You started on piano at age five and later shifted to drums. What sparked your interest in recording and ultimately drove you toward a career in the studio rather than in a band?
I started playing in a band and playing with people as much as I could as soon as I started playing drums. I jammed a lot with different people and played with the genius Gustav Estjes, who formed his band Dungen around the same time. Both he and my own band were very interested in recording at home – and this was way before DAWs and laptops. I got obsessed with how drums could sound through mics and spent all my free time (and skipped a lot of school too) tuning and recording drums… and in my late teens I had already decided that this would be my life.

You’ve said that you’ve never been much into songwriting but always found it fascinating to record other people’s music and make it the absolute best it can be. What fascinates you in this process and what do you think you bring to the table?
I’m obsessed with sounds, arrangements and melodies. I have very little interest in coming up with the idea for a song, but if there is a basic idea to work with, there’s a lot that I can do. I love to help bring out the potential in a piece of music. It fascinates me that we’re able to do so much with the limited range of rhythmic patterns, notes and frequencies that we have. I think me being a multi-instrumentalist who isn’t the one actually performing gives me a unique perspective and I think that’s one of the reasons people want to work with me on many different parts of a production.

Picking up on that—having a job that is also your passion, what is that like?
Life-consuming. It’s all I think about all day long and has been for as long as I can remember.

You’ve recently worked on projects with Devin Townsend. What was your role and what was that experience like?
Before the “Powernerd” album, we had only met briefly. But he flew me out to Canada for the drum recording and it worked out great, the album turned out awesome and it was such a good time. We were in the lovely Armoury Studios with a total dream team; Devin, me, monster drummer Darby Todd, multi-dude Ben Searles, drum tech Flavio and the studio’s wonderful staff. Only a few months later, Devin and Ben came to me at my studio in Gothenburg for me to record drums and bass for his upcoming masterpiece “The Moth,” this time with the addition of bass player James Leach and the great mix engineer Chris Edrich. Again, a great session and a great time.

For both of these albums, I was in the team to craft the drum sounds that went with Devin’s vision and Darby’s playing, as well as running the session, doing the edits and making sure the result was the best possible. Working with Devin is truly amazing, he’s got ears for details and ideas on a level that is just ridiculous. At the same time, both sessions were some of the most fun and enjoyable times I’ve ever had in a studio. There are videos from the sessions on Devin’s YouTube channel that may or may not include funny hats, ridiculous humor and badass music.

You also split a lot of your time between Sweden and the US, particularly New Orleans, for projects. Why and how has New Orleans become a second home to you?
New Orleans started becoming my second home a decade ago when I produced an album there and that relationship has grown more and more each year. The music, the food and the culture all speak to me on a deep level, but nowadays I also have some of my best friends over there. I’ve done a lot of sessions in New Orleans, not only with native artists like the metal band Cane Hill, but also with other US artists coming down there to work with me. But I also work in other parts of the US and have done a lot of work in Chicago, LA and Portland.

Today, working on a record often means juggling the entire spectrum of roles – engineering, producing and mixing, sometimes even mastering the finished product. Is handling all these roles something you enjoy, or do you prefer one over any other?
I do all of it, but if I had to choose, the recording and production is the heart of the music and is what speaks to me the most. Arrangements, drum tones, instruments, building the song up from nothing, shaping the performances and making the song what it is. That was definitely my first love in music production and is still the biggest one.

Is there a signature “Jakob thing” that you find yourself doing in every mix or project?
Haha! One of my colleagues keeps saying “there’s that unmistakable Jakob snare sound!” and I still don’t know exactly what it is. If you ask Devin, I guess my signature thing is being given a bunch of silly nicknames, but that’s not really heard in the music. I think.

What do you wish more bands understood or did before stepping into a studio to record an album?
That gear is nothing compared to knowledge. And that aggressiveness comes from the performances, not the tones.

In a mix or a recording session, how much time do you allow yourself to truly experiment? How important is that to you?
If I’m producing, a lot of that happens when tracking. But if I’m just mixing, I’ll give myself some freedom to try things out. But just as often, I have an idea in my head for a sound and I have to spend time figuring out how to get there.

OK, you’re about to start mixing a record. You open up the session. What’s the first thing you do? Walk us through the process of getting a mix underway and how you pick up from there.
If I didn’t record it, I like to listen a bit to the tracks to get acquainted with what I have in front of me. After I know what I want, I always start shaping drum tones and just let things flow naturally from there. A lot of back and forth to make things gel, but once guitars and drums are a bit locked in, I just let things unfold. I don’t use templates when I mix, so it’s sometimes a very intuitive process.

Name one metal album and one non-metal album that you didn’t work on but that you think sound absolutely perfect in every sense.
Oh, man. There are so many. Opeth’s Ghost Reveries or Watershed will have to be on that list, but so does Metallica’s Black Album, which is still the pinnacle of metal mixing. Non-metal? Abbey Road by the Beatles. No question. I even have that album cover tattooed on my arm!

Which part of an album project do you enjoy the most? Is it tracking the bare bones—drums, guitar, bass, vocals—or is it when all of that is done and the embellishment phase kicks in?
Drums! And then bass, after drums and guitars are there. It’s just so damn satisfying to lock in the sounds in those early stages of a production and everyone there feels like “yep, this is gonna be awesome.”

Walk us through a regular day “in the life of Jakob Herrmann”!
I wake up. I practice some pool—I finally got a pool table for my apartment—and then I go to work and work way too many hours before I go home and sleep. It sounds boring, I know, but that’s a typical day. But a typical day can also be waking up in New Orleans or somewhere else in the world and having a day of unexpected encounters and adventure happen. So I guess my life is very dual in that way.

What’s next on your schedule?
Me and my engineer Jonas Ekdahl have a bunch of mix jobs to finish up. Then I have some small sessions before going to the US again for a vocal recording as well as the NAMM show and to give a masterclass at MI. Most likely I’ll combine it with some more sessions and another project I can’t talk about just yet…

Metal Songwriter EZmix Pack

Duality I EZX

Duality II EZX

Big Stage EZX