I found this somewhere on Facebook, but I really can’t remember where. So if anyone knows please contact me so I can give credit where it's due.
This is what Anthrax's Scott Ian said five years ago when we talked about the album in question and what he learned from working with producer Eddie Kramer.
- I learned how to stand up for myself, because when he started mixing the record… we came into the studio the first day of mixing and we got there around 7 o´clock at night and he had a mix ready for us to hear and it didn´t sound like Anthrax. Everything was a big wash of reverb and it didn´t sound right. We asked him “What´s this?” and he said “Well, I´m trying to make a modern metal record.”, because at the time “Pyromania” (Def Leppard, 1983) was like the biggest record in the world and it had that Mutt Lange production on it and nobody had ever heard that before. Eddie was trying to make our record sound like that kind of a modern metal record, but we don´t play songs like Def Leppard. That production works on “Pyromania” because of those songs, but we don´t play songs like Def Leppard. It doesn´t work on “Caught in a mosh” To me, it literally sounded like I was listening to a broken washing machine. It just didn´t sound right. We were like “This isn´t working, man. We want it to be really in your face and dry, like the records you made in the 70´s. We want a 70´s sounding metal record, like what Anthrax would sound like with a 70´s production. Very dry and tight and everything up front and in your face.” He didn´t want to do that. His attitude was like “I already did that.” And our attitude was like “Well, we don´t want to sound like Def Leppard either. It doesn´t work.” I had to stand up to Eddie Kramer. We got into a big argument and I said to him “Look, you´re gonna make 500 more albums, but this could be our last album! You get to go and make all these other records with other bands, but this is our record. This is an Anthrax record and it has to sound like Anthrax. That´s the bottomline. It has to sound like what we want.” He was not happy. We kinda got into it, it got a little heated and we actually yelled at each other, but it didn´t matter. My opinion was so strong about it. I said “I don´t care what you think and I don´t care if you´re mad and I don´t care if you quit! We´re gonna make the album the way we wanna make it and they way this sounds, it´s not Anthrax.” He said “Fine! Come back in three hours!” We all went to the bar down the road from the studio and we came back a couple of hours later. He put up the mix and I think he on purpose went out of his way to literally pull every bit of reverb, everything and what´s crazy is that it sounded good, because all our tones were so good and the whole recording process went so well. It sounded great and the levels were all there. It really sounded like a really fucking punchy in your face metal record. He saw how excited we were about it so he got excited. We said “It´s ok if you put some stuff on the vocals and maybe a little bit on the snare here or something, but we just want it to be tight. This is what we´re talking about.” From that point on it went great, because we loved what we were hearing. It sounded like what you hear when you listen to “Among the living” It sounded like that in the room and we were all very excited. If I learned anything it was that it doesn´t matter who you´re working with, you have to stand up for yourself and your band. You can´t let someone else dictate to you what your band is gonna sound like.
