Tag Archives: Music

Review: Blut aus Nord – 777 Cosmosophy

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Blut aus Nord generated a lot of waves in the metal scene last April when they released Sect(s), the first installment in their 777 trilogy. The album was a gripping ride through a vivid musical nightmare, merging industrial music and a particularly demented take on black metal to paint its demon-ridden post-apocalyptic landscapes. The Desanctification, released in last November, flew much lower under the radar. Lacking all of Sect(s)’s shock value, it was a more contemplative plod which capitalized on the industrial side of their 777 sound and presented the devastation inflicted first-hand on Sect(s) from a less intimate angle. If the listener was the victim on Sect(s), Desanctification offered the role of witness.

Cosmosophy, the final installment in the 777 trilogy, was released this September, and a lot hinged on it. Sect(s) and The Desanctification were drastically different and yet inseparable, the second naturally flowing from the first. How did Blut aus Nord intend to bring it all to an end?

In the very last way anyone could have ever expected: They repeated the exact same thing they did on The Desanctification. It’s a brooding, visually stunning bird’s-eye view of a cyberpunk holocaust, and as such it’s just as outstanding as its predecessor. But where is it going?

If Blut aus Nord released two albums like this every year they might well become my favorite band. I’ve been dying for this kind of material, and The Desanctification and Cosmosophy both fill that niche with a degree of excellence that surpasses all other attempts I have heard. But I guess for me the 777 series was telling a story, vague though it need necessarily be, and Cosmosophy just kind of waves that off. It’s an outstanding album in its own right, but it does not feel appropriate in the context of the trilogy.

Epitome XVII and XVIII are somewhat of an exception,and they’re the tracks I’ll be sampling here. XVII has a definite sense of conclusion about it. It’s not an optimistic one, especially given the lyrics–“How many seasons beyond this sacred life? How many treasons beyond this clever lie?” But the feeling is one of profound revelation, as if the listener in this nearly wordless narrative has finally come to see the grand vision we were all hoping Cosmosophy would offer. The transition that spans from about 4:20 to 6:20 is pensive, serving to reintroduce the darkness that resolution has by no means abated. As this fades and we reach the final track in the trilogy, you can definitely see the story coming to an end:

Epitome XVIII is one of the finest of those bird’s-eye perspectives on the greater 777 landscape, and in its context it offers something of a new, esoteric light on the devastation below. The outro that begins to fade in after the 7 minute mark is the perfect conclusion and perhaps the darkest moment in the entire trilogy, epic in its silence. Of Cosmosophy’s two concluding tracks I have no complaints. It’s the first three that get us there that leave a lot to be desired.

If you care to revisit The Desanctification, it ends on a completely twisted industrial groove that offers all of the madness of Sect(s) without any of the fear–a sense that the subject (the listener) is breaking down into utter insanity, becoming a part of the surrounding chaos. I desperately wanted Cosmosophy to pick up on this note. I wanted to hear a merging of Sect(s)’s black metal and Desanctification’s industrial that, if you’ll humor my manner of description, merged the victim and the witness into one. I expected a juxtaposition of the sweeping landscapes and the frantic madness that could, in the context of the trilogy, depict a sort of out of body experience in the subject/listener. Epitome XIV and XVI instead feel like unused (though equal) tracks from Desanctification, while XV offers three minutes of obnoxiously spoken French which quite frankly fails to invoke anything but annoyance before plunging into an outstanding but compromised semi-operatic sweep that could have found a place on the album but lacks appropriate context as presented.

Epitome XV is the only track I dislike in the trilogy, while XIV and XVI seem out of order. In the meantime, I feel like an essential step between Desanctification’s XIII and Cosmosophy’s XVII is missing. In short, Cosmosophy does not live up to my ridiculously high expectations. If Blut aus Nord were to come out with a surprise Part 4, I certainly would not deem it overkill. But if we view Cosmosophy as just another 2012 metal album there is hardly room to complain. It is only in light of the standard set by Sect(s) and The Desanctification, and in expectation that the conclusion ought to be the 777 trilogy’s finest hour, that it slightly disappoints.

Review: Enslaved – RIITIIR

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Norway’s Enslaved formed as a black metal band in 1991. That means Grutle Kjellson and Ivar Bjørnson have been playing together for at least 21 years. Most–I’d say the vast majority–of bands are pretty washed up by the 20 year mark. But Enslaved is a fluke. An anomaly. They stand on the cutting edge of the metal scene today, and their last three albums have been phenomenal.

Thoughts Like Hammers

Maybe some of it stems from their age. Bjørnson and Kjellson were 13 and 17 respectively when they began releasing demos as Enslaved. It’s hard to imagine a 20+ year old band whose founding members are in their mid-30s, but that’s what you get here: two artists in their creative prime.

