Neophyte-Ronin's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[No Chance]

They still do this after all these years. The mixing has only improved, as well!

Bad-Man-Incorporated responds:

Haha, yeah man!

[A Haunting v2]

Remastered version of something cool from your library? WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY REVIEW THIS?

Better than the original--actually coherent and the doom-synth is still there.

sapoman responds:

Not sure why no one reviews my stuff. I really, really appreciate any feedback, but I think my music may be an acquired taste. At other times, I really don't give a shit. It's my expression and I share it freely.

[Roar( KP guitar cover )]

You know, I've always wondered what would happen if Katy went Metal like how Taylor went full fuckin' pop (most of the widespread or radio-friendly pieces are this). It wouldn't improve sales, but it would be fascinating regardless. Most pop songs, when you think about it, could use a heavy metal cover (no need to change the tempo--that's the punk or thrash). In fact, the lyrics I hear from Katy actually lend themselves to metal pretty well--the tightrope between eerie and erotic--and she often sings frankly about topics like mental illness, interpersonal strife, empowerment. It's just that she sugarcoats her material with pop flavor to get it under the radar, which is probably why all the metalheads despise her--the secret of her success.

But I wouldn't get riled up. Frankly, most of the pop musicians tend to suck, but Katy was one of the first that I'd listen to. Maybe it's just because she's different-sounding from most pop or maybe that I've listened to the same five or six Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd tracks on album-oriented channels that I channel-switch. Yeah, I said that: I prefer listening to Katy over fucking Led Zeppelin. But think about inundation--what you listen to on the radio while driving or such and then think that the same few tracks by any band or musician will eventually hurt after a while.

So I say this with sincere respect: Katy isn't as horrible as we think. It's just that her format might be wrong. While most lady-fronted metal bands like Huntress (who's bipolar, which explains a lot about her sound and approach) or Evanescence land very few hits, you always have the Eurpoean Lacuna Coil/Nightwish crowd--a crowd which makes sense for Katy given her own ambition and scope. Everybody hates on pop stars for superficial reasons (popularity, unoriginality, shambles of a personal life, etc.) but don't forget that they're human and likely open to new ideas or ways to make a track work. They're never complacent by design--that's their environment talking, actually (the music industry).

But fuck yeah, metal! I think it's an unpolished in-a-few-hours piece, but I smirked. Might as well ask when you're going to submit practice tracks and make them downloadable again, 'cause I still want another good metal soundtrack for Doom (unless Newgrounds has some kind of new policy regarding playback counts and downloads, like their policy on playback counts when you want to nix the tracks from the catalog).

[Off With Their Heads]

Did you know that the soundtrack to the latest Doom game sounds similar to this? Hell, I would put these tracks (all of them--EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM) onto a .pk3 which allows a Source Port to play these tracks in place of the MIDI's featured in the game. There'd be a Final Doom version, a Memento Mori version, a Brutal Doom version....

And it's just a WIP, which might explain why I can't download the fucking thing. (Or you horded this track for an album, which I wouldn't be surprised by.)

[In time]

Do you know what this riff reminds me of, in a way?

The Goonies II.

My favorite game.

The parts where you're searching a room for something to help you survive and to rescue your friends from this far-expanded labyrinth of horrors that just appear in puffs of smoke right before your eyes. Are you tripping on cave gas? Is the bipolar side of Sean Astin (who played Mikey in the movie) churning out an excess of hallucinations? Why are crows and ghosts haunting him while the worst fears (snakes, spiders, BATS...) manifesting like that? And why must he rescue a girl from the sea whom he has never met before? And why is this setup so difficult for some people to accomplish (especially in one sitting)?

But anyway, there's also a hidden side to the psyche unveiled from the trippiness of this piece. I think I can also attribute it to beholding (or rescuing) Annie the Mermaid, who professes her love for Mikey once he does so. It may be primordial, like Joseph Campbell's theory about "The Hero's Journey" as the oldest narrative, whereupon the protagonist surpasses the aforementioned Threshold Guardians, delivers a great boon (for the Goonies' cases, freedom from their tormentors, the Fratelli clan and their hideout), and even meets a goddess (Annie).

Still, it's an incomplete-sounding song, which only adds to the memory because you're still in a room and you haven't gone anywhere, struck, anything, taken anything... just you and whatever tools or implements you salvaged along the way. Just a feeling of emptiness and anxiety from the track which, I believe, makes it an excellent soundtrack piece, like practically all your works from the early days.

