Liontamer ⚖️ Posted July 29 Posted July 29 Artist Name: ThePlasmas One of my favs from Altered Beast, a game that I played a lot when I was a child at the local arcade. I tried to do a straight-to-the-face rock song, including some harmonies, guitar soplos and a very powerful drum beat, that's how imagined the ost if a rock band played those songs live. Games & Sources Source: Altered Beast, SEGA Platform: Arcade OG Track Name: Closed In Upon Me / Swamp & Palace Theme (Round 2 & Round 5) Composer: Tohru Nakabayashi Link to OG song:
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted August 5 Posted August 5 big guitar-driven intro, as expected from the artist. it gets right after the melodic material, and there's some manipulation there. i don't her a ton of bass, which is unfortunate, but it sounds like the rhythm guitar occupies a lot of that space. there's a nice chorus break at 1:01 that, while it isn't quieter or different instrumentation, functions as a good separator between the first and second runthroughs of the melodic material. 1:34's another runthrough of the melody, and the instrumentation here is pretty empty as the rhythm guitar and bass are both pretty high relatively speaking. some pad work or mixing up the rhythm of the backing elements would make a big difference there. there's another chorus section, a solo break that's pretty solid, and then an ending that didn't make much sense to me at all - both in how it resolves to a non-root chord and in why it's so sudden without any real closing element. and it's done. i think this is pretty borderline, to be honest. the rhythm guitar work is pretty much the same throughout, the overall arrangement doesn't really take many if any risks, and the ending is blasé. but i think the overall band sound for the melodic and chorus sections is mostly fine and it's mixed aggressively and fairly clearly. there's certainly things i wish would have been done differently, but this is fun as it is and a fine representation of the original. YES
Liontamer ⚖️ Posted August 9 Author Posted August 9 Nice source tune choice, and an excellent rock expansion. There were moments where I felt the melodic lead should have been more upfront compared to the drums, but no big deal. Nice job varying up the instrumentation and textures to keep the presentation fresh, helpful for a relatively short source. The original soloing during the ending section was another highlight. Mauricio always does a great job fleshing out relatively brief themes and giving them a massive power upgrade. :-) YES
jnWake ⚖️ Posted August 15 Posted August 15 ¡Siempre es bueno ver más chilenos en OCR! El review tiene que ser en inglés si jeje. Source is quite barebones, I'm interested to see how you covered it. Anyway, this begins with heavy guitars doing the intro, setting the tone for what comes after. At 0:09 we move to the first riff of the source, now featuring very intense drums and guitars. Makes it sound much more interesting than the original's soundscape tbh. Drums are super aggressive here, arguably too much. For this first section the source is translated pretty faithfully but the rhytm guitar has some neat variations that add a ton. Drum writing also adds a ton with the continuously changing snare pattern, from hitting on all beats, to hitting on beat 3, to the classic Stratovarius-esque fast pattern on 0:41. Rhytm guitars sound great, leads are well played but get lost in the mix at times, there's a lot of reverb in them. Riff around 1:13 is sweet. Around 1:31 we return to the main riff. On the 1:41 section it's easy to notice that the bass is very low on the mix, since the rhytms aren't playing too low and the bass isn't as noticeable as one would expect. After that there's a couple repetitions and we eventually reach a guitar solo around 2:32. Some sick playing here with the fast wah notes. After the solo ends the track, uh, ends as well. Anticlimactic ending really. K, so on arrangement. Source usage is pretty clear but there's a ton of transformation done through the rhytm guitar riffs and drum patterns. Source is very repetitive and there's a bit of that in your remix but I feel you managed to create enough variations on both rhytm guitar and drums to make this interesting during its runtime. If I was going to nitpick anything I feel the arrangement could've used a small (even if very) break at some point, it's short but VERY intense so it can get tiring. On production I am mostly positive, rhytm guitar tone is excellent and the drums are very punchy. However, as I mentioned above it could be argued that the drums are too aggressive, I'd lower the volume on kick/snare a tad, which would give other parts of the drumkit the chance to shine and make the track less tiring to listen to. Overall, this is a great, aggressive rock cover. You took a very (IMO) boring source and managed to turn it into something great. I have small nitpicks on production but is definitely a pass! YES
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