I thought maybe I'd try this last night, but I started too late and I was too tired. About halfway through Nox Arcana's Transylvania, I was nodding off, so I quit and went to bed.
Next week, though, for sure. Nox Arcana's Transylvania and Midnight Syndicate's Vampyre head to head!
Next week, though, for sure. Nox Arcana's Transylvania and Midnight Syndicate's Vampyre head to head!
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I've never heard of these bands, but now's certainly the month to do a little research. Mood music for gaming makes up a pretty sizable chunk of my CD collection.
If you're in a Halloween mood, check out the Halloween Adventure One-Shot Contest I'm running over at the T&B. All systems are welcome!
Since we're on the subject, there are a lot of examples of the so-called "dark ambient" genre that would fit the bill for tabletop mood music. Lustmord's "Heresy" and "The Monstrous Soul" are perfect examples. The former uses sounds recorded in the ambience of Medieval castles, as I recall, and the latter is directly inspired by the Cthulhu mythos.
Both of them have a fair number of mp3 samples on their websites, so definately check them out.
Midnight Syndicate was hired to do the official Dungeons & Dragons soundtrack a few years ago, and Nox Arcana has their own unofficial version called Blood of the Dragon. I'll do a head to head showdown with those two CDs too.
I read in an interview that Midnight Syndicate licensed the trademark from the makers of D&D at the time. They were not "hired" to do that soundtrack. I think for overall effectiveness, the sounds and music on Nox Arcana's Dragon album is richer and more heart-pounding. Midnight Syndicate songs tends to sound more synthesized and they use a lot of piano/keyboards which doesn't really fit in with a medieval time period.
Why is it that whenever I mention either Midnight Syndicate or Nox Arcana, I get bombarded with rumor and hearsay passed off as fact?
That's absolutely not true. Midnight Syndicate was approached by Wizards of the Coast at a gaming convention and asked to work on the project. Both Midnight Syndicate and Wizards of the Coast both have confirmed that multiple times all over the internet.
As to the quality of D&D vs. Blood of the Dragon; well, I'll get to that when I do that head-to-head review.
Well, to clarify, those two positions aren't mutually incompatible. Wizards may have approached Midnight Syndicate and a licensing deal was the means by which they came to an agreement on how to do this.
I don't want to nitpick, though. More especially, I don't want my blog to turn into a front in the "war" between fans of the two groups.
I was wondering the same thing. Not to nitpick either, but MidSyn did say they licensed the artwork from D&D. They didn't get paid by Wizards, hence they didn't get "hired." And it's not like Wizards gave them music. They did that all on their own, or I assume. Though there are some songs that sound really similar to old video games.
They were approached by Wizards of the Coast and asked to do the official D&D soundtrack. As far as I'm concerned, that means they were "hired".
Hired as a word is more expansive than simply implying that they were processed by Wizards of the Coast Human Resources and put on the payroll.
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