RIITIIR’s aptly-named opening track, “Thoughts Like Hammers”, starts out with a bit of incoherent chaos before busting into a crushing viking metal plod that immediately answers any question as to whether RIITIIR is going to follow the same path as Vertebrae and Axioma Ethica Odini. The relatively new viking-prog-black mix they’ve landed on is faultless, and about the only thing they could do wrong is change it. RIITIIR picks up right where Axioma Ethica Odini left off.

It would be kind of odd to speak of post-viking metal when so few bands have defined the original style in the first place. But what makes Enslaved perhaps the best metal band to ever make a late-career venture into the world of progressive rock is their impeccable ability to maintain all of their heavy metal credentials. Kjellson’s growls are some of the most distinct and cutting in the scene, and there can never be any question about the band going soft. The lofty progressive movements are lush with sound in just the sort of way that has made viking metal bands like Enslaved and Týr consistently great throughout the years. Their juxtaposition of uplifting musical sweeps and crushing, dark passages transition flawlessly, with none of the grating clash of styles that you might hear in bands inclined to force the issue.

RIITIIR

As for how RIITIIR matches up to Vertebrae and Axioma Ethica Odini, I think RIITIIR maintains the much needed improvement in production quality that distinguished Axioma from its predecessor. The major riffs and choruses are just as instantly memorable. I think Axioma had perhaps a stronger black metal side to it, but the difference is slight. What I really feel in RIITIIR more than the other two is the consistent drive–a sort of all-embracing power that gives the album no down time to speak of. Even the slowest folk interludes are exceptionally well constructed to fit the context of their songs and maintain a tense, brooding atmosphere.

My immediate impression of RIITIIR is that it’s the best album to date from a band that has at this point thoroughly proven their standing among perhaps the top ten metal bands making music today. I don’t really need to go into exceptional detail on this one; it’s exactly what they did on their last two albums, only even better. Don’t let this year-end contender pass you by.

Review: Ihsahn – Eremita

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Vegard Tveitan released his fourth solo album this year, giving “Ihsahn” a discography almost as extensive as Emperor’s. Eremita offers the eclectic and exquisitely well-executed sound we’ve come to expect from him in recent years. What it does not offer is very much in the way of black metal. This was a predictable turn, as his sound continued to evolve and incorporate more and more progressive elements. Eremita continues from the major shift taken on After.

Arrival, the album’s opening track, is something of a caricature of everything I don’t really like about Eremita. (Considering the almost total lack of Eremita references on youtube, I have no doubt this video will be removed pretty soon for some copyright nonsense, but the guy who shared it’s account is still active for the time being if you want to go explore the album more thoroughly before buying it.)

The power of the driving opening riff is obviously lost in a youtube sample. Don’t let that be a turn-off. But it’s still a relatively unvaried chug-a-chug, with Ihsahn’s unique distorted vox intermixed with soft, sung breaks. Shortly after the 3 minute mark the song explodes into a pretty wild 30 second guitar solo, and then it’s back to what we started with. I do think Ihsahn’s eclectic guitar doodling is pretty impressive. That’s something I’ve yet to tire of. The getting there, however, is kind of a tedious path for me. Prog bands so often lose focus of the importance of creating an overall vibe, and I fear that “Arrival” too runs the serious risk of amounting to little more than a stereotypical build-up to wankfest. Pretty consistently throughout this album I struggle to get into the moments where not much is going on. I never had any such issue with After, despite its equally drastic break from black metal.

On another note, I loved Ihsahn’s vocals when he was doing black metal. Something about their lack of depth always came off as exceptionally more sinister than the stylistic norm. But when they’re taken out of that context, they just seem to clash with the rest of what’s going on. When he layers them it tends to work, but the single vocal track that characterized a lot of The Adversary does not function as well here. It’s an odd comment coming from a black metal fan, but I really wish there was a lot less screaming and a lot more singing on this one.

That being said, I think Eremita starts off with one of its weakest track. The aspects that make me yawn are somewhat less prevalent further in.

“The Eagle and the Snake” is a good example of what works exceptionally well on this album. The return of jazz saxophonist Jorgen Munkeby is a huge plus, making the breaks between Ihsahn’s outstanding solos valuable in their own right and not merely means to an end. The passage from 2:30 to 3:00 is rescued by the subtle addition of a second distorted vocal track to flush out the screams and avoid the sometimes grating contrast in “Arrival”. The song structure doesn’t feel pre-determined, and the dark, jazzy vibe glues the whole thing together. Ihsahn here offers some of his most imaginative guitar solos to date, in a context appropriately conditioned to present them without feeling forced.

Ihsahn doesn’t forget about black metal altogether, either. There’s nothing on Eremita as wild as “A Grave Inversed” (which, I think, might be the best song of his solo career), but “Something Out There” definitely satisfies any cravings to hear some old school Ihsahn in the mix. Ihsahn also takes frequent dives into the realm of death metal, especially on “Departure”. To me, the really pleasant intro/outro and occasional sax appearance aside, this track runs all the same risks as “Arrival” with no epic solo pay-out at the end to reward you for listening to it. But then, there is a reason I don’t like death metal.

