If there’s been one constant in this site right from the beginning it’s been my love for the film Conan the Barbarian and it’s equally great orchestral score that was composed by the very underappreciated film composer Basil Poledouris. Sure, everyone loves John Williams and rightly so. Then there’s the inexplicable love and worship of Hans Zimmer. Zimmer does some good, and sometimes, great work, but his overall work all tends to sound the same.
Basil Poledouris, on the other hand, seem to have been pushed to the sidelines despite creating some very iconic pieces of film scores in his lifetime. The peak of which will always be the orchestral score he composed for John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian.
I’ve chosen some key pieces from this soundtrack throughout the years. From the Carmina Burana inspired “Riddle of Steel/Riders of Doom”to the rousing “Anvil of Crom” intro all the way to the melancholy and introspective “Orphans of Doom/Awakening”. I think in time every piece of music from this score will make it onto this site. That is just how great this soundtrack from start to finish really has become. Even it’s weakest moments have elements of to them that make them stand out from the latest Zimmer.
Today, it shall be the section of the score for the film that accentuates Conan’s decision to take on a quest that will finally bring him to the very warlord who destroyed his people and killed his family: “The Leaving/The Search”.
Latest “Song of the Day” comes from episode 11 of the ecchi anime series Binbougami ga! and comes at the very end. It’s simply called the “Song of Fanservice”. It’s a very brief song but one that goes straight to the point. It has been picked up by fans of the fanservice as the anthem that best describes why ecchi anime series are so beloved by many anime fans worldwide.
So, with this brief detour from all things horror, I present to you “Song of Fanservice” from Binbougami ga! and let your fanservice flag fly.
What better way to end another month of horror here at Through the Shattered Lens than with a showing a the greatest music video ever made (not even a contest or a question). No matter what one’s personal opinion of Michael Jackson as a person there’s no denying the genius talent the man had and this video just speaks to the horror fan even if one was not into his music.
It has a werewolf (though here it’s a werecat), 50’s horror trope of the girl in distress, zombies, John Landis directing, Vincent Price with one of the best spoken word performance in a music video…and did I say zombies courtesy of make-up FX guru Rick Baker.
A music video that was more a short film plus horror musical, Thriller would become a cultural phenomenon that spread across the globe. It didn’t matter whether one lived in the US or the furthest corner of Mongolia. Everyone saw and enjoyed this music video. Even it’s detractors could only nitpick flaws from the final product.
Oh yeah, it has ZOMBIES!
Hope everyone had a great, happy and safe Halloween!
Thriller
It’s close to midnight, and something evil’s lurkin’ in the dark Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart You try to scream, but terror takes the sound before you make it You start to freeze, as horror looks you right between the eyes You’re paralyzed
‘Cause it’s a thriller, thriller night And no one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike You know it’s thriller, thriller night You’re fighting for your life inside a, killer, thriller tonight, yeah
You hear the door slam, and realize there’s nowhere left to run You feel the cold hand, and wonder if you’ll ever see the sun You close your eyes, and hope that this is just imagination Girl, but all the while, you hear a creature creepin’ up behind You’re outta time
‘Cause it’s a thriller, thriller night There ain’t no second chance against the thing with the forty eyes, girl (Thriller, thriller night) You’re fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight
Night creatures call and the dead start to walk in their masquerade There’s no escaping the jaws of the alien this time (They’re open wide) This is the end of your life
They’re out to get you, there’s demons closing in on every side (boom!) They will possess you, unless you change that number on your dial Now is the time, for you and I to cuddle close together, yeah All through the night, I’ll save you from the terror on the screen I’ll make you see
That it’s a thriller, thriller night ‘Cause I can thrill you more than any ghoul would ever dare try (Thriller, thriller night) So let me hold you tight and share a killer, diller, chiller thriller here tonight
‘Cause it’s a thriller, thriller night Girl, I can thrill you more than any ghoul would ever dare try (Thriller, thriller night) So let me hold you tight and share a (Killer, thriller)
I’m gonna thrill you tonight
(Vincent Price voiceover)
