Producer/mixer/engineer Terry Date has built himself an esteemed career and notable roster of working with metal and rock royalty over the years. Among his credits are landmark releases from the likes of: Soundgarden (“Louder Than Love“, “Badmotorfinger“), Pantera (“Cowboys From Hell“, “Vulgar Display Of Power“, Far Beyond Driven“, “The Great Southern Trendkill“), White Zombie (“Astro Creep: 2000 – Songs Of Love, Destruction And Other Synthetic Delusions Of The Electric Head“), Limp Bizkit (“Significant Other“, “Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water“) and numerous others.
Also notable among his discography is his work with the Deftones on some of their most iconic albums, including “Adrenaline“, “Around The Fur“, “White Pony“, “Deftones“, the ill-fated “Eros” and the band’s forthcoming album “Ohms“.
Everythingrecording.com recently caught up with Date to discuss his life behind the boards, which finds him sharing stories of working with Slayer, Pantera and more. He also discussed the contrast of working with Deftones now as opposed to their younger days.
Speaking of how Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter‘s sonic pursuits have seem him working with a 9-string guitar on “Ohms“, he commented:
“The hardest thing to do on this record was managing the low end. Where do you go? And Sergio plays, you know, because of Stephen’s extreme low end, he’ll creep toward the mid-range a lot more – which creates some problems with “who’s going to take the spotlight here? Who’s going to stick out? Where does everybody fit in?
This was the first time I’ve worked with Sergio – I’ve known him a long time but it’s the first time I’ve made a record with him. So it was different than with Chi [Cheng] because he’d play with his fingers. He’d sit down below everybody basically. He would just “do what he does”. With Sergio… Sergio’s a much more active bass player.”
When asked if he felt “Ohms” will be his new favorite Deftones record, he offered:
“Well, you know this from doing this for so long, after hearing a record so many times in a row, it takes me ten years to actually like a record again. I have to get so far away from it to appreciate it. I’m just now starting to like Pantera records! And that’s overdramatizing, of course. But the immediacy of the dirty laundry is so apparent when something is new like that.
So I can’t judge anything right now. ‘White Pony‘ is still my favorite just because of ‘Digital Bath‘ and because I reference myself to those drums at the beginning of that song, that drum sound. I think that was my favorite drum sound that I got with the exception of the two hits at the beginning of ‘Around The Fur‘ album. Yeah. My favorite entrance to any record I’ve ever done was that right there – just like, ‘Here we go.'”
When asked about any records from his career that he worked on which he felt should have been bigger, he replied:
“The second Prong record that I did, ‘Rude Awakening‘ (2006), is one of my personal favorites to listen to. I used to always, when I’d walk into a studio to start a record, I would put on that record to start with. It was done right after the White Zombie record, but it had Tommy’s [Victor] just brutally edgy guitar. His guitar sound was so good, but we also had Charlie Clouser doing loops. So it was a really cool combination, I thought.”
For more from Date on working with Slayer and White Zombie and how Nine Inch Nails‘s “The Downward Spiral” influenced Pantera, among other topics, head to Everythingrecording.com.
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