Inside Track: Judas Priest

Photo: Jamie Huntley

When the opportunity came to work with his childhood heroes Judas Priest, Andy Sneap didn’t just engineer and produce — he also mixed, mastered, and became the band’s touring guitarist.

Andy Sneap is one of the leading producers and musicians in the metal genre. In a career spanning more than 35 years he has been involved in the making of over 100 albums, by bands like Megadeth, Dream Theater, Hell, Kreator, Opeth, Killswitch Engage, Saxon, Testament, Exodus, Overkill, and countless others. Even so, when he was asked to work with Judas Priest, it was a childhood dream come true. “I got into metal when I was 11‑12 years old. I had Judas Priest posters on my bedroom wall! They were one of the big metal bands in the world and I loved them!”

Sneap engineered, mixed, mastered and produced Judas Priest’s Firepower (2018) and this year’s Invincible Shield. “In 2016, Mille [Miland Petrozza] of the band Kreator suggested to [guitarist] Glenn Tipton that I produce their next album, and after some discussions, the band asked me to produce it with Tom Allom, who had produced almost all the band’s classic ’80s albums. We had a really good time in the studio making Firepower. Then, just three weeks before the US tour started, in March 2018, they asked me if I was willing to step in for Glenn. I wasn’t going to say no, and here I am six years later, still doing that!”

Metal pioneers Judas Priest have been active for more than 50 years.

Bringing It All Together

Firepower was released on March 9th, 2018, and was hailed as one of Judas Priest’s strongest efforts since the ’80s. Just before its release, Tipton revealed that he had Parkinson’s disease and would no longer tour, hence the last‑minute request to Sneap to step in. The Firepower world tour lasted until the Summer of 2019. Work started on Invincible Shield later the same year, but its release was delayed by more than four years due to the pandemic and the band’s 50 Heavy Metal Years anniversary tour, in 2021‑22.

“We started Invincible Shield with writing sessions at Glenn’s place with Rob [Halford, singer] and Richie [Faulkner, guitarist],” Sneap recalls. “So Richie, Glenn, Rob and I were putting the song ideas together. My role was similar as with Firepower. They bounce their ideas off me, and I put the demos together in Pro Tools and make them sound as much as possible like finished songs. I was programming drums using Toontrack’s EZdrummer and Superior Drummer. We ended up with about 12 ideas that we were confident about.

“I remember us in February 2020 talking about Covid. We thought that it would all blow over in a month, and that we’d soon be on the planned tour with Ozzy, and cracking on with recording the album. Of course, everything ground to a halt for a long time. As soon as we could, we got back into a studio for the album recordings. But because of pandemic restrictions, the sessions took place all over the place.

“I went to Nashville, where Richie and Scott [Travis, drummer] live, and we had 10 days to record his drums in a small studio in the area, called The Southern Oracle. After that, Richie laid down his rhythm and lead guitar parts at his home studio, The Falcon’s Nest. He sent me the DI recordings, which I re‑amped at my Backstage Recording studios in Derbyshire.

“I recorded Ian [Hill]’s bass parts in hotels during the 50 Heavy Metal Years tour, and did two vocal sessions with Rob in early 2023 at Premier Studios, Phoenix, Arizona. Glenn’s parts were recorded at his place. I mixed and mastered the album at my studio from August until October 2023. I was doing Accept and Saxon albums at the same time, going between these projects all the time.”

Drum Tracking

“The live room at The Southern Oracle in Nashville has high ceilings and a concrete floor, so it is a lively space. The studio has an SSL XL‑Desk, with 16 500‑series units. With regards to mics, we had a bunch of stuff to try. sE Electronics sent me a couple of drum packs, and I had mics from those on the toms and kick. I had a couple of Crimson Audio‑modded Shure SM57s on the snare, two Shure KSM32s for overheads, and some of the sE mics as spot mics. The room mics were Lauten, who had sent me some of their bigger condensers to try. I had a couple of United 47s in front of the kicks. They’re pretty good 47 [FET] clones.

