Rottenbeard's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Alice is Dead]

Love this

Love your voice Hania. Never stop singing! This whole song has such a great jazzy, soulful vibe. I really enjoyed this.

Cheers,
Daniel

[Multicolour Octopus Ink..]

Great!

Starts off a bit slow and it doesn't really grab the listener at first so I can understand some of the previous comments, but once the track picks up, the progression is superb, and I love all the synth and vocal layering, the whole track has a strong dreamy sound that I really dig. This is like the best of Pink Floyd vocals and Sigur Ros ambient progressions mashed together. NG needs more inventive stuff like this, so keep it up.

Cheers,
Daniel

[Adarga (Shield)]

Good guitar work.

I liked this, the guitar work was great (very steven wilson sounding). Unfortunately the whole song is rather repetitive, namely because of the same drum loop being repeated, but also because the song has no real evolution, it's just the same backing riff for the entire song with little variation with the exception of the breakdown at the 3:30 mark.

A little more melody and progression would've given this song much longer legs to stand on over the long term.

At anyrate, you did good musically, and the guitar work was stellar, I just can't help but hear all the potential this song had, it's a shame you didn't push it that little bit further.

8/10 and 4/5 from me!

Cheers,
Daniel

masheenH3ad responds:

Thanks for your wonderful review. I learned a lot. Rest assured, I will take it all into my consideration. My pursuit to unleash my musical language has no end, I treasure all the ideas and insights of all of my listeners. Once again Thank you very much!

[Iron Horse - Itpoe]

Well done.

If this is the result of a "a bunch of inexperienced kids in a basement" i'm almost afraid to hear what you guys are doing now because it might very well melt my face off.

The quality of the recording is excellent (by relative newgrounds standards), the guitar work is superb and I see no major faults with your tones. Musically the piece is a bit uninspired and seems mostly structured just to show off the skills of the guitarists and as such, doesn't retain a whole lot of repeat listen value due to it's somewhat meandering nature. I did like the tempo changes though which helped break the piece up a bit.
Overall, however, this was a seriously rocking piece, with some impressive skill shown behind the axe. The drum work is also excellent, so hats off to your drummer if he played this via a midi kit, otherwise hats off to whoever produced this and programmed the drums because they were excellent and no doubt took for-friggin-ever.

I hope you guys are still kickin' and rockin' together because you got some real talent here.

Cheers,
Daniel

[-=:The Terminator:=- (RMX)]

Good remix..

I like the orchestrated heavy rock element you had going on for this. The whole track sounded good and it did good justice to the original theme, BUT...

CLIPPING! The whole track is being clipped pretty hard which becomes pretty bad once the drums kick in at around the 1 minute mark, making it almost un-listenable. Whether the clipping is due to bad levels or over-aggressive hard limiting I can't tell, but either way, it doesn't sound very good. No need to crush the audio my friend, especially not on orchestrated stuff! Dynamics are your friend! Ease up on your levels and you'll have a winner :)

Hope my review is helpful!

Cheers,
Daniel

[The Final Abyss]

Nice!

The first minute & a half had a real strong 70's Moody Blues sort of vibe that I liked, and then the piece picks up into a bit of a stronger Pink Floyd sort of deal which was great, especially with the nice vocal chorus in the background, very reminiscent of The Wall!

The mix has some problems though, it is a bit muddy because it sounds like you're trying to mix a lot of wet elements together which can be dicey business if not handled very carefully, the track also has a pretty washy tone to it on the high end, i'm not sure if this is your mix (some sort of tape emulation?) or you just encoded the mp3 at a fairly lossy bitrate (which shouldn't have been necessary for a 3 minute piece), but anyways, a cleaner overall mix would have been nice.

But otherwise, musically I thought this was ace, especially since there isn't too much music here on NG with this sort of older 70's vibe going for it, so keep this up!

Cheers,
Daniel

[Clo - Sonofkirk]

Excellent!

Love it! Nice progression, interesting choice of chords and a smooth solo section. And as always, the drumming is stellar.

The whole thing has a bit of an opeth vibe that i'm really digging.

Cheers!
Daniel

Sonofkirk responds:

Thanks man, this song has a big sentimental value to me, it's really my favourite. I'm glad you liked it! And yeah, Opeth is definitely a source of inspiration to me :). Thanks for the review man <3

[AudeSecret Project]

Nice!

Good production value, lots of nice layering and the overall mix was well done. The music reminded me quite a bit of some of dimmu borgirs more recent stuff, especially with the layered strings and intense use of double kick. The guitar playing was excellent, and the harmonized parts flowed well.

My biggest gripe with this song is that the drumming overall seemed a bit too over the top, especially with the double kicking. I realize that this is pretty common with this style of music so it's more a style preference than anything, but i'd have preferred something that sounded more like it was played by a real human and less like programmed drums.

Anyways, overall I liked this, 4 out of 5 and 9 out of 10 from me. Keep it up! :)

mr-vincent responds:

hahaha thanks, but I can't play drum... I'm only playing guitars, and I do my best to make my drums sounds like a real one, but you know... It's hard :p

If you like it because it reminded you Dimmu Borgir, listen to these one:

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/liste n/347654 (Sorrow Of Life)
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/liste n/346821 (Lights Of Darkness)

[Symphony Of The Demon - S]

Bloody awesome..

Delightfully evil sounding, incredibly full and fantastic guitar work. This tune seriously rocks.

There is two issues that bug me though. First is that your kick drum is barely audible due to the fullness and bass heavy nature of this tune. This can be a hard problem to fix, believe me I know, so i'm not knocking you for it, just stating that it's a bit of a detractor from the song overall. The drum programming otherwise was brilliant.

My other issue is that your hard limiting is resulting in some audible clipping distortion which is a bit unpleasant, and particularly noticeable on tom fills and the double kicking at the end. Again, this isn't necessarily a detractor since it's in keeping with the genre if i'm being honest, and many commercially produced records are MUCH worse (hi, Metallica!), but it's a slippery slope, trying to wrangle loudness against clipping. Hard limiting is one of the best and one of the worst things to happen to the digital music age! Personally, i'd like to see it used a whole lot less..

Anyways, overall this piece was fantastically awesome, and aside from those two issues I raised, I loved this, keep this shit coming man!

Cheers,
Daniel

Sonofkirk responds:

Thank you so much! That's the kind of review I love to read. I always get into trouble when it comes to mixing and mastering tracks because I use crappy computer monitors which are naturally full of bass. To my ears it sound very bassy and I can hear the bassdrum but to other ears it sounds different...

About the clipping thing, you are right and lol at Metallica! This is incredible that such a great band fucks up an album this way... And I actually didn't use hard limiting, I think it's because I suck at mixing :p

Anyways thank you so much, that kind of review make me want to record new stuff! THANKS!

[Bulb]

Nice!

Really enjoyed this. Calm, groovy atmosphere that evolves nicely. The drum programming in particular was well done and interesting to listen to. The mix changed up enough and had a enough backing variance to remain interesting throughout, which can be hard to do especially with a piece in this style. It's kind of a weird ambient acid jazz sort of piece.

Unfortunately, just as the song starts to pick up momentum it sounds like you just gave up on it! This song could have gone on considerably longer I think, but you say it's an old song so I imagine it's a moot point now, nonetheless, I would've liked it longer personally! :)

Anyways, overall this was quite good!

Cheers,
Daniel