This is going to be a longer critique so I give the TLDR here first:
It is a very ambient and nice, when a bit shot, idea that has many elements that worked very well and were a nice creative approach. But some that might not work in its favour.
While there will be quite a bit talk that can sound negative. I’d like to emphasise that this is nothing against you or the song in general. Please see them more as subjective guiding notes that I think could improve the listening experience. It should be noted that the overall listening experience is in no way bad or negative. While the points might sound much there are more specific details rather than major problems.
- What has worked well: The string like textures with the modulating reverb tails are a nice touch and set up the mood nicely. Also the sound FX of when you start the chanting has a nice organic sound that worked well in the situation. Also the general Elements sounded clean.
- What didn’t work for me: The stereo width falls apart pretty drastically since the center is underrepresented in the beginning and the vocals very much to the sides making it almost L-C-R sounding rather than a wide stereo. The tremolo effect was quite distracting and took some attention from the other voices. Having the wet/dry mix more on the dryer side would have worked more in its favour. Also, The vocals are compressed quite heavy with taking a breath getting quite loud. Two points would be to first clean up the recordings by either cutting out breathing or by fading into the recording to keep them at a minimal. With compression it is better to use multiple compressors working in series rather than using one that works to hard and compressing the whole signal. Also, a wet/dry signal (parallel use) might not work that well since it feels you need to compress it more making it sound too strong. So I’d strongly advice to use a 100% wet usage for vocals.
- Singing: This is more of some advice rather than a down right critique, since I’ve done that in a semi professional way in my past. While the chanting sounded nice it feels like its tanking the back burner rather than creating the dramaticism it should. This is mostly due to the lack of projection in the voice. My former teacher described it best by comparing the feeling of the sound of your voice starting inside your mouth rather than in front of it. A nice training is to take your finger and imagine to sing where your finger is. Start by right at your chin and start pointing more in front of you. Keep in mind your body and hip should stay grounded and relaxed. Also your belly mussels should be lightly tensed like pushing your breast out a bit but not to tensed up like showing of a six pack. And your air should feel like it is right between your belly and breast. So when breathing out you can take long and controlled breaths. This is more about noticing how your body feels while trying to sing more out without starting to necessarily getting louder. A second point would be the time alignment of different recordings. Getting a bombastic sound means most often getting the timing tight. So either the editing needs to be top or the recording needs to be well timed. Best practice for getting it by recording would be to NOT listening to your processed sound but to reference a click or the song. You should either feel confident to sing without listening yourself thru the headphones or by using a direct out from your sound card (most of them nowadays have a function so you hear your mic input). Reason is that every effect or plugin in the chain will add additional latency to general latency of your soundcard that needs to digitize, get in your daw and then be converted back to analogue to be heard. This goes in a same boat as time alignment but when recording multiple vocals singing the same lyrics it might be helpful to sing half of the takes or singers without the main consonants (t, s, k, d) since those will be most noticeable when the alignment isn’t 100% there and at times feel overpowering. In general I think keeping the mix simple would have worked out for you since less is more on those regards and with what I’ve seen in the devlog it felt more like you lost yourself in different details rather than having a simple mixed basis to work from that. While most mixing tricks sound fancy and what not most are not really necessary in my experience or are edge cases for certain situations. So my best advice is to keep it as simple as possible (looking at analogue workflow is a nice guide line in that regard)
Still, let me emphasise again that I liked your work and that you did well, since my critique might come over a bit harsh (which isn't my intention).