opens with a slick bass groove. vocal elements at 0:10 are quite sharp in terms of frequency - siblants especially are quite bright. there's some Hurry in there and then it's back to the original lick. we finally get some full voice at 0:46, with some full band sound. it's surprisingly light under the voice part - there's guitar mostly in the right ear, bass and drums, but nothing that i'd call rhythm guitar or a pad that i can hear. it drops down again for a verse/spoken section at 1:00 or so, and this works through some more alternate sections of spoken word and singing. the singing is hard to hear cut through the band sound - it doesn't look like there's much formant boost on some of those sections, i'm wondering if boosting ~2200hz would help it cut.
the band section after this is super technical and sounds great, i especially like the tom work. the chorus following has a lot of sections with the singer singing higher notes and not much underneath them - this doesn't sound particularly strong since there's little to connect the two elements. there's a build with some growls through 2:15 which is a transition point. the Tool influence is immediately recognizable when it comes in, hard to miss on the drum solo with repeated guitar parts over top. this is pretty darn close to the original Tool influence.
the tom section ends with more call/response of singing and growls, and there's some off-signature Hurry elements as an interim section here. a bit more call and response, some rhythmic elements, and it's done.
if i am honest, there are sections of this that i don't care for pretty strongly. i felt that the sections with the vocalist up high and there being little to no harmonic support underneath (like at 1:50) really felt unbalanced. from a technical standpoint, the vocal elements for the most part were executed competently, but there's a few times where approximants like the 'w' sound in "wide awake" at 2:10 or 3:16 took too long to come out and sound schmeared as a result. the band-only sections are technically proficient (3:09 is insanely flashy), extremely fun to listen to, and influenced heavily enough by the Tool source track to the point that there may be concerns from some judges. separately, from an arrangement standpoint, the arrangement is freaking nuts, guys. this is a beyond awesome adaptation of two really fun originals, and they're interwoven enough that it's not just one's the verse and the other's the chorus. i mentioned a few times that i feel that support was needed to lash everything together, but from a 500-foot level, this is bananas. lastly, from a mastering standpoint, my main complaint was the heavy siblant sound from some of the spoken word elements - beyond that, this sounds super clean and well-handled.
i think there's a few missteps. but overall this is an incredible concept with some truly superlative execution on the instrumental side and overall excellent arrangement. nice work.
YES