---ROUND 6 RESULTS---1st Place: Elite
In Mourning - The SmokeThis song’s a bit generic as far as melodic death / doom metal is concerned, but it’s still very well done, and ended up just barely being my favorite of the round. It’s got lots of great sections; the heavier parts have some great riffs, the fast, energetic part that comes in around two thirds into the song is really cool, and the calm section in the middle is very moody and beautiful. The choruses are also pretty well-done and memorable. My one complaint about the song is that it’s a bit too long. In particular, there’s a point right after the chorus that the song would have ended perfectly on, but then it transitions into one last verse that’s completely unnecessary. That’s not really a big deal though; as a whole, this track was pretty great.
2nd Place: Tomislav95
Dredg - LechiumThis was another song from this round that I really liked. It’s got a raw, heavy sound that I definitely found appealing, and the louder sections are contrasted well with some clean verses and breaks here and there that also sound quite good. The song also has a superb flow; the extended build up at the start is done really well, and that moment where the distorted guitars kick in is pretty damn badass. I also really like how the song speeds up towards the end and things get especially heavy. I found the vocals to get a little bit annoying after a while, but that didn’t stop this song from being great.
3rd Place: Scorpion
Enslaved - Death In The Eyes Of DawnThis song strikes a really good balance between heavy and melodic, and the result is a really powerful and evocative sound. The parts with the clean vocals are great; he’s got a really nice voice and the vocal melodies are quite memorable. On the other hand, I didn’t really like the harsh vocals, and they also don’t fit with the music that well a lot of the time, at least in my opinion. In addition, I found the song to be too long. It starts to get a bit monotonous towards the end, and the song as a whole is pretty same-y throughout, though it’s still a good piece. I might check this band out more in the future, as they’ve got some elements that resonate quite well with me.
4th Place: Parama
Oak Pantheon - ClimbAnd here we have yet another submission that I thought was too long. It’s got some good moments here and there, but they’re spread pretty thin throughout the song, and there weren’t any parts that struck me as being spectacular. It also takes like four minutes for the song to get good, which is a pretty long time. The middle section of the song is the part that stood out to me as being the most constantly good, and I also enjoyed the fast, thrashy riffs that come in towards the very end. So yeah, I found this track to be pretty average overall, and if the submissions this round were stronger, this likely wouldn’t have ranked as high as it did.
5th Place: Train of Naught
Slice The Cake - The Exile Part I - The Razor’s EdgeThere’s not really anything wrong with this track, but I think it was a pretty poor choice for a roulette submission, as it’s hardly even a full song. The first half of it is just spoken word over some acoustic guitar, and yeah… it’s just spoken word. Not very exciting. The full band kicks in with a pretty huge sounding riff afterwards, followed by some powerful operatic vocals. This part is great, but then it just cuts off mid-word as the track ends and the next one on the album begins… or it least it would, if the submission included it. It probably would have been a smarter choice to send me both parts of the song as one submission, as other people have done in the past, or to just send me something else that’s a complete piece. As-is, it felt like I only got a fraction of a submission, and that’s not going to get you a high ranking, my friend.
6th Place: LordCost
Mr. Bungle - Merry Go Bye ByeAlright, well, this one I obviously have some mixed feelings about. I’ve heard about this band in the past and I knew that they were pretty weird, and yeah, this song was definitely weird. Now, I love me some weird music, but this song, if you can even call it that, just seems like it’s trying way too hard to be crazy and bizarre. At least one third of it is literally just noise, and it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that that didn’t do anything for me. The track blends a ton of different styles, which I’m always a fan of, but it would be a bit more impressive if the song had any cohesion whatsoever. Instead, it’s just a handful of musical fragments stitched together by random, abrasive noise. And hey, the sections with actual music are actually pretty good. I liked both the heavy parts and the bluesy rock ’n’ roll parts, and the chorus that gets reprised at the very end is actually quite nice, I thought. If this song had more actual song in it, it likely would have ranked at least a bit higher.
7th Place: Evermind
Mark Knopfler ft. Ruth Moody - Wherever I GoI can see your reasoning for sending this song, as your other mellow submissions ended up doing quite well. Unfortunately though, in this case, the third time wasn’t the charm. What really invests me in calm, quiet music is atmosphere, and this song just didn’t have enough of that for me. It’s definitely got some emotion to it, but that honestly felt a bit weaker than it should have been as well. While I thought that the saxophone and guitar solos were really nice, as a whole, I just didn’t feel like there was enough beauty in this song to justify the calmness and minimalism.
8th Place: splent
Enchant - The Great DivideI didn’t really like this one at all. It’s too long, it’s boring, and after a while it started to get kind of annoying. Sound-wise, it’s pretty typical progressive rock, but I thought it was way too restrained. Almost the entire song is very calm, and there are hardly any flashy or energetic parts to speak of, which for this style of music is kind of important. It also doesn’t feel like the song is building towards anything; it’s nine minutes long and so much of that is spent just re-using the same sections and melodies over and over again, and it gets pretty grating. The high-pitched harmonized vocals with the weird effect over them don’t help, either. Can’t say I have any desire to listen to this one again.
No artists banned this round.
THE SCORE SO FAR:Parama: 48
Scorpion: 45
Elite: 44
Evermind: 40
Train of Naught: 38
Tomislav95: 38
splent: 34
LordCost: 25
TIME FOR THE FINAL ROUND!Alright guys, only one round left to go! This is your last change to send me something awesome and amazing and all of that good stuff. The only special rule this round is that
this round is worth more points than the others. Here's the breakdown for how many points each rank will receive:
1st place: 16 points
2nd place: 14.4 points
3rd place: 12.8 points
4th place: 11.2 points
5th place: 9.6 points
6th place: 7.9 points
7th place: 6.3 points
8th place: 4.7 points
Why the weird fractions of a point, you may ask? So that there can be no people tied in the final results, that's all. Anyways, with the extra points, if you're a bit behind, this could be your chance to win! Assuming Parama screws up, of course.
Good luck!