I like this. Instead of going balls deep cinematic, you gave it aspects of it while exploring other things. I respect that. There were times I initially wanted less of a wall of sound, and have a couple elements just be cleaner and more pronounced but I think that would take away from it all. It's good as it is, blended and all.

This is an NGADM 2015 review.

Sick intro. The reversals and minimal beginning are perfect and drew me in. Love it.

I have to give this song props from a sound design perspective. Like many other entries, you've got a lot of small, subtle SFX in there that keeps the listener interested. Actually, your SFX usage reminds me of Damage Vault: Outbreak.

Really like the blend of industrial/orchestral percussion with modern sound design and modulated bass. It's a theme I've always enjoyed, actually, and seems to be pretty popular these days. I think the saw melody around 1:20 to be a little thin and the sound itself pretty unappealing, but other than that there were no major instrumentation complaints of note.

I feel that the song is probably a little chaotic. This is something I noticed around 2 minutes in, but all throughout it has this issue; save perhaps for the intro. The chorus around 0:50 is largely free from it, but once you bring in the melody around 1:08 things start to get somewhat less coherent. It's not that you don't have consistency, I think it's more that your elements are not appropriately balanced. You've got multiple things happening at once in the higher end of the spectrum melodically a lot of the time, and it's also that your percussion is simply unrelenting. As mentioned by TaintedLogic, you've got this consistent industrial beat that doesn't let up for most of the song. The transients are so close together and so similar in frequency content that they kind of muddy a lot of what they touch, spectrally. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and it's an easy way to set yourself up for a difficult task in my opinion. I think you made good of it, though. To add to that, the song probably would have benefited from some change in pace or tone, as it was quite intense for most of its runtime. I consider this largely a stylistic decision though.

Really liking the reverberant pluck around 2:25. It provided a nice tonal change that I enjoyed. It's also keyed me into appreciating the diversity of sound that you're using - you have a lot of unique instruments and elements and I find it quite engaging.

Overall this is a good piece, with some positive and some negative. I think it was a bit too chaotic for its own good, but I also get the impression that you were going for chaos thematically, so in some ways I don't feel I can judge it for that. It's solid work!

I like the dark, ambient vibes at the beginning. Sounds like it’s from a dystopian action movie. The melodies at around :35 were really cool. I’m loving the quirky, industrial sound design. I think this piece was lacking in structural contrast. It has this flowing, eternal energy about it that might need some relief at times. I liked the vocals at around 3:20. I lot of the ideas you have in this piece are really cool. You have this industrial beat playing for almost the whole piece, though, and I think it would’ve been a welcome change if you had stripped it away at one point. I think that the near-uniform intensity that you have during most of this piece makes it hard to discern its structure, and it kind of comes across as lacking coherence despite the beat. I also really didn’t understand why you had that last bass in there at 5:38. The piece was conclusive enough without it, and so it just kind of confused me. I’ve seen you use this heavy, industrial, consistent-energy style time and time again, Lich, and while I like it overall, I think you need to broaden your horizons more if you’re serious about reaching the final stages of this competition. I would recommend exploring a style that allows you to experiment more with melodic development, dynamic contrast, and other aspects of a more emotionally-driven structure. Until then, your hard-hitting and structurally flat pieces will almost always earn you good (but not great) scores from me. I’m not saying you need to change the genre you use, just the approach you take to structuring a piece so that it fits with the genre. Hope this helped! Keep at it, man. ;)

7.5/10

This review was written for the Newgrounds Audio Death Match 2015.

The chaos....ZOMBIE MOVIE!!! I would put this on a zombie movie no doubt!
I love how desperate everything sounds, it sucks the hope out of you...in an awesome way!
I feel its a bit on the long side, thats the only complain
Great job Lich!

i like the track !!!!
how or were did you get the Choir Chants ?
good work !!