Metal

Events, Game Music

Know Your MAG – The Tiberian Sons

January 5, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Know Your MAG – The Tiberian Sons Share this Know Your MAG – The Tiberian Sons

It’s that time of year again; time for Know Your MAG! MAGFest 13 is under 3 weeks away, and there are a lot of new bands and performers this year, and bands we never got to cover this year that we might know a bit more about, so let’s not waste any more time!

Some bands are created specifically for debut at MAGFest, with either the intention of sticking solely to the music and gaming festival as a fun hobby, or to use it as a stepping stone for greater stardom down the line. New band The Tiberian Sons is one of those that are a little of both groups that will be a secondary performer at MAG 13.

The four-man metal band is made up of Colorado-based Tony “Prince of Darkness” Dickinson, formerly of Dwelling of Duels Live, on primary guitar and drummer Travis Moberg, guitarist Connor Engstrom from the mid-west, and Quebecois Max “Wild_Cat” Noel on bass. These men hope to melt your eardrums and thrash your soul into silly-putty with their symphonic metal melodies. By their own admission, however, ” The Tiberian Sons are NOT in fact a Command & Conquer cover band, they just think C&C is metal as #%&$”. (Bassist Noel confesses that the band suggestion “Pud’s Dudes”, a parody of Dickinson’s PuD’s DuDs album, was pitched and subsequently rejected prior to settling on their current name. A shame.)

The Tiberian Sons will be playing on Sunday amongst the other secondary bands performing at MAGFest 13. We’ll keep you updated for exact times and days of all performances when they are released, and be sure to register for MAG if you haven’t already!

The Tiberian Sons – Youtube

Disclaimer: The author has a casual friendship with at least one member of Tiberian Sons outside of the MAGFest professional arena.
Game Music

Viking Guitar Live’s Legion Album w/ Exclusive Track

June 25, 2014 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Viking Guitar Live’s Legion Album w/ Exclusive Track Share this

If you were at this past MAGFest 12, you might have been lucky enough to see Viking Guitar Live perform a face-melting set in the wee hours of the morning that managed to kick of the festival in just the right way. If you didn’t, well you’re still in luck, because the band named after Erik “Viking Guitar” Peabody is releasing an entire album featuring the tracks played at MAGFest in full glory. It may not melt your face, but it will probably cause auditory hallucinations; of awesome. And fortunately, we’ve got an exclusive tidbit of the upcoming album “Legion” to share before it’s drop this coming Saturday, June 28th.

(more…)
Chip Music, Game Music, Indie Music, Reviews

MMMMMM (Review)

June 16, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on MMMMMM (Review) Share this MMMMMM (Review)

Back in 2010, Terry Cavanagh released a game titled VVVVVV, usually just pronounced “Vee”, for PC and Mac. The game is a 2D puzzle platformer that uses gravity reversal as its primary platforming mechanic. The game has seen release on several other platforms since and has earned a large following from the indie game fan base. Not only is the game engaging in its central mechanic, it’s also fairly difficult. The music of VVVVVV was composed by chiptune artist Magnus Pålsson, aka Souleye. If you’ve never heard the original soundtrack, fix that immediately. It’s easily some of the best indie chiptune music that’s been written in the past few years. Pålsson has also written music for a number of projects including Extreme Roadtrip, Drop Sort, and has even written an intro theme for Twitch caster MANvsGAME.

The original soundtrack, titled PPPPPP, has already received an arrange album in the form of PPPPPPowerup!, which featured arrangements by several indie composers and remix artists. This new album, titled MMMMMM, is a power metal re-imagining of the original soundtrack. This new work features a collaboration between Magnus Pålsson and music remix artist and composer Jules “FamilyJules7x” Conroy. As we covered recently on OSV, Conroy has been creating some impressive metal covers of videogame music for a few years on Youtube. His talent seems to have caught the attention of Pålsson, which has led to the creation of this new album. So how does this metal re-imagining of the music stack up against the original soundtrack? Read on to find out. (more…)
Featured, Game Music, Music Production

Check Out This 17 Minute Tribute to the History of Videogame Music

June 2, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Check Out This 17 Minute Tribute to the History of Videogame Music Share this

If you frequently explore YouTube for videogame music covers, chances are that you’ve encountered the videogame rock arrangements by Jules Conroy, aka FamilyJules7X. If you haven’t, then today you are in for a treat. For the past three years Jules has been arranging and performing music from videogames and uploading videos of these arrangements to his YouTube channel. He’s covered games including Donkey Kong, Pokemon, Binding of Isaac, Final Fantasy, and Elder Scrolls to name just a few.

This year, to celebrate the three year anniversary of his videogame cover projects, Jules put together a seventeen minute long medley of game music. As the title suggests, “Replay: A Metal Tribute to the History of Video Games” is a guitar cover tribute to videogame music and covers the medium’s more than thirty year history. The medley starts off at the year 1972 with the original Pong, works it’s way through classic Nintendo and Sega games, and proceeds to go through every year up to 2014.

