Alright, just so you know, I'm mostly done with this song so I probably won't listen to what you say is wrong with it...lol

Just want to see what some of you think about it. (I still have to fade the song out on the last part--I forgot to do that) It's a song with black metal influences in it, but I'm not sure what genre it's a part of. It's fucking PsychoBliss, that's all I know.

https://soundcloud.com/psychobliss/the-escape-of-the-dead-test

Wow, really liked that. I thought the clean vocals really added to the track.

Cool song. Seemed a bit long in the tooth for something that really doesn't change tempo much, overall. If it was me, I'd shorten it to around 4.5-5 minutes, but our songwriting styles are radically different, so don't take that as a knock or anything.

I would call this blackgaze with solos myself (ie. black metal and shoegaze).
And with that said, this all sounds really awesome, albeit the bluesy bits in the solos which almost sound a little out of place.

What would make the whole thing cooler though is some reverb, especially on the clean guitar, and vocals (both harsh and clean).
But maybe that just stems from my obsession with reverb, haha, idk.

Either way, great job, man. I like what I'm hearing!

So you're looking for commentary, but you'll ignore corrective feedback? so you're fishing?

Anyway, you asked, so you'll get my two cents. Harsh vocals in this kind of context always sound arbitrary to me. While the production on the track is solid (that is, full and basically even, decent mix) .. i can't feel it and it's basically all the fault of the harsh vocals. Honestly, I'd probably like it a lot better if it was largely a fleshed out instrumental with only the clean vox passages. But .. yeah. too sceney for me. :/ Still, your recording and balancing is pretty good. And I'm glad it's not trying to be hard core (not the genre, just the hard) because it's pretty soft. I say just go with your strengths, drop the harsh vocals, and make decent music, which it seems like you're reasonably well on your way to doing.

Thanks for the feedback! I think the harsh vocals work great, personally--especially because you almost never hear (good) harsh female vocals. I may turn down the vocals a little bit to meld with the song a little better, though. After having a couple days to listen to it, it sounds like the vocals, on the first half of the song in particular, are a little too loud and "sit on top" of the mix.

The sex of the singer doesn't change anything for me, honestly. They aren't poorly rendered; the combination of them with the production quality of the guitars isn't to my taste. If the guitars were harsher I think it would blend better, or if the vocals were somewhat softer-edged, likewise. To me they feel pasted-on, not necessarily ill-gotten, if you see what I mean.

edit: but, yeah .. burying them more might help that somewhat.

Overall, this is indeed pretty impressive, but I agree with what people are saying regarding the harsh vocals. I don't enjoy them, but some reverb might help them out. They seem same-y and unconvincing.

Did some tweaking it to it and put it to a pretty cool video that I made...Check it out if you want.

I think the tweaks made it a bit muddier, unless that's my speaker. By "burying" it, I meant more what awheio recommended with the reverb. In effect, changing your vocal vision entirely into a remote smear, and not a forefront element at all. For me, that's the only way these vocals will work for me. I guess it just isn't my thing, but I definitely enjoy the warm side of the wall of noise that shoe-gaze can offer. I guess I feel like the vocals just kill it for me as it is now. :/ Wrong audience, I guess.

edit: and I'd re-take the solos if I were you.

I'll admit that it isn't perfect, but I enjoy the fact that it's not. To be honest, I barely even changed the level of the vocals. lol I had a different version of the vocal track a few weeks ago with a fair amount of reverb on it and I hated it.

It's all about your vision. In the words of Ihsahn from The Left Hand Path, "If it sounds good, I guess it's .. right?"