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The Storm Colossus's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Uniqueness | #1 | 4.294 | 4.294 |
| Composition | #2 | 4.176 | 4.176 |
| Overall | #3 | 3.990 | 3.990 |
| Innovation | #4 | 3.588 | 3.588 |
| Listenability | #5 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Execution | #6 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
| Correlation to Theme | #6 | 4.059 | 4.059 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
PLEASE feel free to give your honest critique!
You already hear it from far away. A danger is looming up ahead. With every step you hear those mechanical clacking and the sounds of electrical discharge getting closer and closer, until your vision is only captured by this monstrous being. Metal tarnished with time creeks as you hear a loud roaring thunder entering the mechanical giant and it comes to live. There are only two options run or fight. What are you choosing?
This was quite a long and tedious journey. It describes the second scene of the jam “The Strom Colossus”. This is more an amalgamation of different styles of Rock and Metal music with a mix of Djent inspired guitar sounds, 70s progressive sounds and dark 80s vibes.
Everything you hear has either be recorded with real instruments or played in live with midi.
The song is meant to be like a Risk of Rain 2 boss battle theme. The distorted guitars are chosen to sound like electronic discharge roaring thru the air. The saxophone was more as a joke since it is a “wind” instrument and it sounded kind of sexy.
Gear used:
- Strandberg Boden Classic 7 string (modded) (as seen in screenshot)
- Harley Benton 6 string bass (as seen in screenshot)
- Neural DSP Petrucci | Neural DSP Rabea Masaad
- Nembrini Audio BassHammer
- UAD B3 Waterfall
- UAD Rhodes
- Cherry Audio Mercury 4
- Cherry Audio DCO 106
- 8Dio Solo Tenor Sax
- Crow Hill (Vaults) Icky Bass
- Spitfire Audio Originals Abe Laboriel Jr Drums
- Arturia Solina
- Arturia Melotron
- Spitfire Audio Originals Cinematic Pads
How did you Innovate? (Complete later if you need to submit on time)
The greatest innovation was actually focussing on the project while still having fun with it and experimenting with different things. I’m quite satisfied with the outcome.
Stil, there are many compromises been made for this song. Normally it would be typical for those kind of songs to be much longer to fade in and out different passages and ideas. But due to not wanting to overblow it, things might feel a bit stitched together.
Link to Streaming Service
https://einelthefox.bandcamp.com/album/storm-colossus
DAW Screenshot - Demonstrate that this is your own work
See submission
Discord Tag
EinelTheFox
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Comments
Hmhmh, is rly nice take on the theme given for sure, composition wise is great. However, maybe is just me being Tool enjoyer, but mid percussion is kinda lost in the mix. Idk if it's due to you making room for all the mids, but all the toms and especially rims/sticks are smth u have to rly try to hear properly or maybe I just feel like they dont quite match the power of all those heavy mids you got going on.
Still one of the best subs for sure, verygj.
i have neaarly all of these plugns myself, so as I looked down your list I was excited to see how you were going to use them! This feels very jazzy and smooth depsite the grungy guitars and bass, bit muddy as it is, so my mind goes to something like an alternate-world Morphine track? I like the vibes here. Someone else mentioned Darren Korb and I'd have to agree with that. RoR is the clear inspiration.
Having that 8DIO sax (or atleast the Soundpaint version of it) there's an art to getting it to play along to what you want. It's also mixed in a strange way that makes it standout in a mix unless you correct or structure a mix to include similar frequencies, so good job making it mix in well here.
Lovely to listen to and written very lyrically - you could easily put lyrics over this. Keep it up dude!
Yeah that 8Dio sax is a little bastard and needed quite some kicking to fit where it should sit. After giving it some relistening with other headphones that make problems in the bass region much more apparent and also with some other input from this jam I already started giving it a retouch. Hopefully this will get much better sounding in a bit of time.
Pretty epic dude! The djent-y guitar lends itself really well to the theme, great choice there. The drums could come forward a little, they are somewhat masked by the guitar. There's also a hissing that comes through pretty loud during the quiet sections. I like the sexy saxaphone haha, it gives the whole thing an almost film noir vibe and rounds out the personality of the piece really nicely. Big fan!
Like FoxHyode mentioned, feels just a bit too bassy, I only had the feel at the starting parts of the song, but might be my ears just got used to the loudness later in the song.