Scott Travis lays down a drum take at The Southern Oracle.Photo: Jeremiah Scott

“Richie and I were there to track Scott’s drums, because many of the arrangement ideas were Richie’s. As I mentioned, before Covid we had the demos pretty much locked in, with programmed drums. We wanted Scott to put his stamp on it, so it was a case of sitting down with him and working over ideas, especially that Richie had. Scott would spend a day going over a couple of the songs, do his homework, and then we’d come in the next day and he’d bash out the final ideas, usually within three takes.

“Dealing with these recordings during the mixes was fairly straightforward. I added some samples, and then there’s a lot of what I call ‘donkey work’ of cleaning a kit up, particularly the tom mics, so we don’t have spill all over the place. I’m trying to get things to sound tight sonically. With this sort of music, you want to have the clarity in the kit and especially make sure the phase in the overheads is correct. That drives me nuts. As soon as you start filtering overheads, your whole phase can change. Especially if you’ve got a lot of spot mics, like I did, because of the amount of cymbals Scott is using.”

The Down Low

The reason for recording Ian Hill’s bass parts on the road was, says Sneap, “because we’ve got so much downtime when touring. So Richie and I sat down with Ian every afternoon in my hotel room and recorded the bass, using my Pro Tools rig with the UAD Apollo Twin, going straight in. When recording we obviously have to use something for playback that’s not too heavy on the CPU, so we don’t have too much latency, especially when using a native rig. I’ll use something like the SansAmp plug‑in. Later on, back in my studio, I’ll really dial in the tone with the UAD Ampeg B‑15N Bass Amplifier plug‑in, which I love. I’ve used that over and over again on many records, and it always works well with Ian.

“Sometimes I re‑amp the bass, but I didn’t bother on this record. I tried it on Firepower, because I’ve got a decent bass rig back at the studio. But I wasn’t getting anything that I felt gave me a real advantage over the plug‑in. Later on, during the mix I roughened up a few bits with the SansAmp, and compressed the low end with the FabFilter Pro‑MB or Waves C4. I’ll tend to use the C4 before any bass amp sim, so it’s clamping down before it hits the amp, and I then compress it again. I also often use the UAD SSL EQ, boosting around 900Hz‑1kHz with a sharp Q, to get the bass to stick its nose out a little bit. You can trick the ear into thinking that the bass is louder in the mix that way. You get the aggression from the pick attack, but it does not get in the way of the guitar riffs.”

Keeping It Real

Richie Faulkner’s guitar parts were laid down by the lead guitarist himself at his Falcon’s Nest studio. “I think Richie was running a Marshall head into one of those Mesa Boogie Cab Clones, and he was recording DI at the same time. He then sent me the DI, which I re‑amped at my place, because he doesn’t have the same facilities to track guitars.

“I sometimes use amp sim plug‑ins, because some of them sound really good. I’m not a purist about this. I’ve been using Kempers for years, from even before they released them. We used a prototype on Accept’s album Stalingrad [2012] and I was blown away by it. Things like the Kemper, the Quad Cortex, the Neural and STL Tones plug‑ins sound great. I’m not opposed to them at all. All these people who say they can tell the difference, no they can’t. It’s really close these days.”

For Invincible Shield, Sneap preferred to, as he explains, “use real amps going into real speakers, recorded with real microphones, to give us the tones we wanted on the record. I’ve got the original birch‑ply Marshalls from the ’80s loaded with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers. I’m always trying to find good vintage Vintage 30s, because the year they were made makes a difference. I’ve got one or two cabs that I know sound really good. One thing that a lot of people don’t realise is that changing your cab makes easily as big a difference as changing the amp.

“I try and have two very similar setups now for left and right, when I’m doing two guitar tracks, but not exactly the same, because that makes the sound a bit smaller if you’re not careful. If there are any faults within the tone, it just exaggerates it. For the rest, I keep it simple. I used to be a one‑mic guy who finds the sweet spot and places one SM57 there. On the Priest record I had a combination of a 57, an Austrian Audio OC818 and an sE VR2 ribbon on each cab. I found that the mix of those three worked really well. It got rid of the fizz of the 57 and added some extra body and resulted in a better balance.

