First Impressions
1. Some really awful vocals on this one, but other than that it’s… solid? Surprisingly plain, more than anything.
ariich: SikTh - Golden Cufflinks
2. This is at least some degree of cheating, right? I found this pretty enjoyable and more diverse than expected, though I don’t know if it’ll be a favorite either.
Stadler: Steve Vai - Down Deep Into The Pain
3. I knew to expect the production issues on this one so I’m not surprised by them, but they do hurt what would otherwise be a pretty enjoyable sound.
Tomislav95: Disillusion - A Day By The Lake
4. This one’s all over the place. Strong instrumental chops, “interesting” production, okay songwriting, and some truly wretched vocals.
TAC: Darkaeon - Ark of the Universe, Pt. 1
5. Of all the songs in this round this is probably the most exciting sounding one to me. Reminds me a lot of a band I’ve been really into recently.
Dacul: Gospel - As Far as You Can Throw Me
6. My initial reaction was to go “I said no djent” but this actually has a good heavy tone and is very tasteful and balanced. I’d struggle to say it flows well or has strong melodic hooks though.
Nekov: Jakub Zytecki - Satya's Diary
7. Completely different from what I was expecting, but what I was expecting was way worse than what I got, so I’m not complaining.
Indiscipline: Faith No More - Woodpecker from Mars
8. This was the submission I was closest to banning and I don’t think anything about this song is going to change my mind about the artist in question.
Elite: VOLA - Stray The Skies
9. One of the better core sounds of the round, but like… structurally it’s an absolute mess, it feels like two or three different songs with zero transition between them.
Puppies_On_Acid: The Arusha Accord - The Dark Pane, Part 2
I did first impressions a bit different than usual this time to make things easier on myself and anyways I thought every song here was at least "decent"? I don't think we're seeing any 4 or 5 bullet scores this round at the very least. But probably no 0's either.