“Darkness falls across the land The midnight hour is close at hand Creatures crawl in search of blood To terrorize your neighborhood And whosoever shall be found Without the soul for getting down Must stand and face the hounds of hell And rot inside a corpse’s shell”
I’m gonna thrill you tonight (Thriller, thriller) I’m gonna thrill you tonight (Middle of the night, thriller) I’m gonna thrill you tonight Ooh, babe, I’m gonna thrill you tonight Middle of the night, babe
(Vincent Price voiceover)
“The foulest stench is in the air The funk of forty-thousand years And grizzly ghouls from every tomb Are closing in to seal your doom And though you fight to stay alive Your body starts to shiver For no mere mortal can resist The evil of the thriller”
My music series this year fell victim to a game of forum mafia that’s eaten up every ounce of my free time (and a little more I couldn’t really afford to lose <_<) but I wanted to share one last song here before we lay the Halloween season to rest. Dissection are one of the more notorious black metal bands of the 90s, embroiled in murder and occult suicide and all sorts of trouble. Generally, bands in that ballpark produced the more deranged, off-kilter songs that granted 90s black metal such a strong air of the sincerely sinister. But Dissection was a bit different. For all of Jon Nödtveidt's faults, he was a really brilliant songwriter in a surprisingly traditional sense. The band's most famous song–"Where Dead Angels Lie", off Storm of the Light’s Bane (1995)–is a masterful six minute progression of beautiful melodies that would not be out of place on an early In Flames album. (Is it a mere coincidence that the band’s home town of Strömstad is not terribly far north of the melodic death metal capital of the world: Gothenburg, Sweden?) It is sinister in a theatrical sort of way, quite different from the traditional roots of the genre and quite better than the few ‘mainstream’ bm bands, who are generally more willing to take this approach.
One of the first novelties to really captivate me in World of Warcraft was holiday events. WoW was the first game I ever played that really felt like a full-blown world and not just a collection of zones. (At least, it did back before Blizzard effectively shrunk everything with portals and fast travel.) Holidays added a further immersive element–a sense that this world actually experienced the passage of time. While that aspect was left by the wayside as the game expanded, it had a powerful effect on me back in 2005. Playing the game for me then didn’t mean statistics-grinding–being the first on my server to down a boss or accomplish an ‘achievement’–it just meant checking out of real life for a few hours and immersing myself in this fantasy environment. You could start a new character on Halloween, set off on the long hike to a major city, and there you’d find the whole place decked out in pumpkins and ghouls with themed mini-games and the like. Come back at Christmas, and the world will have aged again. I loved it.
The Darkmoon Faire is an event unique to Azeroth. Originally a traveling carnival that you might happen upon by chance, it eventually set up permanent shop with easy access to the major cities, but the settlement maintained its air of mystery. In practice, the Darkmoon Faire Merry-Go-Round is a necessary stop for anyone interested in speed-leveling a new character due to the beneficial enchantment that visitors receive, but its music leaves you wondering if you didn’t just lose your soul in exchange…
This Jason Hayes composition was not actually introduced to the game until late 2012, in the Landfall patch for Mists of Pandaria, but it could easily find a home in the game’s annual Halloween event.
The short-lived, Yaroslavl-based band Векша (Veksha) offer a look at that strange world of ultra-nationalistic, rabidly pagan Slavic metal that began to emerge shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. I love the awkward juxtaposition (by 1998 standards) of black metal and this anonymous woman’s clean, almost childish singing in the environment of absolutely rock-bottom recording quality. The aesthetic consequence is spooky–a sort of half-formed ghost of a demo tape that dares you to shut off your speakers and see if it continues to play.
But the appeal that keeps me listening to На пороге ночи (Na Poroge Nochi) might not have been the band’s intent. Believe it or not they actually had a website, on which they greet all Aryan brothers with pastel flowers and rotating heart gifs.
umm…
But creepy by accident is always more effective than creepy by intent, right? The bizarrely pervasive fixation on race throughout a lot of early Slavic pagan metal bands probably has an interesting historical explanation that is well beyond the scope of my knowledge, and the explicitly sinister intent of a few prominent bad apples in that bunch might cast the rest a little out of context, but at any rate it’s another off-kilter factor in rendering Veksha’s lone release just a wee bit disturbing for reasons the band probably never intended. They’ve definitely earned a spot in my Halloween playlist.