As if the size and scope of this medley alone wasn’t impressive enough, Jules completed this project, start to finish, in just eight days and during the same week as his college finals. According to his video description, he only had four days to record the guitars, one day to do the arranging, one day for the drums, one day to mix and master the music, and only one day to edit all of the video footage. He set it up as a challenge for himself and the results are quite amazing. It’s an impressive feat to get all of that done in such a limited time frame. If you’ve never seen or heard his arrangements before, definitely give the FamilyJules7X channel a look. Metal fans and videogame enthusiasts will not be disappointed.
Featured, Game Music

Know Your MAG: MegaDriver

December 28, 2013 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Know Your MAG: MegaDriver Share this Know Your MAG: MegaDriver

More “Know Your MAG” for MAGFest 12, and it’s time to touch upon some of the new Main Stage bands! This time around we have the almost exclusively Sega-oriented metal band, MegaDrivermaking their MAGFest debut.

Believe it or not, Megadriver has been around for a decade. Based out of Brazil, the band was created by Antonio “Nino Megadriver” Francisco Tornisiello and focuses on two things: Sega Genesis (aka: Megadrive) game music, and performing as metal as possible. In fact, Nino Megadriver boasts that the band was the progenitor of the “game metal” mold that many bands have since adopted as their style of choice. Whether this rings true or not, most would agree that having more Sega Genesis/Megadrive music is never a bad thing.

MegaDriver and it’s five-man crew of metalheads have released nine albums to date, with several recent updates to older tunes. Though almost solely Genesis/Megadrive based, they have been known to throw in some renditions of songs from other consoles, such as tracks from Batman for the NES and Starcraft II. However, expect a heavy dose of Golden Axe and Sonic the Hedgehog music that hopefully isn’t just “Green Hill Zone”. (Surprisingly, despite how prolific “Ice Cap Zone” is in the video game arrangement scene, to the point of being obscene, not one MAGFest band has performed it live. Could MegaDriver be the first?)

MegaDriver hits the Main Stage on Friday night at 10:30pm.
Featured, Game Music

Know Your MAG: Viking Guitar

December 19, 2013 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Know Your MAG: Viking Guitar Share this Know Your MAG: Viking Guitar

We’re officially under two weeks away from MAGFest 12, and as such it’s that time again for another annual round of “Know Your MAG”, where we introduce you to some of the musical performers of the upcoming MAGFest and start enticing you with the myriad of music available for your auditory enjoyment.

First up, we have one of the several new bands to grace MAGFest’s Stage 2 – Viking Guitar! (or Viking Guitar Live, or Viking Guitar Band; I’m not really sure what the official naming scheme is) This band originally started as the one-man arrangement team of Erik ‘Viking Guitar’ Peabody, who got his start participating in the Dwelling of Duels competitions and releasing his own albums of video game arrangements. Dedicated to spreading his own brand of metal melodies, he went on to creating a modest Kickstarter campaign with the idea of helping others learn how to arrange and record their own music – dubbing the project Viking Guitar University. Achieving full funding, the Viking continued producing his own arrangements, creating tutorials and learning aids through VGU, and participating in various community arrangements projects such as the recent Spectrum of Mana album.

However, there were limits to what one man could do, so Peabody began colluding with other arrangers in the community to expand to the stage. Combining the talents of Grant “Stemage” Henry, Ryan “Mega Beardo” Postlethwait, Adam Henry and Travis Morgan, the Viking Guitar (band?) was now packed with so much metal power it’d be insulting not to give it a spot on MAGFest 12’s stage.

What can you expect from the VG crew? In their own words, “Their premiere performance at MAGFest XII will crush your bones, burn your village, and put a damn beard on your face. KEEP THE WORLD METAL!“

Viking Guitar will debut at MAGFest on Stage 2, Friday at noon.
Miscellaneous, Reviews

Plug-In to your dreams: Hijack (Review)

July 5, 2012 | Patrick Gann | 1 Comment Share this Plug-In to your dreams: Hijack (Review)

Imagine if you were a game music composer. Well, some of you reading actually are, but for those who aren’t, imagine it. You’re not writing for AAA games, but you’re satisfied with your job, and you eke out enough cash to get by.

Alright, so you write game music. But sometimes, you just wanna rock. Harder than you’ve ever rocked before. Now, imagine that slowly but surely, over the span of the last decade, you networked with a bunch of amazing rock/metal smiths across the world so that you could record your dream album.

Are you imagining it? I’m transcending time and space here to make sure you are. And I’m pretty sure you’re not. Try harder!! … nope, you’re still not there.

Well then, in lieu of your failed imagination, just join me after the jump we’re we’ll talk about Fred “Mobo” Motte and his band Plug-In. Their first full-length album, released 12 years after the band’s formation, will be found in the Bandcamp embed after the jump. (more…)