#it has a very catchy kickass soundtrack

[bestanimatedmovie]

Choose your favorite!

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What fans say:

The Lorax:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:

It had a very big impact on meme culture. And a really catchy soundtrack. Plus it has the silly sexy green man. What more could you want from a film.*

The Once-ler and the let it die song. This movie is glorious.

It is legit the mother of all great animated movies nowadays. From Mitchells vs the machines to the new mutant mayhem movie! The plot is so good and you can really see character development from almost all of the characters, plus the designs are BANGER.

THE MUSIC?? TOP FUCKING TIER. THE CASUAL DIVERSITY? IT ALSO HAS LITERALLY THE BEST SHOT IN CINEMATIC HISTORY (Miles rising after taking his leap of faith)

BRO THE ANIMATION IS SO SICK. The amount of sheer effort put into this movie is insane. The character growth was so amazing to watch and such a great movie to analyze. Best scenes are obviously the leap of faith. Actually gorgeous. And also the scene where aunt May sees Peter b after her Peter died. Her “you look tired, Peter” is just so heartfelt

Where the hell do I even start. The visuals are incredible and the plot is engaging. Every scene is perfect.

This film has EVERYTHING. Humor, action, inspirational scenes, kickass music, absolutely killer animation, an art style that is an homage to comic books, loveable characters, a talking pig, DR OLIVIA OCTAVIUS, I could go on

This is the best superhero movie ever made, the leap of faith is one of the best movie scenes of ever

The animation style is better than all the others, and makes the movie funnier too! The representation is also good, and the romantic storyline isn't too prevalent in the movie. Probably the best animation Marvel has made. My favorite scene is when the villains show up to Aunt May's house -- its my favorite fight scene!

I’m sure this movie’s been submitted already because it’s arguably the greatest animated film of all time. I have a personal connection to it because I saw it in theaters on opening night with my late father, and we both loved it and I still do. The animation is revolutionary and it’s one of the only 3 movies that make me cry.

gsksvbsvsbsvs I love everything about it, I love the animations, the story, the soundtrack also the style of animation AAAAAA its so beautiful its art it belongs in a museum i get goosebumps everytime I rewatch it

It’s just so good. All the characters are amazing and I love Miles dad. It’s hilarious and sparked my love for spider-man. It’s such a sweet movie about finding yourslef and has such a powerful message. I totally recommend it so I’m not adding spoilers, but like. Ohhhh, it’s so good.

Interesting villains, well-developed character arcs, a fresh take on Spider-Man, unique use of animation, funny, good use of multiverse that adds to the nature of the story being told, complicated character dynamics

It's the best animated movie because A: it takes one of the most well known comic characters of all time, kills him off in the first few minutes, and then shows you every cooler version of him. B: Has a large amount of representation in its main cast, considering that they're all versions of Spiderman, and that requires a white guy by default. C: everything in it is so well done I can't pick a favorite scene, but the most iconic is the jump off the skyscraper window.

The animation is incredible, the movie has so much story and heart, and there’s a perfect balance between humor and seriousness. And the soundtrack slaps

This is probably the best animated film I've ever seen. The animation is definitely the highlight, the way they blend comic book art styles and 3D animation is an absolute joy to look at and is so overwhelmingly creative, every frame of this movie is gorgeous. The impact this had on the industry is undeniable, as we start to see more and more movies getting more creative with their animation styles. It's not just the animation though. All of the characters are entertaining, all of the jokes land and the story is really well done. It leaves me blown away every time I watch it.

This movie kind of changed the western animation industry from the ground up. Apart from being expertly written, funny, and heartfelt, it is also stellarly animated, with a unique visual style that takes direct inspiration from the comic books it adapts and mixes 2d- and 3d-animation in a way and to a degree that hadn't really been seen before in western mainstream. Its critical and monetary success paved the way for mainstream 3d animation to open up to new and excitingly stylised movies that were like a breath of fresh air between the generic Pixar-style animation that had been the largely unchanged norm in the industry since Toy Story circa twenty years earlier**. ITSV divides the screen like panels on a comic page, it uses dots and lines for shading and gradients, doesn't shy away from lowering framerates for stylisation, and makes liberal use of onomatopoeia, both to comedic and dramatic impact. Impact frames and SFX are often hand-drawn and stunningly colourful, and even the simple dialogue scenes astonish with an expressiveness and realism in their depiction of emotions that makes me rewatch a two-second scene of Miles laughing fifteen times in a row. My favourite scene has to be the What's Up Danger scene, the emotional climax of the movie. Set to an absolute banger of a song, it is the moment the entire film has been building up to. I won't spoil anything plot-wise in case you somehow haven't seen this movie, but both from an emotional and a visual standpoint it is Fucking Dope. Conclusion: Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse is my favourite movie of all time and I could talk about it for hours. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. Thank you.

