I've been having a rough time with my mixes recently, I thought I'd lost my mixing skill completely. However, this mix proved me wrong. I am very proud of this mix, especially since I tried to minimize the use of drum samples as much as I could, to the point where it almost sound identical to each other when I mute the samples. The one you'll be listening to has the samples, though. As I said, I was in a bad time before this, so maybe my ear just fooled me. I am truly in need of an honest ear. If you have any suggestions or comments to give, please kindly do so!
Overall, I like most of the general balances you got with the mix here - You've got the vocals, kick, snare and bass nice and prominent in the mix, which is a good platform to build from.
It sounds like you've used a lot of distortion and saturation to colour the sounds. For the instruments, it mostly works and it gives a nice aggressive feel to things. However, it sounds pretty extreme and distracting on the vocals - it also adds a sense of unattractive boxiness to them that veils the vocal and tends to make the whole mix sound a bit dull and muffled as a result. Maybe a more subtle approach with vocal saturation would suit this genre better.
When the "drop" into the first chorus happens around 54 secs, the mix compression kind of "collapses" the song for a moment. I suspect it may be some kind of a bass drop triggering the mix compressor at that point. Controlling the dynamic of whatever is causing that at its source is the key to avoiding that kind of glitch.
Drum-wise, the snare and kick are sounding quite decent, although the snare has quite a bit of boxiness to it as well. Pulling out somewhere around 400 hz might help with that. The snare is also a little dry sounding, so it doesn't integrate into surrounding instrumentation as well as it could, and it tends to sound too far "forward" in the soundstage. I think the drums are too loud in the balance overall - Perhaps just less level on the kick and snare would help.
The toms seem to disappear in the drum fill at 1:03, so you might want to look into what is happening there. They appear to be intact during the bridge though, where they sound good, if a little dry and lacking some sustain.
Overall, some promising approaches and techniques that might benefit from a little more detailed eq and balancing work, as well as a lighter touch with saturation/distortion.
