Albums ruined by a poor production?

[Jack C]

The loudness of Californiacation is just stupid. The tones in that record are great. It could have been a really nice sounding album if they hadn't pushed it so hard.

[velorush]

This looks promising (to me):

Was searching for this before I posted. Just a sonic abortion made worse due to the songs being really cool.

Bob Rock's work after the Veruca Salt album he did as well as A lot of Rick Rubin stuff, starting with Californication, sounds like shit to me as well. You can tell that a whole lot of stuff was clipped to tape and then just got worse when it get smashed in mastering.

It's supposed to be out at the end of the month. I've almost bought Vapor Trails many times, but I just couldn't get over the terrible sound. Every indication is that this is done right. This is a very important album in the Rush catalog (yes, I realize the Rush catalog isn't necessarily an important catalog to everyone) and it's great it finally got "fixed" for lack of a better term.

[LucSulla]

Velo, thanks for tipping me off to this. I had heard it was getting re-released, but I didn't know it got done. I plan on picking it up.

[MCChris]

They're also putting it out on vinyl, for whatever that's worth.

I've said this before on here, but I wonder why a band that prides itself on being able to do whatever they want would release such an inferior product. Maybe that's just bluster. Aside from record company pressure, I'm not sure why they would want to fight the volume wars when even they have to know that their new stuff doesn't get radio play beyond a week of an album's release (if it gets any airplay at all) before it's back to endless loops of "Tom Sawyer" and "Freewill."

I also don't get the thinking behind jacking up the volume on the product when an FM radio deck is going to compress and "normalize" all that shit anyway. So you get a doubly compressed product on the radio. Awful.

And yes, "Californication" is flat-out unlistenable (pre-empitve strike at the Chili Peppers haters: it's not unlistenable because it's the Chili Peppers).

[Ting Ho Dung]

The first few KISS albums really sucked dead air as well as the first few Judas Priest albums. There was no life to them. Didn't know enough about recording then to know why and still don't to this day.