays drums, so throughout the writing process, we spoke the same drum language. He realized what I could do well, and he pushed me.

He kept saying, “Let’s do some kind of drum solo on this record.” And I’d constantly say, “I don’t want to be in the spotlight any more than I am. And I don’t want to push myself any harder to do a drum solo that I have to cross my fingers and hope goes well every night.”

When we finally get into Spin Studios, Josh says, “Let’s do the drum solo you came up with.” I didn’t have one at all! So he said, “What do you play when you’re at home practicing?” I played a few things, he comped them, and said “You could play this.” I said that’s impossible. He said, “Well, you do impossible stuff! So let’s do it.”

The solo is this super-fast, syncopated polyrhythm with the “and” accented every time. It’s a tricky bit I had been working on. Josh heard me playing it and said, “Let’s speed it up by 100 BPM!” At the end of the day, I had worked on it for 10 hours.

The icing on the cake is that it wound up being part of the first song on the album. It was fun, and now its the first thing we do on tour every night. Every time I play it live, I say, “Why did I let him talk me into it?”

What did you listen to in your headphone mix at Spin?

Normally, I just have the click, but for that aforementioned “three percent gray area,” we’d have scratch guitar tracks. I’d pull those up, and really try and play off of what the guys were doing.

Live, I have Starkey in-ear monitors, which block out everything. I have a low mix with kick drums and guitar on ether sides – its more quiet then when I listen to my iPod at the gym.

It allows me to balance out any anticipation or nervousness, and it makes it feel all quiet and easy to get through. It’s not necessarily for my ears, although that’s important, but for my comfort it seems the less I hear, the better I play. Maybe I’m fooling myself a little — I’m not hearing all my mistakes! – but it adds some serenity to the process.

I read that you took a very regimented approach to preparing for tracking this record, and the subsequent tour: exercising daily, no drinking/smoking, etc… We talked about the walk upstairs. Did you have any other pre-recording rituals before hitting Spin?

In the morning, we would go to Brooklyn Bagels and get some iced coffee, maybe a bagel or a smoothie.

Wild! How did you decompress after the session?

I had a hotel room in Queens. At night I’d go to the bodega and get a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Then I’d watch terrible detective shows till I fell asleep.

— David Weiss

Don’t take our word for it — hear the fruits of their labors right here with “Ghost Walking” from 2012’s Resolution:

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