So kudos to you--The track is pretty damn good for reminding me of my childhood in a good way. The Goonies II, regardless of faults, was good enough to change my life--rather, it solidified the foundation of what I think is a fair and good personal philosophy. Also, nobody else was humble enough to play it since it is often perceived as a cash-grab compared to the franchise, which lives on today in stupid Truffle-Shuffle t-shirts sold at Target or something.

Or that YTMND of Captain Picard in a white tux mowing Chunk down (God, does he ever get any respect?).

But Mikey will win, in time I suppose, and return the Goonies to freedom and the Fratellis to jail. Will he continue searching the ruins and caverns of our world for buried treasure? Given they put the movie's true sequel (where filaments of the first cast play parents of a new group of young explorers) in development hell, we may never know.

[Black Friday 2013]

God, where have you been after all these years?

(Probably fuckin' lurking, but I ain't gonna complain).

Beegeezee responds:

LOL! Nice to see you're still trolling around these parts! Actually, I've spent all these years getting my life together. Now I'm semi-stable, married, my own house, two cars, and a doge! I'm now getting back to the jams. It's gonna be back to the usual antics for sure, but hopefully I'll be able to class the place up a bit with better skill and more thought provoking lyrics. It's been a long musical journey for me and it's only going to get better.

(p.s) I was kinda hoping you'd show up! HAHA!

[From Darkness Shone Light]

You should make a series of these. Music soundtracks are dime-a-dozen 'round here, while this could demonstrate your willingness to create something that would really grip the audience. It's excellent, by the way. Already I imagine a nightmarish dream sequence that ends with someone awaking in the park. Sort of an "In Medias Res" movie introduction.

SunStarsMoon responds:

Thank you for your feedback!
I enjoy doing those, but since there's no proper place to upload them on newgrounds, I'm afraid it would be a bit misleading. They should add a sound design option ; so far it's only song or loop !
I'll consider uploading more of them in the future if people like them, thanks!

[Hell-0 Toosday]

All day Wednesday (today), I kept thinking it was Thursday. I got straightened out, of course, after realizing I blank out Tuesdays by thinking it's a Wednesday. (The Voice was on--that was the next good thing from that day, other than a positivity meeting and maybe playing some Blades of Avernum scenarios). Anyway, this reminded me that Tuesday happened some time this week and I was blissful in my forgetting that fact. In other words, thanks for the fucking reminder.

Good though!

Bad-Man-Incorporated responds:

At least you were reminded with some earhole raping. :) Thanks brother, appreciate it muchly.

[Death Metalingus]

Thanks for blowing out my fucking ears, buddy. That'll teach me to keep my speakers at the mid-high range when I click on a link to one of yours.

Obligatory Five.

Demon-Slayer12 responds:

Haha, sorry about that. I love the Izotope Ozone 5 Maximizer, it makes everything as loud as possible without clipping. I like when my headphones make my ears ring. =3

[A Love Unforgotten]

I 5'd and Downloaded (actually, I always Download, so that's a moot point). What more do you want out of me?

Oh, right. This is pretty solid. I'm still debating about which musician's back catalog I'm going to use for a project, and you keep popping into my head. These days, there's actual stable leitmotifs instead of constantly shifting moods within seconds of each other, like what you did years ago. That constitutes development. Also, this got the flavor of a courtly romance singing all over it.

So yeah, I don't know who the fuck keeps Zero-Voting you, but it's easy to know why: your stuff tends to kick lots of ass, you're a long-runner, and the top ten per day or week doesn't really matter all that much. The real Flash author pours through the long lists of songs and, if he thinks one has potential, looks up the musician's profile and checks out the list of work as a whole before moving onto the next candidate, downloading as he or she goes along. Quite frankly, no-one should worry so long as their pieces kick ass; it's only a matter of time before someone finds it.

You've been around long enough for zero-voting to be an annoyance, not a merciless deluge. If it feels like that, it's only because you're a long-timer whose skills are notorious throughout the Audio Portal. Ergo, DON'T LET THEM BOTHER YOU!

Bosa responds:

Very true, and thanks. It's good to hear from you after so long, and your 'Big Fat Tutorial' is legendary here on Newgrounds.

I'll keep my chin up and I'll keep moving forward. I can't wait to see what kind of flash you come up with next!

And thanks again.