I’m a huge fan of Zakk Cervini and architects, so I’m always doing research on them and I recently came across this remake of seeing red by architects and I noticed the guy got kinda close to Zakk's sound, in my opinion.

https://youtu.be/PBgIfv2JDk8?feature=shared

zainkoala check your PMs

Oops! I’m afraid I haven’t received any new private messages. I did get an audio from you, but I asked about that surprise and I don’t think I got a response. You’ve left me hanging! Haha, looking forward to your messages, my friends! 😂😂

That sounds awesome! What drums did you use? How much of the sound is parallel comp?

I use Invasion for the main kit and Modern & Massive for the additional room.

Here's the parallel comp setup, tweaked from something I stole from Zakk's Sound On Sound interview: aim for GR -4db or so

I guess this is the post our mate was talking about: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniq...california?amp. It’s quite interesting since it covers a lot of plugins, and considering that Zakk doesn’t seem to change his sound much, he might still be using them.

This is sooo important. I found similar results using this plugin alone. This is a gem of a plugin (Works great on vocals as well, which Zakk does too)! I aim for a 2-3 dB reduction but no low cut. Also the mix bus comp setting is important too I believe! Most of my drum compression is handled by the drum bus and my mix bus comp. I aim for a solid 3 dB or less.

Also, it is interesting that I haven't fiddled with the low cut in a while. It seems that it takes care of the harsh tick/click of any drum shells in my mix. I remember doing that with my mix bus comp, but nowadays, I do not engage any sidechain filter. However, engaging the sidechain low cut reduced a lot of my EQ moves for my kick and snare. Also, this reminded me of that time when nolly used to use the same plugin for parallel drum compression (Attached)

Which settings are you using for both kits? Sounds wicked

As far as 'tricks' go, I don't really hear any... just rock-solid balance and blend, and a one-shot or two. Most of his kicks sound to have an electronic sample blended in. He also uses great room samples. Something like M&M or Superior Drummer will help with that. It's important to remember that your drums are only as good as the mix they are in... His mixes are all superbly balanced, which will help the drums 'pop' by default. A well-defined low-end allows the kick to punch without much effort etc etc.

Here’s another test, this time trying out the Softube FET Compressor on the drum bus. Still not completely happy with it, I think there’s a lot of room for improvement to get much closer to Zakk’s sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZUFtXGsXB4

I believe you got close, I would recommend doing further eq on the snare and do not be afraid to go for full compression on the drum comp. I got great results for myself but I'm too lazy/occupied to post these here. And what's your mixbus comp setting?

Thanks! Let's see if we can all get a little closer to Zakk's sound. The mixbus chain I used in this case is Softube FET Compressor + Waves API 550B + Virtual Tape Machine (but I'm not sure if I like the result).

I recommend adding an SSL-style mix bus comp with a 30 ms attack, the fastest release, and aiming for a 4-db gain reduction. As a matter of fact, I replied to your post twice, and it never got posted until now...

he is in "GGD One Kit wonder Architects" kontakt library!

Here's a go using GGD Architects snare, the rest of the kit is Superior Drummer 3 with the death and darkness expansion.

Drums routed out to separate channels in Studio One with that Softube FET compressor on the drum bus doing the parallel compression.

Rest of the instruments are all re-recorded so won't sound the same as the original.

https://vocaroo.com/1j1bSEgcBnG3

It's definitely lacking but feels okay for a first test.

I'd love to get the sound 5u5h1 managed to get on their snare.

Great first attempt! I think the kick is a bit too bright and prominent, which is overshadowing the rest of the instruments. Maybe if you work on it a bit, you could bring it closer so we can hear the snare more clearly.

This is another test I had done with the GGD Architects kit, as you used it in your test!

https://vocaroo.com/1kyeu2dkHsU9

Thank you, here's another attempt slightly updated: https://voca.ro/19uxZAN07pR8

I'm working on getting the sound with a mix of GGD OKW Nu Metal and OKW Architects. Regarding the drum bus, I don't have Softube's FET compressor and as far as I can tell there's no way to "officially" purchase MK1, so any of you know if MK2 sounds as good or better than MK1? I'm considering purchasing it

As far as I know, there is no difference, you’re good to go with the MK2.

I don't know if the curves for attack or release are different but after reading through the doc the main thing I see is that there is no "fluid" ratio. If I want to replicate the settings Zakk uses (or used) I would have to choose either 8 or 12 for the ratio (12 of course we all know higher is better )

Right now I'm using eventide omnipressor with no upwards gain 10:1, attack 0.4 ms and release 50 ms:

FET compressor mk2 has a 'try now' option to trial it. Switching that ratio from a dial to buttons seems like a slight downgrade in flexibility - odd choice. I would also purchase this if I could get mk1.

I also purchased OKW Nu Metal and feel like I can't get a good sound out of it.
Let us know how you get on with it, interested to hear what kind of sound you can get from it.

I'm experimenting with UVI Drums replacer to blend in some samples. Does anybody have some good resources for those Zakk Cervini style samples? Was thinking maybe Drumshotz but unsure.

I'm mainly using the toms, OH and room from the nu metal kit. The kick and snare from the architects kit is a better starting point for those two pieces. The nu metal kick is lacking sub and the snare has too much sustain. I'll post a breakdown once I get close enough.

Regarding the samples, There, you have a few that are pretty good. But if anyone wants to share more samples feel free. I'm blending some stuff that i plan to post. I want to create a Trigger file that is multi velocity, but it's becoming a hardship to get lower ones to sound decent.

Just in case it could be useful. In the last Bad Omens album, the song Hedonist has a section at the end where the drums are solo'ed

I have re-jigged and looped the drums from the BMTH tapenotes session. Great for a reference sound: https://voca.ro/18xfDQAEjzvU

Because Dan Lancaster talks over some of this section, I had to chop and swap pieces of this section to get a full uninterrupted loop - This means there are some slight artifacts in the cymbals where I blended them. Hopefully as a reference, this helps us get closer!

The part of the podcast is also on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/sSZyOiQFT4I?si=5OghwL4Brlb2J9iJ&t=507
At roughly 8:27, you can see the inserts he has used on the different tracks/buses

I would love to get this close to this sound then tweak to personal flavour.

Splice's discontinued Travis Barker Drum Kit included the original Punch Kick (which Zakk used early in his career and differs slightly from the current version).
The snares also has many of the sounds that Zakk seems to use, so it is effectively a Zakk Cervini Sample Pack!

I have that pack and could share it, I don't know if that is allowed

I still have to mess with it, but with the set up of OKW nu metal & architects:

https://voca.ro/1dYkbNhfjrEq

This reminds me a bit of the snare sound Acle Kahney produces for Tesseract. Another good reference for that sound IMO

https://youtu.be/pHZXTmPnMso?si=MhH6VQpKvBDygyhY