Tool Engineer Talks Why John Bonham’s Drumming ‘Would Never Work in Metallica,’ Calls Metallica Album ‘So Weird Mastering-Wise’

“John Bonham’s sound works with Jimmy Page’s guitar sound,” Joe Barresi said.

During an appearance on Let There Be Talk, Tool engineer Joe Barresi – also known for his work with QOTSA, A7X, Slipknot, and more – talked about music, touching on Metallica, Led Zeppelin, and more.Joe worked on Tool’s latest album, 2019’s “Fear Inoculum,” you can check it out here via Amazon.

Touching on Zeppelin, Barresi said (transcribed by UG):

“John Bonham’s sound works with Jimmy Page’s guitar sound – you want the bottom sound? Well, that would never work in Metallica because those drums would never cut through [James] Hetfield or vice versa.

“There’s that relationship of the parts, that’s the sum, and that’s what gives a band identity… It’s how they play together, and the sounds they make, and their hands, and things like that. And that makes a band unique.

“They’re unstoppable, they sound so good… And their styles – you’d lose that style when you start piecing shit together one at a time.”

On the topic of mixing and producing, Joe touched on the latest Metallica album “Hardwired… To Self-Destruct,” saying:

“The last one sounds killer! The one before that, [2008’s] ‘Death Magnetic’ is so weird mastering-wise. Mastering guys started doing shit where they’re mastering the instrumental version because there’s no vocal they can fuck with, they can make that punishing loud.

“And then they master the vocal, and then they kind of do their own mix where they put the vocal in there. And that’s how that shit happens, you can get this kind of volume and crustiness.

“And there’s all the grief where they blame the mastering guy, or they blame the producer, or they blame the engineer, or the mixer… And I’ve had it happen to me where somebody tried to take a mix and put it on from the stems. But I’m like, ‘This sounds like shit, just leave the fucking mix.’

“You don’t need that many options. If it’s shitty, I’ll remix it. Call me up and say, ‘It sucks and I can’t do anything with this,’ and I’ll remix it. I really like the way the last Metallica record sounds like. Greg Fidelman took it back into the realm of…”

Check out Metallica’s “Hardwired” here via Amazon.

The last three. I don’t give a fuck what people say, I think [2003’s] ‘St. Anger’ is fucking crazy, I think it’s totally aggressive, I think it’s punk-rock. It feels like anxiety! I can only listen to it one time throughout a day. If I’m going to listen to it, I can’t listen to a back-to-back because it’s so aggressive in its own way.

“That’s a classic case of a band that’s still growing too. You listen to [Metallica’s 1983 debut] ‘Kill ‘Em All’ and then you go to [1984’s] ‘Ride the Lightning,’ and then you get to [1986’s] ‘Master [of Puppets]’ – every record is changing.

“And then Greg doing this last record… He did a bunch of Slipknot records too. And it sounds like old-school Metallica again. It’s a little more robust and tight and focused but still sounds real.”

Oh, that ‘Spit Out the Bone’ song – wow!

“I still throw it up as references too when I’m mixing and stuff. I’m like, ‘What does this sound like?’ It’s aggressive and competitive, it sounds killer. It sounds killer – so whatever he’s doing, it sounds great.

“I’d listen to some of my stuff on Sirius and give a shit. I gotta shave off some bottom end or something. It’s a little muddy.”

Were you chasing back-end money over the last 10 years from streaming for your points?

“It’s one of those things where you can’t hold a gun to anybody at a record label. I’ve known many people that have gone and audited record labels and come up with a bunch of cash but it’s just a little weird to me, in general, the whole streaming thing.

“I was going to buy some plug-ins this morning and buying a plug-in for 50 bucks, at least I own that plug-in for the rest of my life, for the rest of my musical life. When you rent it by the month, you don’t own it anymore!

“So streaming’s just – I love the fact that you can dial up anything you want at any time but I gotta pay you ten dollars a month, or twenty dollars a month to listen to this, and then a year from now, if I don’t want to use your subscription anymore, I don’t have that.”

There are two sides to it – you get caught up in that addiction to vinyl, which is great, and then all of a sudden, you don’t listen to anything because you got so much. You’re like, ‘Where do I start?’

“20 minutes on a turntable, though, put side one of whatever on, and sitting there listening to it… to me, it’s more like a family used to watch a TV show together. There’s a little more attention paid to it.”

It takes the ADD out of listening – you chose it, you sat down… But my thing is you forget what you have when you got so much there. Streaming too!

“Immediate access is nice, sometimes you’re like, ‘What was that song? What did it sound like?’ And you dial it instantly on Spotify or Apple Music, and you can call it up instantly. But I still buy. I think, at some point, even though I just did the Chevelle record and it came out, I just bought it.

“And in my contract says I get 20 copies of it for free, I got my 20 copies which I gave out to people, and then I bought another 15 copies because that supports music. So record label is a whole different beast, I couldn’t even imagine what the deal is like on Spotify, all I know is that the royalties on a record are different.

“If the royalty money comes in, then I’m stoked, and if it doesn’t… You don’t make records anyway for the reason you think it’s going to sell any copies, you do it because you want to do it. I had been working with a certain producer doing these records, and there’s this thing when we were going to do…

“I chose to do Queens of the Stone Age because Josh [Homme] was like, ‘Hey man, I’m trying to get a deal and nobody’s biting, and I’ve got these songs… Do you want to work on this?’ And I’m like, ‘Send me some music.’

“And he sends me a cassette tape and I put it on, and ‘Mexicola’ comes on, and I’m like, ‘I’m in! Let’s just do this. It’s killer.’ And I did it because I knew him and I enjoyed his music. And I could have been making $40,000 dollars working on some other crap that I didn’t enjoy.

“I worked with Josh on this thing coming out of his pocket, pennies on the dollar doing a band that had an identity and a sound. So you never think it’s going to turn into anything, you hope it does.

“But to me, I’d much rather make records for the band. I was always like that, I never picked anything because the money was insane or because I thought it was the thing to do.”