This one wastes no time and begins with a guitar riff on C# major (I believe) and an adaptation of the first main melody of the source plays on piano. It's interesting (and kinda weird!) hearing the source transposed to a major key. Timing on the drums seems a bit loose at times, with some kick or snare hits feeling a bit ahead. Piano sound is heavily EQed and ends up sounding like if it was on a different soundscape. It also sounds somewhat mechanical. Drums are kinda hot on the mix, each snare hit comes with a lot of rattle that stays for long. Guitar tones are the best part here, they sound great. The mix in general also feels heavily compressed, with a ton of pumping (for example, at 0:49 you can hear the compression). At 0:49 we move to the second main melody of the source, which sounds great in your adaptation. Issues of the previous section persist here, with the mix noticeably pumping on several kick hits. I really like the arpeggios and scales on the backing here. At 1:27 we return to the first section and 2:08 repeats the second section. At 2:45 there's a guitar solo over a guitar riff, the simpler mix works better here. A synth eventually joins, turning this into a unison. At 3:19 we return to the main riff for a few bars before we repeat the second section again. For the outro we feature both main sections together, with the melody continuing to play over the initial guitar riff.

Arrangement here is pretty good, the idea of transposing Hot-Head Bop is fun and it works well in general, especially on the second main melody of the source. I don't really have many notes, it's a creative idea and it's well executed.

Production is more mixed. On the bright side, the rhytm guitar tone is great and you can hear most elements on the mix clearly, even with some of the mix/master issues I highlighted above. As for those issues, my main one is the compression, it's not active all the time but there's several spots where it's very noticeable, with 0:49 and the first kicks of the section that comes after being very clear. You can absolutely hear the volume being crushed by the limiting. Other stuff I noted is the piano sound, very unnatural and completely separate from the rest of the mix. Finally, I also felt the sound of the track a bit shrill, very heavy on 2-3 kHz, which makes it a tad tiring to listen to.

Overall, I'm very torn here. I really like the mood of the arrangement but the production has a lot of very noticeable issues that make this sound a tad unpolished. I can easily see this one splitting the panel and I hate to reject this since you mentioned not having access to the files, but I think this is below the bar of similar rock/metal stuff we post nowadays.

NO

Edited May 6 by jnWake