Originally Posted by Realwild-Terry

No I love the brutal truth bro ..This is why I posted here .

- T

Originally Posted by Realwild-Terry

here is an Email I got from M Frient Tim King bass Player for LOiL www.soil-music.com This is the Input I appreciate from a true musician that has been on tuor with ozzy/Static X Damage Plane etc...

Here is his email.

Terry -

I believe in being very honest when it comes to music cause it helps noone out to be like "yeah it rules" if there are helpful things taht can be said....so with that in mind:

some really cool stuff in there....they are really onto something....the critiques I have are:

1. some of the riffs sound like power metal stuff
2. I don't hear any real vocal hooks....i can't remember any of the choruses...this would all be fine if tehy were a band like killswitch engage, but tehy are a more commercial band taht needs some kind of memorable chorus....

just my opinion...take it for what you think it is worth....they have potential, just need to be properly guided...

-tim

Originally Posted by disregard

Engineering comments only:

I like the compressor on the vocals but it's being overused. Try staged compression. Sounds like trademark devon townsend reverb-usage, but i think it's overdone. I have a feeling it's to compensate for not-quite-up-to-spec songwriting. If this is for submission to a record company, vocals need to go WAY up. If this is for airplay, vocals need to go up a little bit. There is no need to bury this vocalist. He's pretty good. He just needs to be doubled in parts. If he sucked, he would still need to be higher, but he could be washed out in overdubs. The guitar sound in the intro needs to be more aggressive for radio play. NOT more distorted, perhaps just less compressed (there is NO attack on the notes). He'll have to pull out some mud to make the guitars not sound shitty if he rolls off the compression.

It may be too late for performance comments, but I will give you some anyway:

Drums: the drummer (you?) have a tendancy to speed up and slow down, specially during fills, and very much during ride fills. You might consider using strong bell hits instead of double strokes on the ride, or double stroked bells to differentiate them. You may (or may not) be playing to a metronome, but it does not prevent you from going out of time within a fill, or within the bar. Fills are uninteresting. This could be partly due to the horrible tom sound in the mix. Get your engineer to play with those toms big-time.

Bass: The producer should use new-york gating/compression to tighten up the bassist where he is not matching your kick properly. The only time when the bass *REALLY* cuts is when he's out of time.

Guitars: nice tones. Either good pre-production or you just have a good ear. You might want to check the intonation on the guitar. Your harmonics sound flat compared to your fretting. You could be fretting too hard.

Vocals: Really let loose. This isn't bad, but you can go further, cause record production always makes vocals sound *less* aggressive than they are.

Predictions: You will *not* get a major deal off this recording. You might be able to impress a small management company that will help you make some money off your local shows, and that's a good thing.

Are you guys good looking? If not, get in shape. You will not be heard unless they like your picture. Fuck the charts, fuck all that shit. I had lots of top charting songs (Nationwide Radio) and record labels didn't give a shit cause we're ugly. Now I write songs for good looking guys, and work out when I get a chance. Hopefully, I'll be fit before I'm too old.

Labels pick bands like I pick GF's. First, they've got to be good looking. If they pass that test, then I find out if they're talented.