It felt funny seeing the name again on a CD, but this Exodus is not the ’80′s thrash metal band that I had produced and engineered many albums for. This Exodus, is the student band from Archbishop Mitty High School in San jose, California. Super talented high school musicians and vocalists who put together a fantastic collection of popular music.

The band puts out an album annually and I’ve helped out with mixing for several years now. This year we shared the mixing task between BZ Lewis, Johnny Lima, Steve Savage and myself.

I’m not sure what it is with me and bands called Exodus but no matter what, always the promise of great music no matter what the genre!

I almost always have some kind of multi-band compressor in my mastering singnal path. Lots of control and the ability to get lots of, or, transparency of, compression. Often I have no choice but to go with plugins in this kind of work when it’s done outside my studio. But for the Retribution soundtrack I brought in an old standby. A TC M5oo with the tri-band mastering option. I’ve had it for years and it still sounds hands down better than any plugin I’ve tried so far. (I’ve tried a bunch too…)

TC M5000

So yes,hardware still rules!

But I quickly recalled how great the Killzone 2 sounded when the illustrious Tammy T. forwarded this article on a soundtrack possibility for the game. I did the in-game mastering for KZ2 in the Fall and it was a real treat to be a part of the project. First hand word: it sounds absolutely fantastic! Nice to have it coming out soon…

So it appears to me that the music business is healthy and doing well for musicians in more ways than ever. It may be true however, that the music business is not as healthy as it once was for the music business.