Released back on February 6th, 2026, via Make Your Era, “Fighting For Freedom” HL and Elvii combine a vocal-led approach with direct, club-focused drum and bass production. The track sits between mainline drive and jump-up edge, pairing rolling low-end oooomf with a badass topline that anchors the whole record.
With Elvii’s vocal written from personal frustration and creative tension, the production leaves space for the message to land while still delivering the kind of impact built for large systems.
In this breakdown, HL walks through the core tools behind the record, from sculpting the drop basses in Serum to modulating vocal chops with ShaperBox and shaping distortion across multiple frequency bands in Trash 2. The focus remains practical: building strong, sound design foundations, using modulation deliberately, and choosing plugins that serve the idea rather than overcomplicating it.
Below is the full artist-submitted feature, breaking down the tools they used in their own words.
Serum
Serum is one of the most popular and powerful software synthesizer plugins used in modern music production, created by Xfer Records (developed by Steve Duda). It’s available as a plugin format (VST, AU, AAX) that you load into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to design and play sounds digitally.
In Fighting For Freedom, I have used Serum to make the basses in the drop as well as the build-up. The presets I have used in the drop, I have either made myself or deconstructed from Splice into my own preset. These presets include two Womp Basses, the main lead, a thick sub bass, a pulse bass, the Frog Noise second bass, and a Reese bass.
Serum is a key tool in my creative process, and I would recommend it to any producer starting out in drum and bass because it is the industry standard in dance music, and there is so much content online in terms of learning how to use it as well as preset packs you can learn from.
ShaperBox
ShaperBox is a multi-effect plugin made by Cableguys that lets you draw how an effect changes over time.
Instead of turning knobs and hoping for the best, you literally sketch curves that control things like volume, filters, distortion, time, and more — synced perfectly to your track.
Think of it as LFOs on steroids, but super visual and musical. In Fighting For Freedom, I use the plug-in to modulate the volume and panning on the vocal on the drop. On the drop part of Elvii’s vocal is looped at the rate of an eighth note. This plugin is very powerful and can be used in an infinite amount of creative ways, so I would highly recommend it.
Trash 2
iZotope Trash 2 is a professional audio distortion and sound-design plugin used in music production and sound engineering to add gritty character, creative distortion, and unique sonic shaping to audio signals.
This plugin is my favourite distortion plugin because of the amount of options it has to adapt to the sound you route to it. I mainly used it for the bass in Fighting For Freedom, making use of the multiband function.
For example, for the main lead and brass stabs, I added a subtle tube saturation to 100hz and below, an amp distortion from 100hz to about 4khz, and then a crunchy fizz to the high end. I would highly recommend this plug-in to any producer, as it could be used on anything and everything (within reason, ha-ha)
Valhalla Supermassive
Valhalla Supermassive is a free audio effect plugin made by Valhalla DSP that’s designed to create huge, atmospheric reverbs and delays — from subtle echoes to epic, other-worldly soundscapes.
I used Supermassive for the vocals and some of the basses in Fighting For Freedom. For the vocals, I use my two favourite presets which are: Skinny 1/8 notes, and Reverb 2000. Skinny 1/8 notes give a subtle delay that adds a bit of depth to the vocal in parts its less busy. Reverb 2000 is a really nice reverb that is not too much that it drowns the vocal, but is just enough to add that bit of sparkle to the top end.
I also use Supermassive on the main lead with a preset called pulsar. This adds reverb and delay to the main lead to turn it into a sort of arpeggiator in some points in the track. I have automated this to add variation throughout the track.
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Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
