Finally…
LieLowTheWantedMan Elliott Smith- Alameda
Shortest song of the round and, frankly, one of my least favorites too. It's sitting on the line between wouldn't listen to it again if other options were available and add to my 'check out' list. Let me explain… It feels like solid background music. He's got a nice voice, but its hardly gripping. Musically its nice, better than most in fact, but still hardly gripping. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's a boring song, but it doesn't quite get me going like a lot of the other sends this round. One thing that it has going for it is that it has relatively high lows (no single aspect about this song deserves serious critique when looked at independently). Unfortunately the highs are also relatively low. It's one of my most played songs from this round, after I got the initial careful listens out of the way, because it's great study music. Not music to study, or even listen to carefully, but music to study (or do almost anything else) with. I reward you 5.5 points.
bl5150 The Magnificent- Bullets
A lot of the things that I just said about LieLow's send could be repeated here, only I like this one a little bit less. Vanishing Point felt like generic progressive metal, and this one feels like very generic AOR. Journey comes to mind, in terms of comparisons. Great vocalist, but relatively uninteresting musically. In fact, one of my favorite contemporary vocalists. Still, this is what I imagine Circus Maximus would sound like if you took away everything that makes it interesting. The guitar solo is alright, but nothing to get excited about. The lyrics are a little cheesy for my tastes. And the chorus, while very hooky, is repeated to death. Still it's a song that I consider good whilst listening to it, it's just not something I find myself drawn back to. Thus, I reward you with 5 points.
Adace Summoning- Flammifer
I wish, for your sake, that If These Trees Could Talk hadn't been on my banned artists list, so that you could have come away with higher results. This second choice didn't do much of anything for me, I'm sorry to say. In fact, apart from the flutes (don't know for sure if those were programmed), I don't have many positive things to say about this song. It really comes down to my most common issue when trying to find new black metal bands to listen to: production. Nearly all of it sounds like it was recorded using the Photo Booth app on my computer, and this does too. The drums sound programmed, the vocals sound distant, the synth work sounds fraudulent at best. I personally like really atmospheric black metal (Agalloch comes to mind, although they aren't strictly speaking black metal), and part of that atmosphere comes in the production. And that's what's holding this one back. I reward you with 4 points.
Lucien Shostakovich- Symphony No. 5, Finale
Right off the bat, you're unfortunately in last place now. No beating around the bush… this is definitely not my cup of tea. In fact, it does an excellent job of highlighting many things I dislike about classical music. It seems lacking in emotion (apart from maybe anxiety), it's mostly played too quickly for my liking, and it sounds very dated. It's also too long for its own good. Sorry, none of this is what you were hoping to hear. It took some balls to send this song, and I appreciate the risk, but I don't enjoy the music. One of the reasons I want to delay the elimination until after this next round is because I think you can do better/deserve another chance to prove your worth. Same goes for the two gentlemen above you. For now though, I punish you with 3 points.
First Round Results:
Shadow Ninja 7
Dark Castle 6.5
lonestar 6.5
Zantera 6
Elite 6
Dr. DTVT 6
Jingle.boy 6
black_floyd 6
LieLowTheWantedMan 5.5
bl5150 5
Adace 4
Lucien 3
For those of you sitting in the middle, be careful with what you send. Just one really good send and any of the bottom four could easily jump you. Taking a risk and being relatively successful likely puts you in better standing than wimping out and sending an average song that you expect I will like, given that the bottom crawlers will likely take those risks this round.