I like the echo-y strings at the beginning and the dark tone of the piece at :08. The eerie percussion at :11 helps establish the atmosphere, and the brass and other sound design elements all mesh nicely together as well. I think I would’ve liked to hear a bit more of the militaristic percussion in the mix at around :40 onward, but otherwise the production quality is great here. There’s a lot of pent-up tension in this piece, but I’m not sure it ever really gets resolved. You do a good job of creating variety with the instrumentation, but after a while the harmonic framework gets a tad repetitive. The pattern of the heavy downbeats with the dramatic quarter note riffs following (1:06, 1:21, 1:38, etc.) is effective at ratcheting up the intensity for a while, but also gets fairly predictable after a couple of minutes, and it doesn’t help that during many of those riffs the rhythm is fairly square. Still, the melodic content, sound design, and mixing are characteristically strong here, and I thoroughly enjoy the cinematic style of this piece. Keep it up, LSD! ^_^
Mixing, mastering, and balance
1.75/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
1/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
2/2
Instrumentation and sound design
1/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1.25/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
1/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
.75/1
Composite score
8.75/10