Right now, having listened to Eremita attentively maybe four times, I can honestly say I don’t like it. The sort of mood and atmosphere Ihsahn is attempting to create is just completely lost to me on tracks like “Arrival” and “Introspection”, while “The Eagle and the Snake” is more the exception than the norm. But except where something is exceptionally bad (and nothing on Eremita is), it is always hard to put your finger on exactly what you don’t like about it; it is not as though we are in any position to say “the artist should have done this instead”. Ihsahn is a metal legend deserving of the title, and plenty of other people seem to love this album. For me, the difficulty lies in engaging it; I struggle to sit back and give most of the songs my undivided attention without feeling impatient. Eremita lacks a consistent driving force to hold everything together.

Review: Alcest – Les Voyages De L’Âme

Posted on by necromoonyeti

You would be hard-pressed to find an album which more reviews have simultaneously labeled generic and beautiful than Les Voyages De L’Âme. It’s an odd situation. Neige has definitely found his sound. I have to imagine that he personally is more satisfied with his work now than ever. The catch is that a lot of people appreciated his music best when he was still searching for something. Les Voyages De L’Âme is beautiful, no doubt about it. It’s a journey through a mysterious, fanciful world that I have taken for 50 minutes frequently this year; it was released in early January, so it’s technically a year old at this point.

Là Où Naissent Les Couleurs Nouvelles

But such descriptions cannot characterize all of his works. Neige’s music has a bit of a narrative in it, told not so much in a single album as in the scope of his career. His first release, Tristesse Hivernale (2001), was a poorly produced sinister ride not particularly unlike the debuts of the Norwegian legends. It also happened to feature an early appearance by Famine, whose Peste Noire took a drastically different and equally admirable path in the years to follow.

Neige didn’t release an Alcest follow-up until 2005, but “Le Secret” revolutionized metal. The two-track EP was an odd consequence of Neige continuing to play black metal while aspiring towards the atmospheric polar opposite. What you got was something beautiful but perpetually fragile; a glimpse at something angelic in music’s darkest corner, which threatened to fade away at any given moment. It’s the sense that what you’re hearing reveals itself in temporary, fleeting form that really places Le Secret above the rest of Neige’s work for me.

Neige was openly bothered by the reviews Le Secret received. A lot of people just didn’t get it, or more likely did get it but felt some bone-headed sense of masculinity in jeopardy should they admit to getting it. Neige regarded the album as a failure. I think the failure was on the part of the listeners who reviewed it, and I was borderline devastated when Neige re-recorded Le Secret last year. But in any case, the fleeting nature of Le Secret’s sound reflected a real fleeting feature of Neige’s style: It wasn’t what he was ultimately aiming for. It was, rather, the last step on the way to getting there. Souvenirs d’un autre monde was the full realization. We might for stylistic purposes label it shoegaze black metal, but it was really post-black metal in the most literal sense.

Souvenirs d’un autre monde was, to me, all about the triumph. It reached for that light buried within Le Secret and made it through to the other side. Neige’s music finally entered that fanciful world of light and beauty that he had envisioned all along. If Le Secret was all about getting there and Souvenirs d’un autre monde was the overwhelming awe he felt when he reached it, Écailles de Lune might be understood as a more orchestrated exploration of what waited on the other side.

Faiseurs De Mondes

This might seem a very peculiar and abstract way to go about describing a discography, but I think it reveals the reason why Les Voyages De L’Âme feels in some sense generic or repetitive. I don’t think Neige planned out any sort of progression from Tristesse Hivernale through to Écailles de Lune. Rather, he is one of those truly great musicians capable of effectively recreating his thoughts in music, and as Neige the man/musician developed his vision over time, his music progressed to reflect it. In the two years that separate Écailles de Lune from Les Voyages De L’Âme not much appears to have changed, and what Les Voyages De L’Âme lacks has absolutely nothing to do with quality. The music is superb. It’s just that we have come over the years to expect perpetual transition, and Les Voyages De L’Âme instead continues to explore the other-worldly landscape Neige first fully entered on Souvenirs d’un autre monde. Les Voyages De L’Âme is in every way Écailles de Lune Part 2.

Given Neige’s past responses to criticism, who knows how he might react to the labels of “generic” being pasted on Les Voyages De L’Âme in otherwise positive reviews. I think the aspect of his sound that is being criticized in this regard isn’t really something he can help, and anyway the context in which the album may be called “generic” is a major stretch from the normal sense of the word. Better to say that it is a continuation of Écailles de Lune, and outstanding as such.

If there are any further doubts, I should inform you that Sophie loved it. She has impeccable taste.

VGM Entry 68: Final Fantasy VI

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 68: Final Fantasy VI
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Square released quite a number of games for the Super Nintendo, but everyone looked forward above all else to their annual blockbuster, appearing in the latter half of the year, from 1993 until 1995. Secret of Mana was the first of these. Final Fantasy VI was the second.

