I tried a new approach for write-ups this round. I just listened to the songs and wrote whatever came to my mind, completely unstructured and without deleting anything (unless it was just so grammatically messed up it made no sense. And the big dud I was talking about? Well, turns out it just needed a few more listens to grow on me and is actually quite a good song (actually pretty excellent). So, my lowest score this round is a 4 (and the dud was originally a 2), so this was definitely the strongest round of the roulette so far. Unfortunately this also means that there’s not that much of an opportunity to catch up for the people further back in the scoreboard.
wolfking Pyramaze - Back For More
You should stop thinking about your submissions, because this is definitely a lot better than your song last round. It has really good riffs, nice melodies, an amazing chorus. It’s just powaahh all the way through, and it absolutely excels at doing that. Yeah, I can’t really say much else about this song, because it’s fairly simple, but I think this is your best submission yet. It’s a pretty average song for this round in score, but that only shows how strong this round was overall.
jingle.boy Flaming Row - Rage of Dispair
This takes everything about Prog Metal that I love and does it splendidly. While the growls are nothing special in itself, they fit amazingly well here, especially with the contrast of the female vocals. This is also the heaviest song this round, has some really nice, chunky riffs and some amazing solos. It’s epic, its loud, it’s still really melodic, and I enjoy the hell out of it. This is your best song yet, I love the epic chorus, good job.
senecadawg2 James Blake – Overgrown
It took a bit for me to get used to his voice, but I think I fell in love with it. Everything about this song is great. I love the quiet, laid-back vocals, the subtle electronics in the background, the piano/keyboard notes that appear from time to time. As strong as the first half is, I feel the second half with his main vocals in the background, with some weird effect over them, is even stronger. Love the strings that appear here. I don’t have much else to say about this, except that I’ve been wanting to check out James Blake for quite some time now and I’m glad you sent me this song, because I definitely will check him out further after how awesome this was.
Evermind Avantasia - Savior in the Clockwork
I really love the orchestral beginning in this. I feel the guitars could have a bit more punch when it suddenly gets louder, but that’s a really minor criticism. This song is nothing but great parts, and they flow well together. I do feel it would have benefitted from being a bit shorter, because I start to lose interest for a few seconds here and there in the second part of the song. My favourite thing about this is probably the chorus, I’ve had it stuck in my head when I woke up today, because it’s just so catchy and epic. Also, even though this has like 4 different singers, I really wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t told me. Why do you even go for more than one singer if all of them sound the same anyway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have singers that actually sound different, or just have one (you know, less wages to pay)? That’s not really a criticism of the song, because I still think it’s great, more of a general remark.
Also, I’m not sure why you said this wouldn’t score to well with me or Mr. Red, but the bands that got me into music are Nightwish, Kamelot and Dream Theater, so that’s actually really more in favor of this style of music. Still, this in one of the weaker songs this round. It won’t really reflect in my score very much because everything is so close together and pretty much everything was awesome (except for that one song), but I just wanted to have it said.
Sacul Lord Huron - Ends of the Earth
This wins the award for strongest atmosphere. It feels so wide, so vast. It makes me want to go somewhere far, far way and just travel and spend a nice evening in a tent somewhere in the mountains or in the desert and just watch the sun set and be calm and happy. That little melody, I think it’s some kind of string instruments, is just absolutely amazing and happiness and joyfulness made into music. Everything about this song is just so fantastic, oh my gosh. I love the chill percussion, the violin that appears at times. I have no idea if this high pitched sound behind the vast string melody is a voice or some kind of instruments, but it sounds amazing. Soooooo atmospheric.
I think we have the second perfect score of the roulette here, and you’ve now sent the best song for my tastes 3 rounds in a row, congratulations on that. I’d follow this singer to the ends of the world, if he asked me like that.
And that vast string melody. Amazing.
Nekov Faunts - Feel.Love.Thinking.Of
This is the shortest song of the round, but it excels in it’s shortness. I love the hectic drumming contrasted by the calm voice and keyboard atmospheres. It’s really weird how a song with this kind of hectic, electronic drumming can still be so good in terms of atmosphere. I’m pretty sure it’s his voice that makes it so good.
Scorpion Beyond The Bridge - Doorway To Salvation
I quite like the heavy intro in this, felt like it could have led into something awesome. Then it just stops and it feels like the whole song starts anew and the part before it was really unimportant and just there for randomness. I mean, there’s lots of parts I really like here, but the transitions between are just often so awkward that I can’t really love this song as much as I would like to. Also, there are lots of parts where it builds up to something awesome and then just leaves you hanging, and unfortunately not in a good way. So sorry, this is the dud I was talking about earlier. It’s not as bad as it used to be though. I would still say I quite like this song, it has pretty good vocal harmonies, solos, riffs and some epic moments. Maybe the awkward transitions make more sense in the context of the album. Without these awkward parts, this could have been a perfect score, even though I needed some time to realize that I loved most of the song. It’s still strong, but one of the weaker songs this round.
Also, just because both of my perfect scores have been rather folky in nature doesn’t mean you should all send folk for Round 7, you can totally score amazingly high with most other genres as well.