My band has a new single posted on our page, I was wondering if I could get some honest opinions on the mix and overall sound of it.

www.myspace.com/estrus

The new track is "No Despair", the others are like 3 years old, so don't bother with them.

Thanks very much!

holy crap!! It's Carl!:carl:Frickin awesome!

You guys have got a good tone. definitely got the scene sound down.

'cept it makes you sound like everyone else. and will someone tell me when all these bands will stop using blatant scale exercises as solos and transitions? keep working on your musical direction a bit more or you'll be an opening band forever.

so, shortly put. Nice work! but keep working.

I wish the scene kids would think that we belonged with them, but they seem to hate us.

I appreciate your truthfulness. I've been pushing for a long time to add some more progressive elements, but as the drummer, that doesn't shine through too much, no matter how hard I try.

Thanks again!

I'd appreciate more comments, so if anyone else has a few minutes to spare, let me know what you think!

as far as progressive elements go, try replacing your breakdowns with disjointed riffs ( 7/8 8/8 7/8 8/8) and a few clean passages here and there wouldn't hurt. the hardest thing is to make it seem natural, and not forced.

prog also has alot of space for DrumNBass type of passage, especially in first verses or bridges after a certain breakdown and stuff. makes for a nice groove and can probably hook some people

I've been listening to stuff like Anekdoten, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, proggy stuff, its starting to really rub off on me. Next batch of songs we write will be garaunteed 100% more progressive.

Thanks for all your input!

Overall, the mix sounds good. Your kick drum sounds a bit dry though. Maybe it's because I'm coming from a different musical background, but you need to verb up the drums or add some chorus to them to thicken them up.

I agree with Seb, the arpeggio/scale work transitions are really bland and don't really move the song along.

For some different prog influences, listen to some Roundabout by Yes.

Singer sounds pretty good though. I like it.

Actually, pump up the drums in the mix, they're too far back and the guitar and keys overpower them.

I will pass that along to the guitar section. But honestly, our tracks don't usually sound like this, our stuff can really vary, we have some stuff thats very melodic and has more clean sections, and then we have a few tracks that are just trying to be heavy.

The other guys thought this was the best one to put up from the new material, but I disagree.

Anyway, I appreciate all the advice, and I will be keeping it all in mind when we go back to the studio for our final meeting with the producer.