God Complex
Created Sick
Listen
Engineering, Mix & Master catered to by George Lever and Erik Bickerstaffe
Prelude
Every once in a while as a musician you come across music that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up – music that screams at you and stops you where you are, holding your attention until the song is over and you’re back in the room.
This is as accurate a description I can give for my experience when being introduced to God Complex.
Unrelenting, pure, aggression.
The makeup of this record is a very different way of working but one that created a result that is truly the sum of all its parts.
As always, the juicy details are down below.
Coffee, please!
Gear Used
Drums
Kit setup;
Kick – Tama Starclassic Bubinga – 22×16
Toms – Guru drums In-Tense Walnut – 14×14 & 16×16
Snare – Pearl Reference Brass – 14×6.5
Cymbals – all Sabian – (L-R from players perspective):
22″ Legacy Heavy Ride
20″ AA Raw Bell Crash
14″ AA Regular Hats
13″ AAX Fusion Hats
19″ Vault Saturation Crash (Vigil Donati signature)
19″ AAX X-treme China
Mic Selection;
Kick in – Oktava mk012 modded
Kick in 2 – AKG d112
Snare top – Shure Beta57
Snare top 2 – AKG C414 buls
Snare Bottom – Shure KSM32
Toms – MD421
Spot mics – SE4 & Oktava MK012
Overheads – AKG C414
Room Close – AEA R88
Room Far – AKG C414 (omni)
Mixing & Mastering
Erik Bickerstaffe and I catered to the mix once we got back to G1 HQ after the drum session.
Erik let me get to work on a drum mix that best conveyed the energy that James put into the session, we then started to look at the songs as a whole and tweaked the levels until everything started to become more cohesive.
In all honesty, this session was one of those off the cuff experiences where everything came together in unison. This happens as a result of careful consideration during Erik’s tracking stage and then approaching the drum tracking to ensure that it didn’t ‘sit’ oddly with the other elements when in its raw state. The most interesting part (for me) and most different was that we chose to mix into a mix bus compressor in parallel. This thing was going at it, maybe 8-11db of gain reduction.
Really pulling at everything and adding some juice to the mixture to push the energy as much as possible. Super aggressive.

Testimonial
God Complex
As soon as we had heard some of Georges work, we know he was the right person to do the EP with.
We were thrilled to have had the chance to record in which a world-class studio with him and found him to be extraordinarily knowledgeable and professional!
Lastly…
This record… was mental. A huge story and a rollercoaster built into one adventure.
Heres to the future… and EP 2?
G1.