Beware, there’s a monster on the loose:
again very harsh upper mid / lower treble action from you. i notice this with most of your mixes in varying fashion. i can’t like listening loud to this, and this is on headphones with extra smoothened/veiled treble, this tune actually being the first I encountered with them that would have too much & cause discomfort at proper volume, instead of just sounding slightly ugly like other too aggressive noises would on them.
maybe you work on the stuff at low volume, because then the very aggressive treble would actually sound desirable, but belive me if you turn it up it will be too much. or your speakers have some weakness in the freqs in question, or your ears have a little damage there. you should investigate this and compare a bit with pro mixes designed to sound sweet at 100dba, so you can compensate i.e. mix into a boosting eq, so you will notice when it is too much. Look at the equal loudness curves, you will see the dip ranging from 2-7k where the ears tend to be most sensitive, those freqs will also hurt the most if there is too much in a mix and playback at high volume. Somewhere in your chain there must be a weakness in the upper part of that range. or maybe, you are just hard-headed.
I did some ‘improvements’, does it sound better now?
Hard to tell without direct comparison…but now I am able to listen without discomfort. But could also be that I already knew what to expect and adjusted subconsciously & your changes being very subtle, just lowering the freqs in check a little. The edgy timbre seems the same for most sounds, but I think I remember it to be more aggressive when listening some days ago. 2:14 and 2:18 and after it has some stronger high freq clank, but not yet hurting just close before, later on compression seems to reduce the bite of that sound to comfortable level. Its a cool sound, like a hint of rattling metal chains the monster is bound with, it was just a little strong for my taste, especially the first time I heard the tune before you said to have made some adjustments. Bass is also really strong on the tune, but clear enough and it works well for me. Though I’ve not really grown into the headphones enough yet to be able tell with at least some amount of surety.
I mean this is probably just nitpicking. But with certain reason, because the frequencies in question are those where ears tend to be most sensitive & thus could result in undesirable sensations for some listeners (particularly those not deaf already by exposure to too much loud aggressive music…) when played back really loud.