If there is one artist I have consistently returned to every October for the 15 or so years that I’ve had a clue what I’m talking about, it’s Vratyas Vakyas. I first discovered Falkenbach via Audiogalaxy–a long forgotten site that stood out back in the Napster days for a design which allowed users to easily explore non-mainstream genres. I had never heard anything remotely similar to Falkenbach at the time, and I fell in love with the plodding hymns that seemed to turn black metal on its head and generate a spirit of reverence rather than darkness.
Of course, in hindsight Falkenbach fits into a broader historical progression, but his sound is still entirely unmistakable. Vratyas Vakyas was one of the earliest artists to really latch on to the ‘viking metal’ ideal that Bathory began in the late 80s, before too many stylistic norms were standardized, and the sound he landed on has never ceased to captivate me. “Heathen Foray” is the opening track to his fourth studio album, Heralding – The Fireblade (2005), and it also makes an appearance in somewhat grimmer form on his second album, …Magni blandinn ok megintiri… (1998). How far back the basic idea of the song dates is hard to say; there is a ton of earlier demo material available going as far back as 1989. I could have chosen any of dozens of stand-out songs to showcase here without any reservations, but this one has been speaking to me lately. Enjoy!
Part of the ‘appeal’ of the second wave of black metal as it manifested in Norway is the feeling that you are listening to a product of truly deranged minds. Granted most of the artists in the scene were fairly normal kids who matured and went on to enjoy long-term musical success, the genre’s focus on the occult, Satanism, and all things traditionally “evil” brought a few real wackos into the fold. Most of them wound up dead and behind bars. Gorgoroth pressed on.
This is a band that continues to project itself as dead-serious Satan-worshiping masochists long after their peers evolved away from the genre’s early image or else dropped sufficient hints to be recast as a sort of warm cuddly metal-spiked parody. Does their sound reflect this? I like to believe it does. “Procreating Satan” is the opening track to Twilight of the Idols, the band’s sixth studio album, released in 2003. It features the most notorious of the many vocalists the band has had over the years: Gaahl.
Lars Jensen has been working on his solo project, Myrkgrav, since 2003, but his discography is pretty brief. Trollskau, skrømt og kølabrenning (2006) is his only full-length album, and it’s a pretty solid entry into the annals of pagan metal. The album is a bit brooding overall, with a lot of slower tempo black metal-infused hymns, but the optimistic closing track has always stood out to me the most.
“Endetoner” feels like a victory anthem–a celebration of Norse history and tradition that honors those old gods who always seem to make a brief return to Midgard around this time of the year.
If I asked a random metal fan to name ten folk/viking metal bands, chances are they wouldn’t drop Sweden’s Månegarm among the contenders. It’s a bit odd, considering they’ve been around since 1995. But besides having a name that isn’t entirely easy to reproduce on a standard keyboard, there’s no reason to leave “Månegarm” off the list. Their ability to fly under the radar is something I don’t really understand; this band has definitely drawn less attention than they deserve over the years.
I am guilty to an extent, with nothing prior to Vargstenen–their 2007 release–in my collection, but I was still a little surprised to realize I had never featured this band before let alone this song. Following a brief intro track, “Ur själslig död” kicks off Vargstenen with epic bombast and a creative progression that avoids the easy temptation to repeat the track’s catchy main melody in excess. One thing that always stood out to me on this song was the vocals. Erik Grawsiö demonstrates a level of diversity I’m more accustomed to out of Slavic metal bands than their Germanic counterparts, and I absolutely love how he transitions back and forth between guttural singing and atonal growls. I couldn’t resist the urge to belt out a death metal roar of my own at the 40 second mark when I was listening to this in my car earlier today. So much for not scaring the new neighbors. <_<
True Slavonic Romantic Pagan Metal 
Through the Shattered Lens 