There is only one logical place to begin a discussion of the music of Final Fantasy VI.

And that would be at the beginning. Final Fantasy VI did not begin like other games. Sure, it was by no means the first to fade out on the title screen and play through an introduction to the plot, but this was different in a lot of respects. It provided barely any background to the story. Ok, there was a devastating war 1000 years ago in which the destructive art of “magic” was lost, and an emerging industrial revolution is beginning to recover remnants of that past. That’s all you directly get. The rest plays out more like a movie. You get hints and clues to what’s going on–a new face here, a key term there–but you’re left curious rather than informed. The intro to this game doesn’t set the plot; it sets the mood. (The revised English translation tragically lost sight of this, such that the original SNES “Final Fantasy III” is really the only port of the game worth playing.)

Nobuo Uematsu’s music went hand in hand with this approach. There is no opening anthem–no catchy piece to hum along to. The sinister organ, the harp-like transition, the windy sound effects, and ultimately the opening credit music all flow from one point to the next, breaking only for the sake of the cinematic experience, not because a particular track is over or the next scene has new “bgm”. Final Fantasy VI had perhaps the first really cinematic introduction for a video game.

It might be argued that Nobuo Uematsu revolutionized the use of music in video games from the very opening sequence, but nothing made this more apparent than the events at the Jidoor Opera House, where an odd twist in the plot leads the cast of heroes to become involved in a backstage operation during a musical performance. Not only does the opera take place in the backdrop as you work your way through the mission, but as part of the plot device the heroine Celes takes on the lead female roll in the show. Events transition back and forth between action behind the scenes and the live show, and part of the outcome is determined by your ability, as a player, to regurgitate Celes’ lines from the script.

The video I’ve linked here includes the first two songs in a four-part performance. What makes this sequence so important for the history of gaming music is that Nobuo Uematsu’s amazing score plays a direct role in the plot and gameplay. While the simulated pseudo-vocals might sound silly in hindsight, this was also a real first in gaming music in its day. Square’s sound team might not have possessed the technology to incorporate real words, but nothing prevented them from displaying them as part of the script. As an odd consequence, one of the first video games to make extensive use of lyrics had no vocals.

Uematsu’s third major accomplishment, the indisputable quality of his score aside, was to completely derail the limits of acceptable song length. Granted Commodore 64 artists had been busting out 6-8 minute epics back in the mid-80s, the standard by and large still remained firmly below the 3 minute mark. If we take the opera as a single piece (it’s divided into four tracks), Final Fantasy VI had three songs that pushed 20 minutes.

“Dancing Mad” probably remains today the longest final battle music ever written, with the original ost version clocking in at 17 minutes and 39 seconds. This might seem excessive if you haven’t played the game, but within its context nothing less could have possibly sufficed. Kefka was pretty much the greatest video game villain of all time (Luca Blight from Suikoden II might surpass him), and Final Fantasy VI might have had the most apocalyptic plot in the series. Sure, series fans had saved the world from imminent destruction five times before and plenty more since, but Zeromus, Exdeath, they were just icons of evil. In Final Fantasy VI, Square’s obsession with mass destruction finally found a human face. Kefka’s psychopathy was something you could buy into. He was entirely capable of emotion even as he slipped progressively further into insanity. He just attached no moral value to life. Where enemies before and since sought to destroy the world for destruction’s sake, Kefka was in it for the experience of the ultimate tragedy. For once it actually made sense for a final boss to let the heroes creep up on him; the whole agenda would have been pointless if no one was there to experience it with him.

Both visually and musically, the final battle of Final Fantasy VI was beautiful. Nothing else–certainly no 1-2 minute fight theme–would have been appropriate in the context of the story.

VGM Entry 67: EarthBound

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 67: EarthBound
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Hirokazu Tanaka and Keiichi Suzuki composed Mother in 1989, and it would remain perhaps the most eclectic soundtrack in all of video gamedom until 1994, when they teamed up again for Mother 2.

Better known to western gamers as EarthBound, Mother 2 (Nintendo, 1994) was… well… on the new game ‘name your characters’ screen you are asked the crucial question “What is your favorite homemade food?”, and that’s about as normal as it ever got. Since Mother was never released here, EarthBound was our first experience with Shigesato Itoi’s madness, and the already ridiculous events and dialogue were made all the more bizarre by a sometimes incredibly awkward (though fairly grammatically sound) translation. (Consider that the most powerful spell in the game is called “PSI Rockin Omega”.) Perhaps this was not originally by intent, but I like to pretend NOA fell in love with it and let a few oddities through intentionally.

