Great job! I can see the lead easily being replaced by a singing voice, and that usually is a sign of a solid melody. After checking the original, I see how that came about ;D You lost a star for two reasons, though:
1) 0:55 out of nowhere you introduce fast paced/heavy drums that seem off beat to the rest of what is going on, and that made me cock my head and go "wtf?". It's easy to have that happen if you leave the melody to also serve as a rhythm keeper and do some irregularities with it - and then try to introduce drums, especially mid-phrase. Two ways to deal with such cases is either ease into it with a more sparse beat and build up to the part after the pause, or you could just use a beat that matches what's currently going on, even if it changes in the next section - the latter could amplify the epic feeling of going into the next section as a bonus! Either way, the sudden appearance of those drums was a bit of a no-no. This was my biggest issue.
2) Possible mastering issues and transitions: Pauses can be effective, but if overused it can kill the magic of the piece, too. Not a big gripe here, but I'm thinking the 2:00-2:32 part could have used either more sparse (or lighter) drums or even dropping them altogether, and rather than a lead-in pause have a descending filler melody to retain the intensity coming off the chorus (ascending could work, too). The mastering issues I'm seeing is perhaps just too much crowding, especially with the chorus - it gets overwhelming to my ear when for the duration the volume meter stays put near 0db. Crowding can be solved in multiple ways - putting parts into different registers and timbres and/or EQ-cutting them are two major ones if you do not want to simply take out parts or play with their volumes (some sidechaining is nice too, though I generally can't be arsed to do it and stick with other methods xD).
Like I said, #2 is not major and fairly subjective - but since it may help you to consider those things I thought I'd elaborate :) #1 however does break the magic of this piece for me somewhat. My best tip there is to think of the drums not as the time keeper but as the spice to the piece, if you were to think of the music piece as a dish :) The right spices in the right amounts make a dish delicious! ;P
Hope this helps, and keep up the great work!