I feel that one important factor for shitty recordings is to actually mic things. This does not mean that miking things will make it sound crappy so the logic doesn’t work both ways. What it does mean is lined instruments and especially software instruments sound too pretty and too isolated. My biggest gripe with amp sims is just that, that they sound too pretty and almost always way too isolated. Amps don’t sound like that. Sure, they’re getting closer with Eleven and it’s breakup feature, as well as Softube with their in my opinion more realistic not so hi-fi sound, but truth to be told miking an amp is something different. Software instruments are worse, so if you have the possibility, run the softsynth through an amp and mic it instead to give it a touch of the vibrating cone tone.

If you don’t have an amp you can still record really ugly guitars. Ohm Force Ohmicide is my go to choice for this. You can get straight Burzum ‘Filosofem’ sound with a few turns of the knobs and an ultra distortion on the higher frequencies. Two instances of Sansamp one after the other works well too. Speaking of digital, don’t be afraid to use a 12 bit sampler or something like that - bit crushing if fun.

I mic my monitors as well (or actually my $50 Hercules computer speakers), not in the traditional way, but in the way that I’ll just leave them on when I record. It usually results in some bleed, especially if I happen to record with a condenser, but that’s OK. I generally leave in noise that happens to turn up when I record as well, like if I’m opening the fridge when reamping or something like that. There are of course exceptions, if the songs intent is to project a medieval theme I can’t have a cell ringing in the background, but other than that I’m usually fine with unexpected noise. Hell, one of my favorite blues songs ever is a field recording with Son House. A bit into the song you can actually hear a train passing by! And I mean loud and clear!

Microphones is an important topic in recording. I won’t say a good mic isn’t a good mic, and that the mic choice doesn’t matter because I think it does, but for shit I think it’s one of the least interesting parts. Take whatever you have lying around, 57’s, 58’s, Neumann, Røde, who-cares, or do like some shit advocates do and get the cheapest worst mic you can find. Personally I almost always use a 57 for these type of things or whatever I happen to have set up at the moment.

Analog gear is of course desirable because of the resistance they can induce, but don’t turn into a snob, that has nothing to do with shit. If you don’t have the analog stuff, don’t sweat it, there are noisy and sweet plug-ins you can use to mix with. Favorites of mine are previously mentioned Ohmicide, Ohmboyz (which can be shitty and fairly pretty, it’s a matter of dialing), Sonalksis TBK 3 Über Compressor (a newly rediscovered bad boy). You might also want to try Sansamp, Lo-fi and amp sims for other things than amp simulation. Some of Masseys plug-ins can be of interest as well. The gritty nature of some of them (Tapehead and TD5 for instance) can make them sweet for shitty stuff. If you don’t have neither hardware nor plug-ins don’t worry, you don’t want to mix too much anyway it will just end up sounding too pretty.

If you still want to do some mixing you could try having a room mic, compress the crap out of it and even throw a distortion unit in there and blend it with the rest. I do this all the time for drums, makes them sound huge and brutal. Other things you could do is side-chain in noise or print flanging tape effects to the tracks. If you don’t have a tape machine to do it, try a plug-in. I once recorded a track with tons of guitar overdubs. After every two I printed them with VirSyn VTAPE Saturator to a new stereo tracks set to fairly lo-fi settings. It ended up sounding really old school viking metal and ugly.

These kinds of recordings are of course not for everyone. But to me, blues, edgy rock, punk, rockabilly and it’s various forms, many forms of metal and especially black metal gains nothing from high quality recordings. In fact, I would say that a lot of the noise on many of the albums from these genres makes the overall impression better. To me, these styles shouldn’t be pretty. The songs aren’t pretty - why should the production be?