Nerve 9 - Living Lie (M&F)

[Digitaldruglord]

I like the kind of hip-hop drum tone. It caught me off guard at first but grew on me. And it just shows another direction this song can go in.
Overall, l I like it. I do think the drums are a bit in front and feel like the focus and the lead vocals feel a bit neglected in the background. Everything sounds big and there's a lot of interesting ear candy. I just wish the lead vocals were and big as everything else. It sounds really good. When everything is happening like the sections with the background vocals or at the outro everything balances out and really works well. It has great energy. The vocal/lyrics need more love.

Thanks for the listen RoyM: The note in her vocal in the Chorus "Give up this Living Lie" is very sharp and in parts of the verse, the dynamics of her vocal performance also pokes strong notes through.. so the leveling of the vocal here was based on finding a balance of embedding it enough where each word is audible, while hosting the dynamic range of the vocal performance to fit and not poke out hard when she hits the higher registers. Because it's a 2020 Rock Ballad.. I wanted to keep some hard hitting core to the song which are the drums and toms.. which carries the feel into later in the song when the guitars rain in heavy... I couldn't get a result when I first tried being shy on these parts, the later parts of the song would wipe out the energy of the beginning parts, it's a 5+min song.. when I tried the more aggressive strategy up front, this gave me a road to finish the song to me what feels more to sounding like a single complete song rather than a song with different energies that could confuse the overall listening experience. 

As I maintain, it's a tough tune, when it comes up in my review playlist, in line with the other songs in there, I'm happy where it landed.