---ROUND 5 RESULTS---1st Place: Shadow Ninja 2.0
Polkadot Cadaver - Last Call In JonestownYou apparently just don't do middle ground, as your submissions either end up winning the round of ending up in the bottom three.
Anyways, this song was the obvious choice for first place this round, especially due to the number of average/okay submissions. It has a fast, energetic pace with some great riffs, but the real strength of the song is how catchy it is despite its heaviness. That chorus, especially, gets stuck in your head instantly, and it works incredibly well with the rest of the song. The way the verses are less heavy and lead into the choruses perfectly creates a great contrast and makes each of them hit really hard. I also really like the section before the last two choruses. The slower part with the low choir that leads into the guitar solo is great, and the section with the voice sample has some great instrumentation behind it. This is just a really fun song, in addition to being quite heavy, and I don't have any real complaints about it. Congratulations on sending the only song this round I really enjoyed.
2nd Place: Lucien
Haken - Darkest LightAh, Haken. I'll admit, I'm not quite as sold on these guys as most of the people on this forum are. Oh they're good, definitely, but I don't really understand the mountains (no pun intended) of praise they get. It could just be that I'm not into straight-up prog metal as much as I used to be, but I ended up getting The Mountain after my first roulette, and I thought it was just… okay. Good, but nowhere near as amazing as people say it is. But anyways, onto this song. Again, it's good, but definitely not amazing. There's parts of it I really liked, parts I thought were decent, and parts I didn't care for. The weird sounding arpeggio in the intro does nothing for me, but things pick up a bit after about a minute. Some of the guitar riffs are pretty killer; I especially like the one during the "forgive me father…" part. I also really like the section about three minutes in where the "take away my vision" vocal line is reprised with much heavier instrumentation. The part soon afterwards where the rhythm changes a little before the four minute mark during the guitar/keyboard solo is great as well. Finally, the outro ends the song on a high note with a great groove. As for everything else, again, good but not great. One thing I can definitely compliment the song on is that, despite its song structure being all over the place, it all comes together in a very cohesive manner. The instrument performances are also top-notch, but that's to be expected. Good song, but I'm still not all that motivated to check out more stuff from these guys.
3rd Place: mikemangioy
Destrage - My Green NeighborI've seen these guys mentioned around here before, and the way that I've heard they blend genres and jump between sounds had me intrigued. This song doesn't really have that, as it's pretty much just metal throughout, but it's still pretty crazy sounding. The instrumentation is frantic and energetic, with pummeling drums and rapidly-changing guitar riffs, and the vocalist has a lot of range. The chorus is my favorite part of the song; it's pretty catchy, and the somewhat less crazy instrumentation behind it makes it stick out among the rest of the song. Also, the riff at the end of each one kicks some serious ass. While I like the fun and crazy nature this song has, the craziness can make it a bit hard to grab onto sometimes. The section after the second chorus in particular just feels wacky for the sake of being wacky, and while this song has grown on me a bit since my first listen, aside from the chorus, it doesn't have any other moments that really stick out to me as being great. It's not that I don't like crazy music, in fact I freaking love it; this song just didn't click with me quite as much as I would have liked.
4th Place: Sacul
Nine Inch Nails - HeresyThis was a pretty cool song. Being industrial, the focus is on the effects, and they're all done very well. The verses in particular have a great beat and synth line, and the effect on the vocals is really cool. The guitar that comes in after the first chorus works great as well. As for the chorus, it's certainly memorable. The guitar riff in the background is good, and the noisy, ear-splitting effects make things incredibly heavy. It might just be a bit TOO noisy for my tastes, but hey, it certainly accomplishes what it was trying to do. There's not much else to say… It's a good song, but a bit short and lacking in substance. Great sound though, that much I cannot deny.
5th Place: Scorpion
Persefone - KusanagiThis is another song that I liked, but never really clicked with me entirely. The first two minutes are great; the fast guitar riffs are awesome, and the keyboards make things pretty epic sounding. I especially like the "main" guitar riff about a minute in. The song loses me a bit when the vocals come in, though. It's not the vocals that are the problem, they're fine, it's just that the song itself doesn't have many memorable parts or moments that stick out to me. The large presence of keyboards is also a double-edged sword; while they work really well in some parts, they sound a bit… off in others. I think that's mostly due to the actual keyboard sounds not being all that great. Overall, there's parts of this song I liked, but as a whole it just feels… there. Maybe it would have grown on me more in time, but I got this song pretty late and these results are already later than I would have liked them to be, so that's just how I feel about the song at this point in time.
6th Place: Evermind
Galahad - Empires Never LastYou described this song as being both heavy and atmospheric, and yeah, it certainly has elements of both, but I don't think it's that strong in either department. The first two and a half minutes work quite well, with a good buildup leading into the first verse. The main bassline is also quite nice, and the song gets lots of milage out of it, reprising it throughout the song with varying instrumentation. The verses are pretty average, not much to say about them. The anthemic chorus is very memorable and has some really dramatic-sounding strings, though it gets a bit old after a while. After the third one the song breaks into a simple, yet pretty powerful riff that is certainly the heaviest part of the song, and while the song from this point onward is more intense than what came before, it didn't leave much of an impact on me. As I said before, while the loud parts of the song are somewhat heavy and the quieter parts are somewhat atmospheric, both departments just feel kinda weak, and the song as a whole merely comes across as average as a result.
7th Place: Dr. DTVT
Dan Swano - PatchworksI didn't really like the sound of this song, but the reason why is kinda hard to put into words. I don't know, something about the way the metal guitars and vocals are combined with the more prog-sounding keyboard work just doesn't mesh that well for me. The resulting sound just feels weak and a bit dry, if that makes any sense. It also doesn't help much that the riffs and keyboard lines themselves aren't particularly great or memorable. They're not bad, but they're not that good either. I could definitely see some people liking this, but for whatever reason, it just didn't do it for me at all.
8th Place: senecadawg2
Addaura - City Light (In Still Dark Forenoon Silence)Man, I feel really bad for doing this. If it's any consolation, there were parts of this song I definitely enjoyed. The first two minutes are quite nice, with a peaceful atmosphere and a buildup that's very well done. But once the full band comes in, things quickly start going downhill. The production is subpar, but I would have been able to get past that if the song itself were better. As it is, the middle six minutes of this song are extremely monotonous and boring. The composition and instrumentation is incredibly repetitive; the dynamics stay exactly the same, the instruments are doing largely the same thing, and if you skim through this section it really doesn't feel like you're missing anything. After a while, the constant tremolo guitars, vocals, and semi-blast beat drums just dissolve into a haze of noise. When the song FINALLY reaches a climax eight minutes in and adds a lead guitar line and shifts the drum beat, it's unbelievably relieving just to hear some change. The last two minutes of the song are actually quite nice, even without the boring prior six minutes to make them sound so much better by comparison. Overall, that's 40% of the song I like and 60% of the song I dislike, and at ten minutes long, that 60% just brings the whole thing down. Sorry dude.
Artists banned this round: Haken
THE SCORE SO FAR:Evermind: 36
mikemangioy: 36
Scorpion: 34
senecadawg2: 32
Sacul: 32
Shadow Ninja 2.0: 32
Dr. DTVT: 30
Lucien: 28
The rankings are getting closer and closer! Anyways,
Round 6 is another
ATMOSPHERIC round. Here's hoping for a better round this time, or at one that's not so overwhelmingly middle of the road.