“It’s still a case of dialling in the sound you want on the amps, and then moving mics by less than an inch trying to get the phase to a sweet spot where the scratch goes out of the speaker — going off centre a little bit with the 57, maybe bang on centre with the 818, and finding a good place phase‑wise for the ribbon mic. I don’t do too much EQ on the way in. Again, I keep it simple. It really is about balancing the mics to a point where they give me what I want in the mids and in terms of being aggressive. I also add a little bit of a room mic in there. Fifteen, 20 years ago, I wasn’t really bothering with room mics on guitars, but I’ve come back to adding a bit of space and air. You can’t really hear it, but you feel it.

Andy Sneap’s Backstage Studios is home to an impressive array of amps and cabs. These were used to re‑amp the guitar parts on Invincible Shield, with a combination of sE, Austrian Audio and Shure mics.

“Richie and I talked all the time while I was re‑amping his parts. We live stream to each other when I’m doing that. I know roughly what he wants, and he trusts me. With Firepower we worked together at Glenn’s, but because of the pandemic and the 50th anniversary tour, we couldn’t do that this time. We constantly went backwards and forwards on this stuff. If he hadn’t been happy with it, we would have found another solution. And at the end we had a couple of days together at my place when we patched bits up we weren’t 100 percent happy with.”

When it came to Glenn Tipton’s contributions, says Sneap, “We did all recordings at his place. We’d work through parts when he’s feeling good, and we then later pieced bits together. He’s got a lot of ideas, so he’ll often work with Richie and explain to him what he’s hearing, and Richie will put these ideas down. There was a lot of this when we were doing demos, and we used bits from these demos for tracks like ‘Vicious Circle’. We also used bits of his rhythm playing on the two songs that came from the Firepower sessions, ‘Sons Of Thunder’ and ‘Giants In The Sky’, that were co‑produced with Tom Allom. I re‑amped these parts to get the right tones. I didn’t play any guitar on the album, so Rich is doing the bulk of the playing. Glenn was more of an overseer and gave us his opinions and his ideas on arrangements and harmonies. He was very present in the creative process.”

Trust Your Ears

In the beginning of 2023, Sneap travelled to Phoenix for 10 days of vocal sessions with Rob Halford. “During these first series of sessions with Rob, we got most of the main vocals down. We were doing a song a day, after which I’d go back to the hotel room to comp what we had. When we came back the next day, we’d work on the song a bit more, and we’d start on the next song. I was careful not to overwork Rob, because obviously, as soon as the top end starts going out of someone’s voice, you’re wasting your time.

“Two months later I went over again, and we did all the backing vocals, and worked on the mid sections to the songs and tried to make them work with the solos that Richie put down. It was quite a long process, but we got there. Rob had harmony ideas, and I’d compile those, and we double‑tracked vocals to make the choruses bigger. I learned from Tom Allom that the Priest vocal trick is to get the minor third harmony, sung an octave below. It gives it the British Steel sound. The second sessions were a lot of putting the fairy dust on. Rob did seven, eight, maybe 10 takes, and then I’d comp them, and I’d try a few different approaches. I’ll always double the choruses so we can spread the vocals to make them sound bigger. I double‑track the harmonies as well, so I can spread them out of the way of the main vocals, making sure they’re still the focal point.

Andy Sneap: I learned from Tom Allom that the Priest vocal trick is to get the minor third harmony, sung an octave below. It gives it the British Steel sound.

“For microphones on Rob, I used the Austrian Audio 818 for this album. On Firepower I had an Advanced Audio C12, but in this case I travelled with the Austrian Audio because it’s not too big, and it ended up beating the mics that we had in the studio. I don’t have to worry about tuning much, Rob is really on the money with that. Also, many plug‑ins, even Melodyne, won’t pitch aggressive, edgy vocals. So you really have to trust your ears. Many singers, when they do the high stuff, have quite a wide vibrato, perhaps covering a whole note. It’s a matter of taste of where you think the centre note is falling.

