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Reviews for "Come to Reality"

Here's your NGADM Round 1 Review

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Quality song straight off the bat. Love the length, love the riffs, love the changes. I can definitely see how you're influenced by Metallica in this song considering you follow very similar chordal patterns as to what they do. No on to more critical parts.

Drums: To be totally honest they sound fairly bland. The kick has no punch and the snare has no snap. Bring up the kick volume by a good few db (Maybe about 3) and pull up the snare too, and add some high end EQ to the snare to give it more presence. Cymbals sound alright but your choice of cymbals are very repetitive, mix it up a little.

Guitars: Chunky and thick, the stereo sound you have is awesome but it's a little muddy in the low end. EQ a bit out at around 500hz so the guitars work more in the midrange. Solo guitars are awesome though, however slightly out of time which comes down to production and playing.

Bass: Same as above, it sounds fairly "Honky". I'd take out around 200-500hz so it doesn't have the horrible horn sounding pop to it.

Your playing could use a bit of practice to be perfectly honest. You're a sound player but a lot of your recording is out of time, so I'd work on either playing to a metronome to build up a steady rhythm or splice the hell out of your guitars so they become quantized with the rest of the track.

Your song seems to be mastered fairly low as well? It's only reaching half volume of what is capable. That's LOADS of wasted head room. I'm not gonna slant you on this much because I'm focusing more on the compositional side, but that's a lot of headroom out the window just as Step said. Either Brickwall it so it's useable with MP3 players or use the dynamic potential for drums, maybe some orchestration etc.

However, congratulations for getting through to Round 2. Can't wait to see what else you come up with and I hope you put this critique to good measure :)

Metallica1136 responds:

Thanks man, really happy that you think the length is a good thing. Yeah Metallica is a huge influence for me. Along with other bands like Pantera and Testament. Yeah I agree about the kick. Kick needs a lot more BOOM to it, rather than just sounding like a click. Snare needs to be louder for sure. I always record with a metronome btw. Though I do agree some parts are a little off time.

Yeah splicing is a good idea, but it would take up a lot of time, and overall, be more trouble than it's worth. It'd be easier to just get it right the first time. Yeah, the song being mastered too quietly is definitely a big flaw. I should definitely maximize my songs, after I'm done to use all the headroom on the waveform that is usable. But thanks man, I hope whatever I submit for Round 2 gets me to Round 3. :)

Oh yeah, about the instrument's EQ, I agree about that as well. Guitars need more mids/highs, and bass needs those frequencies removed like you said, to get rid of that annoying popping sound.