ReMix:Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue Version "Alpha, the Defect" 4:19

Newcomer Iron Mage (Rus Gordon) debuts on OCR with a crunchy, satisfying prog metal arrangement of MMBN3:

"I was surprised how funky, fast-paced, and weird (for a final boss theme) this song was when I first heard it. As a challenge, I wanted to pick a song that I wouldn't be able to turn into a typical "metal cover" verbatim, so to speak, so I had to stretch out what was there, since the original theme is just under 1 minute long."

It's good to challenge yourself, and even better when you rise to meet said challenge with a mix this energized, creative, & spontaneous. Aggressive, visceral guitar work pairs quite nicely with crispy natural drums - production clarity is superb, with good attention paid to panning, EQ, etc. - plus the arrangement itself is dynamic, pivoting a couple times in neat ways. MindWanderer writes:

"Nice! Lots of creative original guitar work. The "stretching" was perfectly appropriate and was done without making this feel repetitive. The intro being panned hard right was a little off-putting, but that was short lived, and otherwise I felt the stereo was pretty well balanced despite some extreme panning of individual elements. Ending is a little abrupt but not overly so. Overall very nice job."

Sir_NutS and a couple other judges were iffy on production; what I interpreted as general clarity they took for sparseness/dryness, which I can see being a thing. I liked the drier, more stripped-down sound, but your mileage may vary. In spite of that concern, Mike writes:

"...The arrangement and performances are fantastic though. The mix felt a bit straightforward at the start but it evolves over time with signature and pace changes, not to mention the rich tones and articulations provided by the guitar performances."

I liked it; I think Rus did a great job of extrapolating complexity and a substantive extended arrangement from the source, the production struck me as being open & clean (while still shredding), and the guitar performances were on-point & lively. Great debut from Iron Mage, hope to hear more in the future!