Have you SEEN the Whats Up Danger/rising and falling scene? it's a work of art that makes me fall in love with storytelling all over again whenever I see it. Also the impact that it's had on animated film is absolutely being felt at current, if incrementally. Incredible film.

It has an amazing art style based on comics and mixed up due to genre differences. It's really fun and the characters are great, even the side ones. The story line is great and I love Miles and his family.

*Mod note: errr, quite a lot more than memes and music actually

**Mod note: amen

#The Lorax #Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse #best animated movie #round 2 #tournament poll #tumblr's favorite

[maxwell-grant]

pizza tower is out! have you played it already ? if so, thoughts?

OF COURSE and, man it feels weird that the game is finally out officially. The demos for it have been probably my most played “game” over the past years, and I’ve played all of the demos available to Patreon backers plus some of the old public ones. I've been following for a long time through countless refinements and changes and do-overs and now it’s finally out, for good. I donated to this some years ago and now my name is in the credits of this thing! Feels pretty great!

I'm as biased as it gets in regards to it. It plays marvelously, it has one of the most fun characters to control ever made, endlessly replayable on the basis of that alone. The soundtrack is self-evidently kickass and has always been one of the biggest draws this game’s had to pull people in, the artstyle and animation being the other massive draw. Most of the big virtues of Pizza Tower are very self-evident, so instead I wanna talk a little on it's story and characters, because now that the game is out, it finally has a proper "canon' of sorts, in the sense that a lot of this stuff is no longer going to be rewritten or changed based on demos. Now Pizza Tower’s finally set-in-stone, of sorts, and that end result is what I wanna talk about:

I think Pizza Tower kind of had an uphill battle at first making sure it had an audience besides people who just showed up for the Wario Land-fix. Initially, that was the promise, it was designed to give people that fix that they weren’t gonna get from Nintendo themselves, and the game’s initial success in it’s demos kicked off that rise in what people now call Wario-likes, some of which are more blatant about it. The game initially played pretty much exactly as you’d expect a Wario Land fangame to be like and was set apart mainly by it’s distinct animation and catchy music, and maybe that could have been enough, but it evidently wasn’t, given how many undercooked demos it took for it to reach it’s current distinctive gameplay and appeal.

Of course, the Wario Land vibe may still be a big part of what people talk about in regards to Pizza Tower, but there was a very substantial shift over the years that I saw in real time, as the conversation around it shifted from “If you like Wario Land you should look into this new Pizza Tower thing, it seems like basically that with the serial numbers filed off”, to “Hey Pizza Tower rules, the music is kickass and the protagonist is very fast and the animation is super funny, you should play these demos, also it’s inspired by Wario games if you’re into those”. I actually didn’t even see Wario Land get brought up much at all in the last days since it’s launch, partially because Wario’s had his own comeback since 2018 (although just for the Ware games) but mainly because Pizza Tower succeeded in setting itself apart from it’s inspiration. It got people wanting the Pizza Tower-fix, and not just the bootleg-Wario-fix, if that makes sense.

And of course part of that comes from how Pizza Tower didn’t stick to just Wario games, but gradually took bits and pieces from stuff like Sonic, Earthworm Jim, Looney Tunes and Tiny Toons, some otherobscure defunct games that got brought up on occasion and etc, and then just kept throwing these gimmicks at a wall of beta testers and Patreon backers it accumulated to see what stuck and what didn’t. The game had a very small development team, and gradually acquired more and more of a following, and it made the most out of both.

I think a rather underrated aspect of the game is how Pizza Tower works at squeezing blood from stone in regards to it’s narrative and characters. The game follows in that platforming tradition of stock excuse plots that are as least obtrusive to the gameplay as they can possibly be, and for the longest time the demos and game didn’t even have one of those because no reason was settled (or needed) on why Peppino had to trek through these blasted towers fighting monsters while scared shitless the whole time, and a couple of different lore motivations were tried out over the years to explain some aspects (if anyone reading this is also in the PT Discord, you guys remember when Noise was some kind of weird shadow mirror self of Peppino? That was a thing for a bit, glad it got canned early). I want to emphasize how the trial and error approach of the development applied to Peppino’s character and the game’s story because I’m very much of a fan of what the game finally settled on: Peppino fighting to save his business from being destroyed.

Peppino is a miserable man who owns a failing pizza business and is struggling to make ends meet, who one day gets cornered by a giant pizza monster who lives on the tower across his shop, who tells him that he’s going to blow up and destroy his pizzeria, and so Peppino has no choice but to race against the clock to stop this from happening. Prior motivations tried out concepts like he destroyed “evil towers” as a job or was looking for secret ingredients to bake better pizzas, but the finished game cuts the filler and instead puts a giant bomb hanging over everything Peppino has, which is a shitty pizzeria, and sets him on collision course to cathartically smash the bomb.