The EarthBound soundtrack was huge, or so it seemed to me. With no comprehensive ost on the market it can be a bit hard to tell, but at least one fan rip I came across contained 78 tracks. Every town had a theme. Every combat zone had a theme. There were easily a dozen or more different battle themes. The new music just never stopped coming from start screen to the ending credits. According to Wikipedia, Keiichi Suzuki claimed in a Famitsu interview only available in Japanese that he wrote over 100 songs for the game. Many of these obviously were not used, but Suzuki also only accounts for half of the music.

EarthBound‘s finest musical moments took place in combat. This video presents a compilation of eight battle tunes (by no means all-inclusive) which should give you a good idea of what the game had to offer. The music was a mix of smooth grooves like the first track played here and corny absurdities like the second, with the former typically representing aliens and tougher bosses and the latter such detestable foes as “New Age Retro Hippie”, “Scalding Coffee Cup”, and “Big Pile of Puke”.

The corny tracks are more representative of the larger gaming environment, but the groove numbers are where Tanaka and Suzuki really excelled, culminating with “Kraken of the Sea” (6:27).

I’m not actually sure who was responsible for the combat music throughout this game, or whether the individual tracks were collaborative efforts. (Many songs in the game in fact were.) It would certainly make sense, considering how they all fall into two neat categories, to reason that one composer made the groove tracks and another did the comedy ones, but I certainly can’t confirm this. The track “Another 2” on the highly mutilated official Mother 2 ost contains quite a few samples from the former and none from the latter, and it’s credited to Tanaka specifically, but that might simply mean he was responsible for the remix. “Another 2” contains the bicycle theme as a hidden track after a half minute of silence, and that was definitely written by Suzuki, so there’s really no clear evidence here pointing to one musician or the other.

The two best songs in the game are the last two you’ll hear before the ending. Both are combat tunes, and they couldn’t be more different. “Pokey Means Business” was my favorite song in any video game as a kid, and I don’t think I need to tell you why.

Or are you not there yet? Wait for it…

Ok so, maybe it’s not decisively the best song on the SNES, but it’s definitely the heaviest. Funny that for all the dozens of games out there marketing their edginess as their selling point, none came anywhere near goofy little EarthBound. Once again I am not sure if this is a product of Suzuki, Tanaka, or both. I just know that Pokey meant business alright…

And then there was Giygas. Credits suggest this was all a product of Tanaka’s twisted mind, and it may well go down in history as he most disturbing boss music ever written. Everything about Giygas was completely abstract, from his form to his combat moves. (The game would just say “You cannot grasp the true form of Giygas’ attack!” and deal out damage.)

There are a lot of hairbrain theories out there as to what Giygas represents, especially in connection with how his final form outlines the shape of a fetus. Frankly I think if you’re playing EarthBound for the plot you’re probably reading too much into it.

This song does have a little bit of relevance to what’s going on though. The transition starting around 1:40 and the music box charm it leads into at 2:32 reflect a break in the gameplay action where Paula uses her psychic powers to ask various friends for help. So while its inclusion certainly adds to the creepiness of the overall piece, it’s also intended to be a bit heartwarming. And anyway the song as it appears here, 4:03 in length, is a little arbitrary. The song isn’t a single continuous piece, and the transitions take place as a result of progression in the boss fight.

The song and its visual counterpart have earned quite a bit of internet popularity for its unorthodox behavior. You’ll have to forgive me for sharing this last one with you:

Review: Drudkh – Eternal Turn of the Wheel

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Another year, another Drudkh album. It’s something we’ve come to expect from a band that’s pumped out 9 full length albums in the past decade. Their last release, Handful of Stars, was pretty universally denounced as their weakest album to date, and perhaps there is something to be said for the fact that they skipped over 2011 without a new one. Eternal Turn of the Wheel makes a clear shift away from the direction they had been heading in, returning to a style more in keeping with their earlier releases.

Breath of Cold Black Soil

The question is what they gained from that transition. The sound is certainly in touch atmospherically with the old vibe fans have been clamoring for a return to. If you’ve been following Drudkh from the get-go, there is definitely something refreshing about this one. I am instinctively inclined to engage it, whereas Handful of Stars kind of lost me and I never gave it the proper listening time a Drudkh album deserves.

But that’s not to say they’ve gotten better, nor that they were getting progressively worse before. Drudkh have always had their ups and downs. When you come close to releasing an album every year for a decade, it’s bound to happen. It’s difficult as a fan to even keep up with them. If the music doesn’t strike me pretty readily I put it off for a bit, and by the time I do get around to it the next release is already in the mail.

Eternal Turn of the Wheel will gain some attention because it presents at the surface what people have been looking for for a while now. I think if Drudkh had, alternatively, stuck to the same general sound all along, this one would be pretty readily forgotten.

Night Woven of Snow, Winds and Grey-Haired Stars

Beneath the surface, it’s just a little lacking in creative song writing. It’s quite nice by the standard of average atmospheric black metal, but from Drudkh I tend to expect a little bit more. On Swan Road and Blood in Our Wells especially they managed to merge this sound with absolutely superb song writing, and the latter was the selling point that really projected them from just another Ukrainian black metal band to legends of the genre.