“When tuning by ear, I’ll turn the volume right down, because if something’s out of pitch a little bit, it’ll be jumping out of the mix. If it’s not jumping out the mix and not catching my ear, it’s fine with me. I also think you don’t have to be pitch perfect on everything. It just has to feel right. I don’t tend to pitch high vocals in any case. They are more about performance and getting it to sit right. Other than that, I may use SynchroArts VocAlign for a big choir or something, to nudge things timing‑wise. Especially with the t’s and the s’s it can get messy.”

Hybrid Mixing

When Sneap started mixing Invincible Shield at his Backstage Studios in August 2023, he still had quite a lot of work to do. “I’ll go through everything in the sessions. I spend a lot of time cleaning the tracks up, and getting rid of anything that I don’t want. I organise the sessions so they’re always the same, starting with the kick at the top. I clear out any tracks that aren’t used. I’ll then have stems that I route through my SSL: kicks, snare, stereo toms, overheads with hats and ride in, and drum reverbs coming up on ‘miscellaneous’. Then I have bass, rhythm guitars, overdubs, lead guitars, vocals, backing vocals, keys and miscellaneous.

“I have an SSL AWS desk with 24 stereo channels, which gives me easily enough for what I want to do. I’ve got probably 16 to 18 stereo stems coming back up the SSL, which gives me a little bit of analogue control. I tend to mix within the box and then bring those stems up, and I can then reach for the SSL desk EQ. Fine‑tuning in analogue adds another five percent. I wouldn’t be upset if I didn’t mix through the SSL, but it’s a better workflow for me. It might be because I came up working on SSLs. Going back through the desk gives me a bit of that old‑school feel of hands‑on approach. I like to see everything in front of me. If I want to push up a guitar at the last moment, I can just grab the fader, and it’s there, rather than scrolling through screens. I also use the SSL automation after Pro Tools.

“My other hardware includes Focusrite interfaces. I have a couple of the old 192 Digidesign interfaces as well that I use as insert points. I’m still running Pro Tools as an HDX rig with the cards. It’s not native, but it works. I’m still on Genelec 1031s and Yamaha NS10s with a sub. Together with the SSL, it’s stuff that I grew up using. I was always on an E Series SSL with NS10s and a sub. I also have some outboard that I tend to use on the way in, and very occasionally in the mix. I’ve got some Neve mic pres, and some old dbx compressors, and some of the AudioScape stuff that I really like, plus old LA‑2As and 1176s, from different makes. They sound great.

“With this album, I tried some of the outboard in the mix, but I wasn’t hearing any advantage, so I ended up using a lot more UAD stuff. The simplicity of recalling in the box also is a consideration these days. I’ll use quite a few plug‑ins in the box. There’ll be lot of the Metric Halo Channel Strip on my drums, which I have been doing for 20‑odd years. I think that’s the best‑sounding non‑SSL SSL plug‑in you can get. The compression is great. The Boz Digital Big Beautiful Door plug‑in is great for overheads. I use that to get the snare out of the overheads a little bit. The UAD stuff is fantastic, as are the FabFilter plug‑ins, and the Korneff stuff.

Andy Sneap: For mastering and compiling I actually use PreSonus Studio One. I love it.

“For mastering and compiling I actually use PreSonus Studio One. I love it. I used to use WaveBurner, which came with Logic, but that got incredibly buggy once Apple took over. Then I started using Studio One because I know the guys at PreSonus. They’ve been great because I’ve suggested stuff to them, little shortcuts and things, and they’ve added them in. So I print a stereo mix in Pro Tools that I then export to the Project part of Studio One. You can basically compile the DDP files and burn your stereo WAVs for vinyl and do all the separate digital tracks as well. It’s well thought‑out.

“I always use the FabFilter Pro‑L 2 limiter for mastering. It’s great. I’ve got a setting in that that I always use that is really transparent. I tend to master quieter now than in the past. During the loudness wars, 10‑15 years ago, we were all pushing things to the limit, but now I think if you’re at about ‑8 LUFS with rock music, you’re in a safe space, where you have enough energy, but you’re not crushing things, you’re not losing the dynamics. When we were mastering to tape back in the day, it gave us an extra push on the final mix and a bit of glue. If you’re careful with your limiting today, you can do the same thing. You want the snare to sit back that fraction and make sure it’s feeling like everything’s sitting together.”