You won't recognise his face, and you may not even know his name, but should you ever bump into Andy Wallace, you might want to give him a hug and thank him for changing your life. Because if you're a fan of rock music, your record collection (or streaming playlists) would be infinitely poorer if stripped of the albums that the New Jersey-born producer, engineer and mixer has worked on.
Examples? Reign In Blood. Nevermind. Rage Against The Machine. Meantime. ...And Out Come The Wolves. Roots. Hybrid Theory. Puzzle. Relationship of Command. Prequelle. Grey Britain. Basically, we're talking about some of the greatest, most influential, timeless albums in the history of rock, and Wallace's fingerprints are all over them.
It was Wallace's engineering and mixing work on Slayer's thrash metal masterpiece Reign In Blood which truly kickstarted his career as one of the most in-demand and respected recording studio technicians in the world. And, as he admits in a wide-ranging and fascinating new interview conducted with YouTube personality Rick Beato, even before he began mixing the Rick Rubin-produced album, Wallace was aware that the LA band's 1986 record was a game-changing piece of art.