I think the Microcosmos haters heard a stylistic watershed and immediately cashed in their opinions. The shift didn’t phase me at the time, because I think the song writing that really propels them was present in full form. The further changes on Handful of Stars were a bit more of an immediate turn-off, but I’ll venture to make the potentially bogus claim that the song-writing, not the style, ultimately accounts for my having never given it a good and thorough listen.

I’d argue that the song-writing on Eternal Turn of the Wheel is really not appreciably better, but in returning to an old school Drudkh sound they at least compelled me to leave it on repeat for a day. Don’t expect any of the tracks to overwhelm you the way Eternity or Solitude do, or Ars Poetica for that matter. It’s pretty cut-and-dry, generic Drudkh, and it’s crucially lacking any sort of subtle Ukrainian folk undertone. I would be lying if I pretended to not appreciate their return to black metal, but all in all this album is nothing special… at least by Drudkh standards. It will still rightfully go down as one of the better releases of 2012.

Review: Hail Spirit Noir – Pneuma

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Do you know how many albums I’ve reviewed in 2012 so far? One. Comparing that to 2011, when I had pumped out well over 40 by this point in the year, you might say I am a bit behind. It was somewhat inevitable this year, with my video game music project taking up the grand bulk of my free time, but it’s not too late to catch up where I can.

And why not start with the obscure? Hail Spirit Noir is a band from Thessalonika, Greece. The person who introduced me to this album described it as “progressive psychedelic black metal”, which I don’t necessarily agree with but should certainly uh… pique your curiosity.

Mountain of Horror

My apologies for this video. I wanted to include the opening track, and the only copy of it on youtube commits the double idiocy of presenting a fake music video and cutting off the last 30 seconds of the song. While it actually syncs up with the music quite nicely, I have no reason to believe it is anything but a fan project, and it should be duly ignored.

I think there is a general bias among metal fans to label anything black which possesses the slightest traces of the sub-genre. To call Pneuma black metal is a bit of a stretch. The elements of black metal it incorporates are all on the fringe of the genre, and at the end of the day it is far too broad to place any single label on. What you get in “Mountain of Horror” is a combination of that “black and roll” vibe that Peste Noire perfected on Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor, a heavy dose of 70s prog keyboards, and a progressive black break that falls firmly within the sort of sound Ephel Duath pioneered–more avantgarde than “progressive black” in the sense that recent Enslaved and Ihsahn might call to mind.

Against the Curse, We Dream

And what do you know, another fake music video. Oh well. What you might start to notice as this album progresses is a semblance of stylistic consistency underlining the disorganized madness. Black and roll meets traditional black metal meets psychedelic/70s prog meets avantgarde doodling, mouthful though it may be, is definitely the order of the day.

The Peste Noire vibe is definitely the selling point for me, and in Against the Curse, We Dream it syncs up particularly nicely with the prog synth. The Ephel Duath-esque avantgarde bits leave a lot to be desired, but really, when does avantgarde music ever not leave a lot to be desired? Its presence is at least relatively minimal in the broad range of Pneuma’s sounds. The disorganized nature of the songs is also not particularly problematic, in so far as a standard rock beat sustains to hold the vast majority of it together.

The only thing that kills it a bit for me is the lack of dynamics. From the most break-neck blast beats to the calmest, coolest prog grooves, the album maintains pretty much the exact same level of intensity. It is very much even keel from start to finish. That is more a vice of prog music, which Hail Spirit Noir ultimately choose to place above the metal side of their sound. Much like practically all prog that I have encountered prior to the past ten years, it never opts to overwhelm, feeling relatively dispassionate at the moments where intensity is in highest demand. Consider the staccato break at 5:34 in this video, and how much it could benefit from the level of tension System of a Down applied to similar passages in their early albums. The aggression which follows is somewhat lost to the vibe-killer that the previous passage did not necessarily need to invoke. The avantgarde outro is a disappointing end to a relatively creative song that, enjoyable though it may be, fails to move me to the extent that I feel like it ought to have. This is, of course, to place some unfair stipulations on the band; that the overall atmosphere isn’t what I would have chosen doesn’t mean it fails to capture the vibe Hail Spirit Noir were aiming for.

Haire Pneuma Skoteino

The closing song, Haire Pneuma Skoteino, is by far the most accessible song on the album, and I was pretty surprised by how well I remembered it, having only heard the song one time before, when I first picked up the album half a year ago. I suppose a poppy, catchy outro track is well in keeping with Hail Spirit Noir’s consistent inconsistencies.

At the end of the day, I have mixed feelings about Pneuma. It falls victim to being the first new release I’ve listened to in the better part of a year, and I’m no doubt being a lot more critical than I would have been this time last year, but I just feel like the execution leaves a lot to be desired. On the other hand, it is definitely an impressive and well-informed debut from a band on an obscure label from a country not exactly famous for its metal scene, and the shortcomings I hear suggest I am instinctively holding them to a much higher standard than I would other bands with similar backgrounds. Pneuma isn’t an album I’m likely to revisit, but it has convinced me that this band is a world of potential. I’ll be keeping an eye out for their future releases.

