First of all... Nice job on the recordings in general.
I have only listened through on my headphones so I can't make much in the way of EQ comments until I have heard them on my monitors. I'll try to have a listen through them tomorrow and get back to you. I only have time to make comments on one song right now.
All Right now:
Guitars... Gotta sort them out mate. I'm kind of struggling to hear exactly what you have on the guitars here since i'm only listening through headphones so I could be way off the mark, but regardless... That riff is legendary so it absolutely
has to be killer. I guess it was DI'd so you're going to need to do some major EQ'ing and playing around to get a nice sound in my opinion. The biggest issue is that they are too 'mono' sounding. I know a guitar is a mono instrument etc. but you will rarely, if at all, find a single guitar on it's own panned straight up the middle on a commercial record. Did you use anything to spread it all? If so it needs to be spread more in my opinion. I can hear that there are two guitars there, though i'm finding it difficult to place them in the stereo field through my headphones. The best option would be to double (both of the guitars) or even quad them (record the same thing twice or four times) and then pan them hard left and right to make them sound a lot wider. So you would probably end up with 4 or more tracks of guitars. However you don't have the option of re-recording so you're going to need to double it digitaly.
Pan the guitar to the left and add a stereo delay of about 15-30ms (maybe more just play around). pan the return to the right so that you essentially have a second copy of the guitar playing a few milliseconds later than the original guitar which is panned to the left. Experiment with the ms range until you find something that sounds nice and wide but not too artificial.
Alternatively if you don't have a stereo tap delay just make a digital copy of the guitar track. Pan one left, one right and offset one of them by 15-30 ms manually.
If the guitars still arent 'large' enough then you can quad them up in the same manner. Perhaps try a different EQ for the 'mirrored' guitar to seperate them some more. Also if you have a plugin which can detune an instrument. Try detuning one of the guitars by maybe 6 cents. The idea is to immitate true double-tracking, which is what those guitars need. Keep the lead solo straight down the middle though in mono. But it could really do with some space. Feed it through a stereo reverb with a relatively long pre-delay so that it sounds 'spacious' yet still up front. Hell maybe even try the stereo reverb on the guitar riff also, might widen it out some more. Just don't put too much on, it needs to be gritty sounding not wishy washy.
As for EQ on the guitar... again its hard to tell on headphones but you probably need to roll off some low end rumble. Try Rolling off anything below around 70-80hz. It might need a touch of energy in the upper mid's (thought maybe not after you have rolled off the low end) to make it hit you harder so look for a frequency to boost slightly in the 2.5-4khz range with a narrow Q. No more than 2-3db probably. Low mids... Yuk. Typical of a DI'd guitar. Search around 350-400 for something to cut quite drastically. Hopefully a nice wide Q of around 1.0 should be right. When you have got rid of the nasty low-mids you will probably be able to push up the whole guitar without it interfering with everything else. It should sound much more lively.
Okay, bass needs some more compression. Needs to be tighter. I would try really blasting it at something like 7:1 - 9:1, go for a max of -13db gain reduction then push up the makeup volume to get it thumping. Don't set the attack time too fast because with that crazy amount of compression you are going to need to let the transients through or it will sound dead. Start with say 10ms and go up if there isn't enough punch. Bare in mind however that this will depend greatly on the quality of your compressor. A crappy compressor will likely sound pretty awful at these more extreme settings. If you cant get a nice pump no matter what attack time you use then perhaps even try a limiter combined with some more subtle compression.
Hmmm it's actually kind of difficult to 'tell' you what to do as normally I would be trying a thousand different things until it just sounds 'right'. Still maybe this will give you somewhere to start.
Anyway, vocals. I actually think you have the reverb set up okay here. It's subtle so that you can hardly hear it but it still manages to add some space. It definately needs something else though. Try a very small delay. In the range of maybe 20-50 ms. Take the 'dry' signal out of the delay and just 'add' the delayed signal to the original. As you begin to turn up the delayed track you should hear the vocal get thicker. Keep turning it up until you can actually hear the delay itself, and then back it off some so that it isn't noticable. Hopefully it should be enough to just thicken it somewhat. Lead vocals are always being mixed with very little in the way of reverb these days. It's a fashion thing. It's all delays and exciters instead. If you wanted to go for a more authentic sound then I would suggest a touch more reverb. If you want it to sound more 'modern' then stick with what you have and play with delays etc...
Backing vocals. Hmmm could do with some panning in my opinion. Again these would have been better double tracked or even quadded. Most commercial pop records have something stupid like 16 tracks of backing vocals on the chorus. Maybe play around with the fake doubling I described for the guitars. Fake doubling is never going to sound as good as true doubling played/sang by a good tight musician/singer. To my ears fake doubling almost always sounds a little too artifical but you might be able to get away with it. They could do with some more drastic EQ'ing also. They need to be seperated from the lead vocal more than that already are. Hopefully the panning and doubling should be enough, if not then maybe cut a little at 4khz to push them back in to the mix some more.
Drums, personally I would compress them a bit harder to get them more in your face. They sound a tiny bit lifeless as they are. You just need to play around.
I think the biggest single issue is the too 'mono' sounding main guitar riff. I think if you spread that out nicely it should make some mroe space down the middle for the Kick/snare and bass to sit better. Get that sorted and it will be a massive improvement. Everything else is just gravy.
EDIT: Actually if you wanted to send me the guitar tracks to 'All Right now' I would happily play around with a quick double/quad, send it back to you so that you can have a listen and then tell you exactly what I did. Obviously I wont go mixing the whole track for you though. It's your dissertation afterall!
If you do want to then upload the guitar tracks completely dry and just as mp3's or something. We wont worry about sound quality since it would only be an example.
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