Dead On: The Quest for the Perfect SCHMACK

“It’s gotta have that SCHMACK! Hit you in the back of your head and really wake you up” laughs Hank Berggren. We sat down with the frontman of Stockholm’s ferociously danceable rock unit Diskopunk to discuss the perfect drum sound.

Watch our conversation below:

”Dead. Completely dead, no sustain whatsoever. SCHMACK! It cuts through the mix, and then gets out of the way. That way it leaves room for the other stuff in the mix”.

Hank uses a hybrid setup to craft the band’s hard-hitting drum tones. Live performances are recorded in their own studio, while demoing is a breeze with Addictive Drums 2 and the ADpak ”Vintage Dead”. The kit was captured by the XLN team in painstaking detail inside an anechoic dead box, custom-built inside the live room at renowned Ingrid Studios, just a few blocks from Diskopunk’s own studio. And a lot of times, the drums from the demo sound so right that there is no need to replace them with a live studio take.

Hank’s perfect dead drum tone comes from dampening the heads with towels, napkins, and custom dampening pads and felt pieces. Recording in a dampened room with padded walls that absorb reflections creates a super tight, claustrophobic, in-your-face sound that hits harder.

”Vintage Dead sounds just how I like my drums, and it sure is easier than rigging and micing our live kit for 40 minutes to try an idea. Vintage Dead is just there, ready to go.”

In fact, in minutes Hank recreated the drum tones from their latest single, using the preset “Hard & Icky”.

Watch the insane video for Diskopunk’s “Step it up”:

Follow Diskopunk: https://www.instagram.com/diskopunkofficial/