The vibe is nice and having listened to quite a bit of the RoR soundtrack lately (for probably obvious reasons 😉), this fits that vibe well. Also had the feel that if this had singing on it, something like the falsetto ish style that Darren Korb uses would fit this like a glove.
The 8dio sax sounded surpisingly good! have to say that before hearing it and just reading that its from 8dio I was half expecting it to sound a bit worse since I've had a some mixed experiences with some of their stuff.
Good stuff!
You did a really solid job. Your mix is really clean, composition is nice. The electric guitar is nice and meaty in the mix, very skillfully compressed.
I thought the sax worked really well.
Great work!
Awesome job, Like I said previously I really like the synth arps its fantastic, I appreciate that you changed the guitar texture and toned it down a notch it sounds much better. if we look at the overall track it feels a bit too bassy overall, I think it works in the beginning to set the tone but its definitely missing something in the high spectrums to balance it out, especially the quiet part at 2:20 is a perfect place to get some highs. The Storytelling is great I really like all the dynamics you put your ideas well in placed. I think that was the main issue in general that you had, you have great ideas but putting them together to get the bigger picture was something I feel was missing, but this one felt as a whole track. Great work !
A really cool instrument combo, I especially liked how the sax complements the guitar in the first section.
The mixing is solid overall, I would maybe add some high frequencies in the 8-12 khz range, either with a parametric EQ (Arturia’s are great for that) or higher-pitch ambient textures. I also noticed some seemingly unintentional clipping on the drum kick in the second part.
That’s just my two cents though and completely subjective. I really enjoyed the composition and the unique approach to instrumentation. Great work!
I do like the innovation here, the sax is interesting, though I think that perhaps it could've been switched out with perhaps another loud instrument, or maybe even double-downed and dueted from 3:50ish on, because it definitely could've gone harder.
Overall, a great piece and well-composed battle track, and I think the mix is really good. The instrumentation with the synths nails that old-school dark vibe.
Hey Simishcj, thank you for your critique. The original Idea was to switch it out on the finale but decided against it for consistency reasons. But you’re more than bang on with doubling the sax with some other melodic instrument. Sadly that part only got finished on the day before submission 💀. Hopefully I will be able to implement it after this jam for the final release on the other platforms. Keep int on!
Oh my goodness EinelTheFox, what have you created here? Totally here the Risk of Rain 2 vibes in this. Defiantly would be a good boss fight song. This is really some great work you have done with that deep dark guitar and the sax. They really came through. The only I didn't quite like were those metal glass sounding dongs around 4 min 20 sec. They seemed a bit out of place. At least to my ears they didn't seem to fit. The rest was outstanding. Again, it is a pleasure to listen to your awesome work! Great track you got here!
Hey Squirrel, thank you so much for your kind words. And yeah you are right. Those icy shard things are quite noticeable on that part. But they are actually all around the song for adding some high end texture, since everything else is quite dark sounding, I might just need to take them off a notch so they are more subtle like everywhere else.
Sax works really well. Even if you loaded the VST with a smirk, that's the soul of the jam.
I think the sax doesn't quite sit in the mix clearly in the second half, it's almost lost here and there.
but maybe you wanted that. I never even got far enough for solos in mine, too busy trying to make lightning.
Well done!
I really like the guitar rhythms/patterns in every section and the saxophone performance sounds great. It reminds me of the Hades soundtracks. I personally would enjoy if the guitars were a bit "crisper" or if the quieter section in the middle had some more variety, but i think it sounds great either way
SICK AS HELL DUDE!!!!
I love those little dings you got in there on the higher frequencies! You can barely hear them, but they add so much texture to the track overall; They're REALLY satisfying. The guitar of course, just goes phenomenally hard, and I don't know if that's a clarinet or what, but it is the most immaculate thing to hear going off. (I think there's like an oboe or some kind of flute in there too, super neat)
Awesome submission dude! super stylish!
Thank you so much for your kind words. BTW it is just a Tenor Sax for the whole song with some octave (down and up) delays in the background to give it some broader texture. So maybe that’s what you've might picked up as something oboe like in the background.
ahhhhh I see haha, it sounds quite similar to an oboe instrument I've got on decent sampler, Sax sounds CLEAN, my dude