Your guitars are definitely in need of some gain and your playing isn't exactly sloppy as much as it just sounds like your fretting-hand finger-independence needs some careful, focused attention. Your overall intonation and timing is light years beyond (what sounds like) your pinky/ring finger control on those opening melodies. Also some minor timing issues in the syncopated parts preceding the slower bridge section; possibly related to the aforementioned fretting independence.
As far as the mix itself, the guitars are overpowering your drums which are themselves a little dry and the bass is a little indistinct (which is a huge no-no with Colony/Clayman/Jester Race covers, for reference!), but it's definitely not bad compared to the original and the style in general.
Definitely try to work on bringing some clarity into the low-end of the mix. HP your guitars a bit more, spend some time with EQ/compression on the bass (especially the higher harmonic content, let a little grind poke through between the guitars), bring up the drums in the mix and please take some of the dryness out of the soon-to-be-much-more-prominent snare. In Flames from that era has a notoriously epic snare and I don't expect miracles, but I do expect it to suit such a highly melody-infused song such as this one, and not sound like a tomato thudding a tambourine covered in mud
Overall, moving toward good things. Keep practicing and, honestly, don't let not having a perfect recording/mix yet keep you from recording and mixing some of these great guys in your area -- the better the quality of the source material, the more it will tend to mix itself. I'd record every last one of them and get as much practice and variety of material as possible if I was serious about improving
EDIT: I realized upon re-reading I might have misunderstood what you meant by "great guys here"; my sleep-deprived morning brain figured you meant locally, but you probably meant on the forum. Either way, my comment is the same -- practice practice practice.
. By muffled, do you mean lacking high end? I'm having a hard time finding a good balance of treble, because my last mix had apparently gotten too much high end. I rolled off around 13k this time, and last time I didn't roll off. Maybe I'll try a little in between to get some air? Also the tom fills, I'm using midi straight to APtrigga, and loading around 5 tom samples per tom. What can I do to make it sound less like a machine gun? Thank you
