This is an NGADM 2015 Round 1 Review.
Hey man. Something about this song resonated with me pretty heavily, to the point that this was the highest rating i gave out of all round 1 participants. I may have been spurred to do so partially because I thought you deserved to pass the round, and I felt that of all the judges involved I was the most likely to appreciate this song. That said, Group J was just filled with awesome stuff, you were up against some of the tougher opponents of the round in my opinion.
What impressed me most was your sound design in that first drop, although I don't think your structure necessarily stood up to this aspect. That said, a lot of submissions are difficult to score because one aspect of them is incredible, and others are lackluster. I don't think any aspect of this song is terribly lackluster, but you get the idea. I chose to go with my gut lol. Anyway:
Nice ominous intro, although it and the subsequent buildup don't move very far on their own, if that makes sense - there isn't a huge amount that happens, but it's spooky and ominous and it certainly caught my attention. The arps and sidechained saws you bring in for the buildup create a lot of tension, and I think the buildup functions quite well. As mentioned, first drop is pretty awesome. It's quite dynamic, the kick and snare have crazy impact and are easy to discern. Your mix just has so much space! You said you tried to step away from the loudness war, but you're still at -7.5RMS, which is pretty loud. For those levels your mix is pretty impressive in my opinion.
Sound design wise I just have to applaud the obvious effort. Not a 10/10 on coherency for the first drop, but it's good. It's coherent where it needs to be and I enjoyed it a lot.
After the first drop the song does lose a lot of its energy and flow. You're probably right to question the transition at 2:09, I'm unsure about the decision. To the casual ear though (which is what I used when I initially listened, admittedly - I think I was multitasking) it actually flows pretty well, honestly. Paying more attention I find it a little jarring, though.
So the second drop seems to be double-time, which is a great way to mix things up. I think it's more the way that you've gone about it from a composition perspective that makes it a little more questionable. Mixing is still good, sound design is pretty good (I didn't think it was as coherent as the first drop) but it's more the addition of chords in the second half that I'm not sure about. I don't even think they're a poor decision thematically, plenty of songs (especially dubstep songs) go from melodic content to completely unmelodic content. I just think it was the wrong place to put them. I hear you about not knowing how to finish a song though, we've all been there.
To summarize, your sound design and mixing are impressive to me. I thought that despite some structural issues, you had a damn solid submission, the positive aspects were too good to ignore, and it seems you're aware of a lot of the issues of this song yourself honestly - so I have to applaud this.