Ok, you asked for constructive criticism, so I'm going to give it to you. Much of it is bad. At 5 months, most of it is going to be, but they need to hear this stuff and work on it BEFORE they put their name out there and start handing out CDs to people. First impressions are EVERYTHING in the music industry, and this isn't a very good first impression at all.
The first song:
The buildup is crap. The tone of the bass, or piano, or whatever that instrument is doesn't mix at all with the distorted lead guitar. It's too slow for the changeup. Moving further into the buildup, the two guitars muddy each other up too much. They're both distorted about the same and its like listening to two people talking at the same tone at the same time, but both trying to say something different. They're both playing lead, when one should be playing rhythm guitar.
The drummer sounds like he cant hold the same beat for more than 4 or 5 repetitions. Too much switching, and hes trying too hard. He needs to learn how to hold a beat and do a switchover. The switchover from the end of the intro into the verse part of the song is seriously BAD.
I agree with the general consensus that the singer isn't good. He's not horrible, but he needs to practice working on his vocal range. He sounds like he wants to stretch his vocal arms out but he's purposely holding himself into a range which simply doesn't sound good at all. He could be a lot better with more practice, possibly a vocal coach. When he DOES go out of his range, you can tell WHY he holds himself back. I don't want to slam the guy, but the higher vocal parts are simply horrible. They're hard to listen to.
He needs to be more consistant with his delivery, he goes from singing loudly to screaming to softly far too often and not in a meaninful way. Tell him to practice doing the 'do re me...." scale in different octaves, and at different levels of volume and duration. He should do this every single day no matter how annoying it is. A good time to practice is in the bathroom during his daily shower/shave/etc routine.
Basic song structure does not exist in this song at all. It's a jumbled mess of just... stuff..
Look, an example of a song goes like this :
Intro > Verse > Pre-Chorus> Chorus > Verse > Pre-Chorus > * Breakdown > * Chorus > Maybe another verse, chorus if you lose the chorus after the breakdown > Outro > end
* interchangable depending on how the song ends. You can lose the prechorus before breakdown or altogether depending on the style of music as well. These are interchangable, but pretty much every song written follows this form or something very similar.
This is what I'm hearing (in this case > notes transition, -- notes bad transition) :
Intro -- Verse > Pre-chorus > Verse -- Prechorus -- can't tell -- can't tell -- Breakdown which sounds like the song should be ending -- outro -- (pre)chorus? -- another outro? > end of song
That might not be accurate, but thats because the song as it stands is just way too hard to follow. A listener should be able to pick these parts apart fairly easily. Even deathmetal has this stuff. The transitions are wierd and sound like they were just thrown in. The outro should be a definate end, short and sweet. Its dragged out way too long. If you want to drag out the song, do it during the breakdown. The chorus should be repeated with only minor variations if any, this song sounds like everything changes throughout the whole song, making it hard to follow.
Basically, a song is supposed to tell a story with music. This story reads like a poorly written x86 assembler language manual.
Second song:
This one starts out a lot better than the first one. The singers voice is still bad, which was expected, but it goes along a lot better with the music at least.
The song structure is much improved from the first. The drop for the breakdown should have come sooner, without that "okay blah blah blah" end to the chorus. If you listen to this song's structure compared to the first ones, you will understand what I am saying about the first.
They have a REALLY BAD HABIT of dragging out the fvcking outro. The outro should stop when the guitars end. What does that part at the end of the song add to what has already been done? absolutely nothing.
Overall I have far fewer complaints about the second song, since it sounds like a lot more went into it. The music sounds much better. The song structure again definately needs work, but it isn't horrible like the first, both things are easy fixes.
Definately work on shortening the songs. They need to tell the story and end it, songs for most bands should be short 'stories', not war and peace sized epics. Leave the epic songs to when they have either a producer with a profound understanding of music theory or someone in the band with a college degree in music.
If you don't mind me asking, who did the actual production and mixing? If they hired someone, they shouldn't hire them again because the producer should have flagged pretty much everything I told you. If they did the production themselves, they should try to find someone getting a degree in production to work on it, they should be able to find someone who will gladly take them on just for the experience.
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