Adam "Nolly" Getgood Interview - Heaviness in Metal Music

Adam "Nolly" Getgood reads heaviness literally. For him, it is the sound of massive things in motion. The former Periphery bassist and longtime producer traces the lineage back to Tchaikovsky's *1812 Overture*, with its distorted strings, cannons, and volume that dwarfs the listener, and forward to Meshuggah's mechanically synchronised riffs, where every transient lands in phase across kick, bass, and guitar. That stomping, machine-precise weight is the primary form of heaviness in contemporary metal, and digital production is the tool that makes it deliverable. Getgood recognises lo-fi black metal as a different kind of heaviness, emotional and atmospheric, evoked through harshness rather than density, but it is not the full-spectrum physical impact he chases. 00:00 Earliest musical influences and classical-music roots (Beatles, Chuck Berry, Beethoven's Fifth) 01:50 Massive things, machinery, and animal sounds as the heart of heaviness 05:00 Mechanical, industrial heaviness and phase-aligned attacks 09:00 Production versus performance: respecting what the band actually played 12:30 Mix qualities for heaviness: tightness, low-end clarity, frequency space 15:30 Lo-fi versus hi-fi heaviness, with black metal as a different aesthetic 21:00 Overproduction, over-quantisation, and the loss of human feel 28:00 Wrap-up and handoff to the mix walkthrough About the project This video is part of the Heaviness in Metal Music Production (HiMMP) research project at the University of Huddersfield. Eight metal producers, Jens Bogren, Mike Exeter, Adam "Nolly" Getgood, Josh Middleton, Fredrik Nordström, Buster Odeholm, Dave Otero, and Andrew Scheps, each mixed the same five-minute song and were interviewed about what heaviness means to them. The interviews and mix walkthroughs are on this channel; the full research is in Heaviness in Metal Music Production, Volumes I and II (Routledge). Principal investigators: Dr Jan Herbst and Dr Mark Mynett, University of Huddersfield. Funded by the AHRC (grant AH/T010991/1). Research findings, supplementary material, and the In Solitude multitrack: https://himmp.net Subscribe for more producer interviews and mix walkthroughs. #HiMMP #MetalProduction #HeavyMetal