The game chooses to emphasize Peppino’s poverty and struggles followed by blistering rage at the injustice he’s being inflicted with, and this is something that works better even just reflecting his basic design: though he is a chef, though he may put up ads of himself as a jolly cartoon, he cannot act like one to save his life, and if you look closer he’s actually just wearing a sleeveless shirt over black clothing: he can’t even afford an actual apron. He’s a failure who has very little to call his own, and he’s about to lose even that because some assface sitting high and mighty deemed it so: he’s a walking embodiment of an incredibly relatable frustration, and he’s going to smash the source of that frustration right in the fucking face.

You get this entire deal in the frames of animation Peppino goes through just before he faces down the final boss: he spots his place in the distance and looks dejectedly at it, gets scared when the boss looms down before him, and that fear gives way to shrieking rage as he prepares to throw down not just to save his business but as payback for all the shit he’s put up with the whole game, and MAN does the final fight make it all worth it

Because the game has basically no dialogue outside of in-game hints and flavor text, it has to put a lot of effort in making it’s cast shine non-verbally. Right from the start it was pitched as having a strong Earthworm Jim and Courage the Cowardly Dog influence, it was always playing around with as many cartoon tropes and gags as it could, and the end result in-game is that Pizza Tower does succeed big time in feeling like a cartoon show that could have been.

All of it’s levels are accompanied by title cards that present said stages as “episodes”, and all of them have built-in gimmicks with implied narratives like picking fights with pirates, taking a trip to space and back, going to jail and needing your friend to bail you out, getting stalked and hunted by monstrous animatronics until you get a shotgun that lets you hunt them back, and etc. There’s a level where you can surf through graveyards on the back of a corpse while looking scared shitless, and the Achievements later reveal Peppino used to know the dead guy when he was still alive, and so on. The core story is just there enough to make the final fight feel narratively satisfying, and along the way you get all these little bits and pieces that make this world richer and it’s characters more lively, enough that we can fill in the blanks and see how they would fit if they were part of a long-running franchise or some kind of wacko world with off-screen adventures before or after the game.

Gustavo wound up being one of the more pleasant surprises in the game. And not just gameplay-wise, since I honestly found playing Gustavo in the demos a chore but they buffed his moveset a lot in the game proper and made him a lot more fun to mess around with, but even character-wise. Ever since his planned spin-off didn’t take off Gustavo was kind of a throwaway character for the longest time without much of anything going on for him, with his in-game role as someone you'd deliver pizzas for and would beat you up if you failed (and was apparently your boss).

In-game, Gustavo is no longer your boss, in fact apparently he no longer knew Peppino before the game, he's just a guy who is going into the tower at the same time as you (and clearly more prepared since he’s got a map), tangled up in his own side-adventures taming and befriending a giant rat, who’s taking the time to help you out anyway. In-game he’s this nice, friendly character who is straightforward in a way Peppino can't be, he's got a kind of beady-eyed cuteness to him that Mario used to have in the old 2D titles (and a super deep smoker voice for contrast), and he winds up becoming your Luigi (...or maybe it’s the other way around and you’re his Luigi) in the sense that he complements and contrasts you as the secondary lead (and you sorta do Bro Attacks together at the end).

The game gets a lot of mileage out of the Gustavo and Brick dynamic as is in a way that makes it so Gustavo on his own doesn’t have to be as extravagant as Peppino or Noise, but still be funny and endearing enough as a protagonist that we can put Peppino aside to enjoy him just as much, maybe even more so depending on your preference. Gustavo is obviously very silly but silly in a lot of ways that Peppino can’t be, and I think the way the game treats him goes a long way towards lending Pizza Tower some more versatility in terms of humor and characterization. 

I'm glad Mr Stick didn't wind up as a boss as planned. He's not terribly interesting or funny enough to be one, he isn't really anyone's favorite and I think McPig got more mileage out of him as an ally to you, and considering Peppino is inspired by Courage the Cowardly Dog, I think having a Eustace type character among your allies works pretty allright. He's not a character you would really see in a Wario game, Wario would never put up with being bossed around or scammed by some greedy jackass (that's his job), but Peppino is not Wario, he's got bills to pay and bigger issues to work through via violence and he can't really pick or choose his allies so, he's stuck with Mr Stick, the piece of shit landlord who rips you off constantly and you have no choice but to pay him, but who does help you progress at least so, eh.