VGM Entry 66: Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 66: Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

The release of Star Fox in 1993 was a sign of quite a few great games beyond the RPG/adventure genre to come. The following year would see another visually revolutionary blockbuster, this one completely blowing Star Fox off the map. Rare, a famous name on the Nintendo, held back developing much for the SNES until they were good and ready to take the system by storm.

Donkey Kong Country (Nintendo, 1994) essentially marked the peak of graphics on the Super Nintendo. It never got appreciably better than this, though plenty of other developers would rise to equal it by the end. Considering just how bad the graphics of say, Final Fantasy VII or Super Mario 64 look today, its amazing how well the best of the SNES have stood the test of time. Musically the game did not have quite as big of an impact, but it definitely maintained the cutting edge standard.

Composed by Dave Wise (Wizards & Warriors), Eveline Fischer, and Robin Beanland, the game’s sometimes hoaky jungle themes might be misleading; somewhat silly tunes out of context, they were ideally suited for the gameplay, and they completely defied the limitations of the SNES. I mean, plenty of great musicians were able to craft soundtracks that didn’t sound contrived. They weren’t obligated, as in the 8-bit days, to treat their audio chip as an instrument for any hope of success. But when Nobuo Uematsu added a pseudo-vocal track to Aria Di Mezzo Carattere he wasn’t fooling anybody; the extent to which SNES music could sound performed rather than programmed came in degrees and was not directly relevant to quality. (Final Fantasy VI, Uematsu’s opera included, was one of the best scores of all time despite sounding nowhere near as authentically orchestrated as Yuzo Koshiro’s ActRaiser 2.) But I feel like Donkey Kong Country was remarkably successful in its ability to distance itself from any sense of these limitations.

I mean, it’s electronic music in spirit (or more appropriately ‘new age’, though that is a dangerous term to throw about in so far as the musicians who have defined it share little in common with the finest musicians to have been branded with it) and it should not be compared to attempts at orchestration, but the subtle panning and fading, the outstanding percussion, the appropriate and convincing use of ambient jungle noises in the background… it all adds up to a sound that goes beyond the system, as if they had the nearly limitless possibilities of composers from the Playstation era and beyond.

While Donkey Kong was enjoying his first incarnation as a well-defined, major franchise character, Samus was returning for her third venture, and her first on the SNES. Super Metroid (Nintendo, 1994) was one of the best games on the SNES, presenting a massive, open world for exploration that surpassed its series predecessors and remained unmatched until Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Konami, 1997). And much like Castlevania, the Metroid series was synonymous with good music. Super Metroid was composed by Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano (Link’s Awakening), and as best I can tell this was very much a joint effort. The ost on vgmdb credits both artists with 11 out of the 24 tracks. (Hirokazu Tanaka is credited for the last two.)

The two had their work cut out for them. While Tanaka’s original was, I think, far more novel in concept than as an actual finished product, his vision of the Metroid sound as carried on by Ryoji Yoshitomi in Metroid II: Return of Samus was nothing short of perfection.

Super Metroid took a slightly different approach from the get-go. The first two games featured eerie yet beautiful intro songs which really captured the conflicting nature of the metroids as morally innocent yet dangerous predators (one of Metroid’s unique features in early gaming is that some of the monsters aren’t evil or lifeless ‘bad guys’, but rather a natural species taken advantage of by, well, evil bad guys). Super Metroid, on the other hand, starts off on a human space station, and the opening conflict is between Samus and the Zebesian Ridley, not a metroid, so a different sort of musical theme was in order. Yamamoto and Hamano effectively captured that with dark and suspenseful music that offered none of the warmth of the first two games.

Furthermore, the majority of the game takes place on Zebes, the home world of the space pirates who are manipulating the metroid species for conquest. The original Metroid took place here as well, but a lot had changed plot-wise since then. The metroid species had been all but exterminated, and Samus at any rate had had a much more intimate encounter with them in Metroid II than would be possible on Zebes. Their presence here was no longer such a significant factor (in setting the mood, though they remained central to the plot), and the Zebesians presented a less mysterious and more sinister threat.

Yamamoto and Hamano wrote some pretty creepy music for Super Metroid, and it served its purpose well, but the bulk of the tunes were earthy in ambiance and more action-oriented, precisely in keeping with the mood of the game.

The SNES had some less famous gems in 1994 too. Demon’s Crest was the third installment in Capcom’s largely forgotten Gargoyle’s Quest series, which was in turn derived from the Ghosts’n Goblins series. It couldn’t have been much of a commercial success in North America; at the height of my teenage game obsession I managed to never even hear of it. It had a unique classical soundtrack which rarely stands out in any single instance but deserves a great deal of praise for its consistency. The composer never gives in to temptation by picking up the pace, keeping an even keel that succeeds in maintaining a sort of Halloween spook to the whole game from beginning to end.

