Craze - Nemesis The Warlock

I have a love-hate relationship with this remix. The intro until 1:11 - love it. The part between 1:11-1:45 - hate it. The bass guitar heavy arrangement between 3:05-3:57 - love it. The lead guitar arrangement between 4:02-4:31 - love it. The chaos of 5:04-5:35 - hate it. The ending from 5:35 - love it.

This remix seems to suffer from too much variety. The symphonic Metallica (a la S&M) style really fits this tune. The purely symphonic parts are too simple and too dry to be enjoyable. The chaotic anarchist part sounds too much out of tune to my ears.

All in all, kudos for daring to be different and for going for something completely different, but it's not really fleshed out here and stylistically it seems to go all over the map in a relatively short amount of time. There are some great gems of ideas in there, though - next time concentrate on those.

Ok… I've listened quite many times on this arrangement now, and I'd like to write my first review ever… we'll see how it turns out. 😊

I just had to write something more about this tune than a few lines.

To start with, it's a complex arrangement indeed. My first impression is that someone tried very hard but made something average. I had to listen a few times more to see the potential and what's good and bad, and the more I listened to it, the more interesting it is.

So here's what I think about it, going throw all the parts (yeah, many parts, it's a damn long title song).

0:01 Great start and dramatic string.

00:31 Ahh… nostalgia! (I'd like to have different gong sound)

1:04 The melody drowns a bit in the rest.

1:12 This part is nice and sad.

1:48 Hitchcock like sound, I'll get an ill omen feeling. Good stuff. Then the coming part from 1:50 is kind of the main theme of the whole song. The original SID is more aggressive here. You are still keeping to the sad feeling mood here. Well, it's OK, it works… but I'd like more aggressiveness here.

2:25 Great - this part is really nice! The solo string sounds really authentic and the build-up of rock guitars in the background is creative.

3:05-4:07. The weakest part in the arrangement. The rocky sound and classic strings doesn't really match in this part… or it's something else. Can't really put my finger on it.

3:27 Things are starting to get a bit more interesting, but still a bit weak.

3:58: It gets more intensive and actually better.

4:07: Now we're rolling again!

4:33… the main theme here with lots of pulse and aggressiveness. Gotta love this! I'm getting goose bumps here. 😊

4:43 The strings play an interesting pattern here.

4:55 This part is OK.

5:05 We have a disharmony here, but I guess this is intentional? Reading your web page I am guessing that you are tearing up the harmonies with the guitar here to make the listener less comfortable and have merciless feeling? I like the idea (_IF_ it's intentional that is…).

5:16-5:35 This part is OK but not great.

5:35 Awesome. This is beautiful.

5:55 And the fade out from rock guitars to the original starting style. This is truly beautiful.

6:16 And the ending is totally there, just the way I'd like it.

I'm gonna be a bit hard on you for a start. You say on your website that you spent 80 hours on the whole tune. Ok… then I ask myself: why on earth spend 80 hours on a great arrangement and then NOT spend the additional 20 hours to polish and finish the work with good mastering and fix up the details?? It feels like some sound frequencies collide here and there, and some string sounds are a bit dark and blurry at times. I have to agree with some other comment - why not get help from someone that is good at mastering. This arrangement deserves something better. It's somewhere between average and good, but I'll give you Good since I'm in a generous mood.

All in all, I think you follow the original SID well and the feeling of the original tune is definitely there. This is probably Rob Hubbard's darkest tune and one of the most slaughtery and violent games made to C64. I think you are setting the feeling right from the beginning. So… nostalgia factor: outstanding.

Now to the artistic part. I can see that you have struggled a lot and I don't think you succeeded entirely, but that belongs to the technical execution. The will to do something different is there which I value a lot. You tried to mix classic symphonic style with rock… and I can hear that it was pretty difficult. I am having a hard time to make up my mind about what I should give you here… Very good or Outstanding… I think this tune competes well with Reyns version. It's a long tune, and I'd say it's artistic all the way and it has succeeded to

still keep my interest although it was a bit difficult to sink into from the start. But not many songs here give me goose bumps, and knowing that this tune is still great to listen to after 10-15 times of listening, I'm gonna give you and outstanding on artistic impression.

(By the way, about Reyns version, I still think he's the king. I'd say Reyn has: Technical-outstanding, Artistry-outstanding, Nostalgia: very good).

I listened to another of your tunes here, GhostnGoblins, which plays in a different league. Comparably primitive stuff. It's interesting to see such leaps in complexity from one tune to another. I am interested to hear what you will be able to compose in the future.