Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow "BLOOD" 8:37

Blood! Ahem, sorry... BLOOD! The judge/twin multiclass pairing that is Pixels & Paradiddles are back for, well, blood. And they've brought along fellow loathsome creatures of the night ZackParrish and Cyril the Wolf to wreak unspeakable deeds on your ears with Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. As with many, many OCR mixposts in the present era they seek to answer the question, OverClocked ReMix or Dwelling of Duels? There can ONLY be one (1), a single community... and whatever choice you make, you will be cast out of the other! No actually, the answer is both, of course. There's a ton of cross-pollination between the two scenes, with a song typically starting on DoD and making its way over to OCR. "BLOOD" started its own unholy existance in the June DS Month. Maybe even on the 6th day of the month, at 6am?? Who can say? From lead arrangement vampire pixelseph:

"Okay, this time, this really is your Dracula's castle. We refuse to go to Dracula's house without proper equipment.

After swearing off of doing a main for Dwelling of Duels this year to focus on other projects, they went and hit us with a second-month-in-a-row of double-feature themes that cross-pollinate with Pixel Mixers - namely, Nintendo DS/3DS Month (PM's is Portable Games Month :-D). We wanted to bring our style to the contest and finally had something that lined up with the theme. <3 And, y'know, we simply must clown around with our fellow metalheads for some Castlevania after how fun GSM2 and David Wise Month was last year! This is the cursed fruit of this month's labors: an 8-minute progressive metal journey, complete with vocals from Pixels and Cyril! (Just listen for the WOOOAAAAHHHHs in the night - that's us calling for you. :-D) Had to reference some classic CV lore in there."

The absolute temerity of this guy! Not merely content to go on a bloody rampage at DoD and then later OCR, he also had to darken the doors of Pixel Mixers as well. Nah, again the crossover between DoD and PM is very real, with clever smarties often trying to make an entry that satisfies both monthly prompts. As it turns out, this gang of ghouls scored a very respectable 5th place at DoD with this malignant monstrosity of murderous metal. Clocking in at 8 1/2 minutes this prog metal juggernaut is not for the faint of heart! The immediate comparison for anything prog metal is often Dream Theater, and while the judges did bring up DT there's a much stronger comparison here: Opeth. Specifically the Ghost Reveries album where they started fusing crusty old Mellotrons and Hammond organs in with their heavy sound. From the get-go with the heavy chords and rather wheezy & aged organ, the DNA of Ghost Reveries is all over this. The team of terrors has channeled the angular riffs of Opeth, the chromatic movement, and the (more than) slightly off-putting chords. And the layering of clean vocals with metal growling, a metal production staple, is excellent here. Also, the lead vocals are courtesy of head horror Seph himself! While probably known in the community more for his guitar prowess, he was compelled by the darkness within to croon this song of the night. And if Seph represents the clean side of Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt, the vile vox of Cyril the Wolf are the distorted side, the two of them working together in some kind of corrupted yin-yang. And you bet your sweet bippy there's a mellow acoustic section, you can't invoke Opeth without a pleasant acoustic guitar section sandwiched amidst the crushing riffs.

Judge prophetik music, perhaps under the influence of some supernatural glamour, was all effusive praise:

"this is a huge undertaking and it's a fantastic result. from a compositional perspective, this is superb - there's a ton of interweaving of the different elements, it's super fun without being medleyitis, there's loads of creative adaptation throughout, and the performance of it is excellent as well. the mix is overall really solid as well despite all the parts [...] overall this sounds professionally produced. superb work."

Judge Hemophiliac, perhaps concerned for his own well-being given his name and being in the presence of such voracious fiends, also knelt to the darkness:

"the arrangement itself was handled masterfully, the production was clean, and the performances were very nice"

Judge jnWake, perhaps trying futilely to assert his own willpower with some nitpicking, was nevertheless compelled to put it over the top:

"Overall, this is a really good track! 8 minute tracks are tough to pull off and although I have some nitpicks this is clearly way above the bar."

Nitpick all you like, Wake, it will do you no good in the face of such monstrous mastery! All hail the dark horrors, on this most auspicious of Hallow's Eves, and let the BLOOD flow!