this is top 1 material

I like the eerie whirring effect at the beginning and the crisp strings that come in shortly thereafter. The snare at :23 really pops in the mix, which is nice, but many of the other instruments sound a bit thin and inauthentic, especially the guitars. It might help to either give the bass more space in the EQ and/or add some reverb and other atmospheric elements to fill out the texture. There’s a good sense of build into 1:33, and the glitchy effects and added pads there are nice touches. The main riff (1:55) feels pretty bland and repetitive to me after a while - it and the other lead harmonies are doing little else besides outlining the chords for most of the piece. The re-intro at 2:45 was a good idea, although I still want some of these instruments to have more space in the mix. I also thought the extended stop-start transition from 3:22 to 3:34 interrupted the flow of the piece a bit. At some point, I would’ve liked to hear more variety in the harmonic content and more ebb and flow within individual phrases to break up an otherwise disjointed arrangement. Otherwise, I enjoyed the production quality, atmosphere, and rhythmic content of the piece. Keep at it, WingsOfAsh! ^_^

Mixing, mastering, and balance
1.75/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
1/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
1.5/2
Instrumentation and sound design
.75/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
.5/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
1/1
Composite score
7.5/10

Lovely experiment and sounds like a lot of fun! I definitely feel your electronic roots in the production. So there are some things I would note if you intend to continue in this direction down the road.

Guitars for heavy metal are typically double tracked, meaning rather than using a chorus on the rhythm guitar to achieve stereo width, 2 different performances of the same guitar line are panned 100% left and 100% right. To achieve this digitally, edit the midi velocities and occasionally articulations and pinches, hand position if applicable, and attack and release times. I will usually use humanize function on only one track.

It sounds like this was not done for your 7 string, and that detracts from the mix for me.

Regarding your approach to drums, I think your drum writing is great. That jingle bell in the right channel I would pull down some volume wise and move a bit more to the left than where it currently sits. More orchestral cymbals would be appreciated. At subtle volumes they add a lot of space.

I think I would put this somewhere in industrial, as it feels very electronic and not so much metal, but definitely a fusion genre (and I am not rating genre anyway)

For your snare, I think I would actually hard or soft clip it and compress it dynamically, as well as add a subtle slapback delay or other FX noise below it with a longer tail. It sits a bit flatly and could use grit -- have you ever heard the bottom of a snare?

Your hihats could probably sit a bit further in the left channel. Sometimes I like to add a subtle delay to them that ping pongs to the right channel.

Some variation to guitar articulations would be appreciated, like diminished chords and dissonance, chuggs, etc.

Otherwise, wonderful piece. Great work!

I feel like this is one of, if not the best song I've heard all year :0

lol funny its the exact opposite of my nguac entry in every way