The Mars Volta - Drunkship of Lanterns (Dynamic Edit)

This is what I like to call a ‘dynamic edit’ of “Drunkship of Lanterns” by The Mars Volta! De-Loused in the Comatorium faced a TON of dynamic range compression in its final release, resulting in a rather fatiguing listen. My edits here are meant to rectify that, presenting the album as close as I can to what it sounded like before such compression!
For those not in the know, the Loudness War is a phenomenon beginning in the mid-90s onward, in which music was mastered louder and louder, with the underlying reasoning being that louder music sells better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts the same loudness; not to confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to make a signal louder than maximum loudness) were used to make music as loud as possible.
The issue with this is that overuse of dynamic range compression and clipping can make music fatiguing to listen to, and sometimes even audibly distorted. Clipping or poor compressors specifically can introduce audible artifacts such hiss or crackle into the mix. Vlado Meller, the mastering engineer for this album, is rather infamous for often clipping the recordings he works with, but in this case, he seems to have avoided it (though the album is still mastered monstrously loud). I did notice a bit of audible distortion at the tail end of “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt”, but I believe that’s the result of Meller pushing the limits of the compression limiter, rather than him outright clipping the signal.
I have attempted to fix up the mastering compression of the album with a program I have called “Perfect Declipper” (creating something I dub a “dynamic edit”). This editing process makes the album more dynamic and can also eliminate artifacts of crackle and hiss throughout the record. In this case, I was able to turn the dynamic range of the album from 5 into 12! I also edited when “Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)” and “Cicatriz ESP” begin and when “Inertiatic ESP” and “Eriatarka” end to make them sound more natural.
“Drunkship of Lanterns” and “Eriatarka” specifically face what sounds like a level of clipping distortion on the left side of their releases at 5:24 and 3:09, respectively, I believe caused from either the recording or mixing stages of the album. I believe such distortion was caused in recording or mixing mainly because my initial editing of the album did not fix such distortion. (I did attempt to fix up these sections with further edits, however.)
On “Drunkship of Lanterns”, the guitar that appears to be clipping does so for only a few seconds before ducking to a quieter loudness that does not seem to face that distortion. Perhaps this could be an intentional mixing decision, or perhaps it’s the result of an audio engineer scrambling to reduce the gain during recording, noticing that the guitar was clipping. Either way, I believe these bits of distortion would be present on any release of the album, including vinyl releases, as they (seemed to) occur before mastering.
It’s important to note that the dynamics are not being restored with the “Perfect Declipper” program that I use, but rather, they are being approximated. While one may not be able to “declip” an album as one would be unable to “unbake a cake”, I find the results here to be a convincible attempt at doing so. Only in the most extreme examples have I heard the program produce odd artifacts that would appear unintended in the album’s mix. I think it’s also important to note that dynamic range compression is not an inherently bad thing. It can tighten up performances, add grit, and help remove dynamic outliers that would take you out of the mix.