Hey, CONQUER THE DAY again! Here's a newer demo I made of a different song and again I'd love opinions and critique's and such. Anything from vocals to guitar sounds. New track's a bit more melodic death/thrash I think - less black metal influenced anyway.

Across The Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFYCRg0FmS4


And incase you missed it, this was the first demo I put out;

Tears Of The Waterfall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byrHnKEl_Gc

Still need to put the first song I made up.

So yeah, opinions and stuff on anything welcome! Please comment! Thanks for listening!

In case anyone's interested; lyrics

Infected will eat your flesh
It's all in your head; paranoia
Chaos from above the clouds grow dark
As if something was coming apocalypse here

This is the day
This is the day
The day we die

On silver wings we head for the sea
Human terror/ human massacre
When hell is full walk the earth
Your soul is free but we are damned
To burn
Enslaved
To the master

We stare up into the sky
Waiting for our domination
The gate to hell opens
The fire touches the earth

Do you remember the words I used to say?
You can't live forever there is no eternity
Break the silence or you will find
This is the last day, this is the last time

They came from across the sky
They came from across the sky
To watch you
To watch you die
They came from across the sky
They came from across the sky
To watch you
To watch you die

Do you remember the words I used to say?
You can't live forever there is no eternity
Break the silence or you will find
This is the last day, this is the last time

No one?

Even one real instrument might make this tolerable to listen to in spite of the boring riffs and hilariously awful vocals, but it sounds like it's ALL programmed..

Eh I don't think the vocals are THAT bad... They're certainly not great but they work for the style I suppose.

The programmed guitars are pretty abysmal... Real guitars are definitely recommended.

The drums are way too loud in the mix. Especially during the blast beat section.

This is awfully uh...

It sounds like a mix between an NES and black metal or something. I guess the sound works for that. It might actually be pretty interesting with better production. Is that what you're going for?

I don't know what to say about the vocals, I don't loathe them, but I can't say I like them much either. I guess they fit well enough though.

Nope, the guitars (and bass) aren't programmed, they're all live. You can even hear me playing mistakes And the mario/NES thing was mentioned about the song Tears Of The Waterfall, and I tryed to improve it for the demo that I am asking you to tear apart this time; Across the Sky. Are the guitars still really bad sounding in Across The Sky?

And for vocals, is there anything in particular that is wrong?

And thanks for the heads-up about the drums

Thanks, and keep opinions coming

I thought the songwriting was pretty good. But yeah, it sounds only slightly better than a midi song.

Eeeeh stop this modern bullshit... Ever heard of the 80s? I thought the drums was too low in the mix but the thin tightup snare sounds WEEAAK

But then again its just programmed everything so... Ehh

Modern bullshit? The drums are the loudest thing in the mix, by far... They drown out everything else. Taking them down by about 3dB would make the whole mix a ton better.

Is this seriously real guitars? The timing and precision are unusually good considering how simple and regular the guitar parts are, there aren't any mistakes I can really hear, and there isn't any vibrato or string noise or anything else that a guitar usually makes when you play a real one... and unless I'm mistaken there isn't any palm muting either?

Either way, definitely change the guitar tone.

Nah, there's nothing really "wrong" with them, they fit well enough, i just imagine a lot of people won't like them.

With some refinement of your style you could have some neat stuff if you keep pushing this electronic/black metal thing.

I'm gonna take that as a compliment

And I absolutely swear, they are real guitars. Reason why it sounds so clean or whatever is that it's a guitar plugged straight into my computer, kinda like midi, but it's more like a microphone as I can't manipulate indervidual notes etc... like midi.

As for guitar sounds, I am finding it really difficult to get a good sound

I haven't listened to it yet, but if your plugging in directly you might want to check out Guitar Rig, its a VST plugin. That should give you a much better tone. Basically record in clean and use it for post processing (distortion, effects)

Forget about Guitar Rig, if he's plugging his guitar straight into the microphone jack then it's never going to sound good no matter whether he uses Guitar Rig or the (much better) amp sims like TSE X30 or SoloC or 8505.

I plugged it into an analogue to digital converter

This, no less; http://www.novationmusic.com/products/nio_2_4?option=2

You can tell the guitars are abysmally programmed because the computer cuts each note off before it can fully sustain. Sounds a lot like RSE - Realistic Sound Emulator, the thing Guitar Pro uses. The drums - they're programmed right? It sure sounds like it - are too loud and also have that fun cut-off noise. The vocals sound like they were distorted - if that is the case, I have no respect for you. I hate people who layer distortion over their vocals, to me it shows that their voice is not powerful. Sorry, try again. The songwriting itself is just not very strong besides the rest of the stuff I mentioned. Especially in the other song, you don't have a very good sense of what sounds good where. On Tears of the Waterfall, you start with blast beats and have a harmonic minor-ish undertone, but the main guitar is natural minor. It just doesn't work. Try to learn some theory and take a songwriting class.

Edit:



It really doesn't sound like those are real - and they're certainly not "clean". I don't know what you're doing, but somehow you are cutting off practically every single note as soon as you play it and that sounds like a computer is doing it. I record everything directly into the computer with my PODxt, and it sounds great. So that can't be the reason. Definitely fine a new, LESS GAINY tone. Try buying a POD or something to help you out.

Edit #2: I listened to the song Cleopatra you had up - and while the songwriting is unquestionably far better than either of the previous, the guitars sound even more fake. I would highly suggest filming yourself doing the guitars so we can see.

Sorry I'm so hyper-critical, I hope some of my comments help.