Who composed it? I was about to say Yuki Iwai, because she’s almost universally credited for it, but this is yet another one of those gross misconceptions derived from failure of in-game attribution. Apparently Demon’s Crest has no credits (I never played it), and some time long ago someone decided Yuki Iwai must have composed it because she composed the previous series installment, Gargoyle’s Quest II (Capcom, 1992). Thankfully someone on Wikipedia caught on to this and did some research; a compilation cd of music from the series explicitly credits the score to Toshihiko Horiyama.

And then there’s Live a Live (Square, 1994), composed by the rising star Yoko Shimomura (Gargoyle’s Quest, Street Fighter II, some minor involvement in Breath of Fire). Shimomura left Capcom in 1993 and joined Square, with whom she would maintain a long and productive partnership up through the present day. Chances are you never heard of and almost certainly never played the RPG Live a Live. Even in the present day of classic game redistribution it has never received an official English language port. It’s a shame, because with a lively mix of adventurous western themes and oriental melodies, Live a Live presented one of the most spirited soundtracks on the SNES.

It was also one of Yoko Shimomura’s first independent scores. Though she receives solo credit for a few earlier games–F-1 Dream (Capcom, 1989) for the PC Engine and The King of Dragons (Capcom, 1991) for the arcade for instance–the bulk of her earlier games list joint credits, and these can be pretty misleading. (She only contributed one song to Breath of Fire from what I gather.) Live a Live then might be seen as one of her first really extensive works, and it was definitely a sign of good things to come. With a legendary repertoire to include Super Mario RPG and Kingdom Hearts, Shimomura would be making herself heard in video games for a long time to come.

VGM Entry 65: Follin in the 90s

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 65: Follin on the SNES
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

The average quality of Tim Follin’s compositions seemed to progressively decline with every new improvement to technology. A sort of daredevil musician accustomed to breaking barriers and pushing boundaries, I think the relative freedom of SNES composition forced him to find new forms of inspiration. Sometimes the muses moved him, and quite often they did not. When it did click for him, he showcased the same level of creative aptitude he’d been stirring up the gaming music world with since 1985.

Plok (developed by Software Creations, first published by Tradewest, 1993) was an instance in which Follin most certainly did rise to the challenge. For a goofy little game, here was a simultaneously ridiculous and wonderful score.

Tim and Geoff collaborated on this one, as they had often times before (I may well have falsely credited Tim with Geoff’s work on occasion), and it all came together exceptionally well in this instance. The track beginning at 1:48, “Venge Thicket”, especially exhibits precisely the sort of upbeat prog rock for which Tim excels, with a definite Ghouls’n Ghosts vibe. The track at 5:00, “Cotton Island”, does a delightful job of busting out in trademark over-the-top Follin style while remaining entirely within the corny and fun setting of the game it represents. “Akrillic“, not featured in the above compilation, is more of a smooth, relaxing jazz-prog ride that far exceeds the game for which it was written.

Plok was not the first great Super Nintendo soundtrack by the Follin brothers. Tim and Geoff also collaborated for Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge, another Software Creations development, published by LJN in 1992. It was, as it turns out, the only Follin game I actually owned as a kid, and its music was the leading cause in my purchasing it after playing a rental. Tim has supposedly cited Guns N’ Roses as a musical influence, but it’s only on the Arcade’s Revenge title theme that you can clearly hear it.

The whole rock and roll approach to composition was not a one-time go for the Follin brothers, though it was fairly foreign to their pre-SNES games. They would employ a much heavier rock influence throughout most of their SNES catalogue, most obviously on Rock n’ Roll Racing (Interplay, 1993). But it didn’t always work. Arcade’s Revenge was more the exception than the rule. In any case, it was not strictly rock, and the music of the Gambit stages in particular exhibit a wide variety of electronic beats intermixed with rock and prog.

The music to the Spider-Man stages was perhaps the most memorable of the game for me, and not merely because they were the only ones I could consistantly beat. It’s definitely the most diverse song in the game, intermingling prog and classical with some funk and jazz in a subdued sort of way that matched the cool vibe of the opening level, where you infiltrate a high security facility with a smoggy night sky as your backdrop. It made an otherwise tedious game well worth playing. . . . With a Game Genie.

The Follin brothers were mostly committed to the SNES throughout the 1990s, but at least one incursion was made into the world of the Genesis/Mega Drive. To the best of my knowledge Tim is responsible for the title screen music to Time Trax, and he probably wrote it in 1993 or 1994. Its extension from the Arcade’s Revenge sound should be fairly apparent. Unfortunately neither the game itself nor any other songs from it are available. Malibu Games released a SNES version with an entirely different score in 1994, but the Mega Drive version was dropped prior to publishing.