Marilyn Manson bassist Tim Skold is producing the band’s new album, its first studio release since The Golden Age of Grotesque in 2003, in various private studios. Skold admires Metric Halo’s ChannelStrip plug-in bundle for operating simply and efficiently. “I don’t think I have a single session where I don’t have ChannelStrip up,” he says. Skold has been using Metric Halo’s integrated EQ, compressor and gate for nearly a decade. “It does what it does well—that is why I like it. It’s a lifesaver.
“Marilyn Manson is a unique situation and a unique band,” Skold says. “It’s hard to say upfront how and where things are getting done, because it’s very liquid and always subject to change, but this keeps it exciting. Because of the mayhem, it’s really important that I have ChannelStrip to rely on and to bail me out. I want control of the sound, and that’s what ChannelStrip gives me.”
“I try to be good about what I record, so I use it as a backup,” Skold continues. “I try not to slap a plug-in on everything unless I really need it. Maybe that’s just from having been around computers a long time. I still think about conserving horsepower.”
ChannelStrip has become a useful tool within the band’s workflow, Skold says, and has also led to some fruitful experimentation. “One of my favorite features is that I can pop it on a track and pass it to one of the other guys in the band, and they can doodle around, sometimes without necessarily knowing much about what EQ is and what it does. Even just messing around with the pretty colors will at times make for some really creative settings. Taking that misappropriation of EQ even further, I’ll use those ‘crayon’ presets and slap them on random other things as an experiment. You can get some really great stuff from doing things the so-called wrong way.”
For more information, visit Metric Halo at www.mhlabs.com and Marilyn Manson at www.MarilynManson.com.
