MonoChromatic Drawing Board - Propulsion. Feedback needed.

[Adun The Untouchable]

Hi, all. Please give this a listen and let me know your first impression and your impression after reading all this jargon.

MonoChromatic Drawing Board - Propulsion

5:39 & 320 kbps. Enjoy!

I'd like to leave this as free form as possible, but feel free to use the WIP checklist or whatever you like to critique this.

Some notes:

I realize it is relatively loud. Oops. I guess that shows how much I like it. I am also considering EQing this more.

The beginning and very end is subject to change. I plan on making it fit in with the tracks around it once I get more songs or an album together.

I wanted the lead synths to sound very full so I let them run rampant for the most part (to get that brick wall feeling).

I capped the volume at the everything to -2dB. I've been reading around and figured it was better than 0dB.

This is my first full length song. It was made in FL8 using no presets and only one or two samples. Other than that, I used Sytrus and the granulizer.

Questions (please don't limit yourself to these):

Is it too muddy/cluttered?

Any input on how I might EQ the lead synth?

Was the sidechaining/ducking noticeable? Did I do that right?

If you have to pigeonhole this in a genre or two, what would it be?

Did the song evoke any feelings of propulsion?

Any red flags come up? I feel like I could be missing something obvious.

Thanks in advance!

PS: Bonus art! I only spent like, 15 minutes on it in CS2 and I'm no art major. I figured I'd include it.

[bustatunez]

I wouldn't say it's muddy/cluttered at all really, if anything it's kind of the opposite - there's a lot of harshness but nothing to balance it, so it kind of becomes extremely fatiguing on the ears very quickly, especially early on. It is a big relief once the bass drum finally comes in at :57 to get some sonic variety (and introduce a new unheard frequency range), but by that time it's been biting at the same frequencies for so long that it's hard to believe the song is going anywhere. That and the amount of repetition, while it's okay conceptually, in this case nothing is really being added or changed each time and so it kind of reinforces the lack of forward motion.