(Art by @ketrindarkdragon​​)

I frankly loved Pepperman as is back when he was just the default boss / a stage hazard purely on the basis of his design and attack animation and of course his kickass theme, but his reinvention into a pretentious artist who sounds like Comic Book Guy was a pretty wonderful way to make a character out of him, not exactly what you’d expect out of the game’s Musclebound Bully boss character. He’s got that Squidward gag where he’s actually remarkably skilled at several different kinds of art, and going by the credits he’s apparently well-off for it, but he’s a self-obsessed prick who only makes self-portraits, and nobody in the cast thinks much of him as is (if you beat him without taking damage, you get an achievement called “The Critic”). He’s probably the character I would most enjoy playing as even though those plans were scrapped for good reason.

I’m glad that The Noise got a somewhat reduced role in-game as just a boss fight, I think this was the smart choice. For the longest time, Noise was the only other character in the game besides Peppino and he’s always been fairly popular, and he’s going to be made playable since he’s got most of his animations finished as is, so I think downplaying The Noise was a good call to make all the other elements stand out more. I’m not super into how his boss fight ends (I do like Noisette quite a bit actually, I just don’t think that bit was particularly funny) but I otherwise really like it, the fucker keeps opening himself up for beatings because he cannot stop literally giving you the middle finger, I like how well his fight emphasizes just how much Peppino and Noise hate each other, and I can’t wait to see what else is he gonna bring once made playable.

I’ll miss playable Vigilante, it was for the better yes but I’ll miss it. Still, he does make a better Boss, and obviously since his role is to be the Meta Knight of the game he does have to be the Cool Boss Who Hands You a Weapon. I’m glad that the game plays him straightforward, I’ve always loved the contrast of our Actual Cowboy Badass character being essentially a Goomba, a sentient pile of cheese with a cowboy hat and spurs (in concept there’s also a bit of Bandana Dee in him). He’s just gross and uncool enough on the basic concept that he can get away with being the coolest character in a way nobody else can be and in some ways only makes him more of a genuine badass, after you’ve steamrolled and gotten used to the game’s Goombas and then one of them fights back big time. I love the bit of him staring into the broken John at the final floor and quietly having a moment of concern he’s not allowing you to notice, I love him teaching the Toppins to shoot in the credits in preparation for the main villain’s next move, I really love this guy.

I fucking KNEW IT that Pizza Boy was gonna turn out to be a secret villain at some point, I fucking called it, as soon as they gave him a theme park in a now scrapped version of Pig City I knew that he was gonna be more than just a running gag. I actually didn’t expect Pizzaface to be fake, but I knew Pizza Boy was gonna show his true colors at some point. I however certainly did not expect for him to be basically Ronald McDonald, which is a choice that makes the most sense for the food mascot-themed villain who’s gonna boss around all the others and be the Punchable Face of Evil for a struggling chef and business owner to be set against.

Of course the real Pizza Boy is a scuzzy freak who’s nothing like the mascot he plasters around, that’s pretty much a running theme in the game at this point. He has perfectly deranged music completely unlike anything else in the game’s soundtrack, his boss section is wonderfully obnoxious, he’s a great final twist villain to have at a point in the game where you absolutely need the most punchable character of all time to take out Peppino’s frustrations in.

I didn’t expect the Pillar Johns to wind up having a mini-story in their own right depending on how you complete the game, where it does the Wario thing where the amount of treasures and loot you collect determines the ending. Except here instead of loot, collecting all the secret treasures determines whether or not John the pillar monster comes back to life after being broken and beaten into countless pieces and having his consciousness scattered into a hivemind across the entire tower, to the point where you are basically doing him a favor by smashing him at the end of every level. I didn’t expect the game to bother explaining why Gerome the janitor is following or helping you, let alone for the explanation to be so goddamn dark.

(You guys remember way waaay back in the earliest demos when John used to be this invincible thing you fed Toppins to so it would grant you passage? That was overhauled completely but turns out in the end, you still need to feed Pillar John to finish the game)

I find it funny how Peppino winds up incidentally rescuing the Tower from the Pizza, and that’s not even a funny overstatement, the game’s progression really does show how the Pizza was the bad guy in this scenario and the Tower was just corrupted along the way. It’s Pizza Tower, a game that has pizzas and towers, and you play as a pizza chef who’s threatened by a giant pizza (hiding another pizza) atop a giant tower, and so you smash the giant pizza and escape the tower and wind up saving the tower from the pizza while trying to save the pizza from the tower.

...I killed Snotty, I’m sorry you guys, I’ll do better next time.

Did I tell you guys about the soundtrack already? Because good God it has never stopped getting better and better, it alone is worth the price you pay for the game, and there’s a LOT of music in this thing even without counting the tracks that didn’t make it into release.

I think it's great that the game assembled it's core cast piecemeal over  the development cycle from all these unlikely places over the years, it’s come such a long way from the days when it was just Peppino and Noise. I adored how the game’s ending and subsequent promos show how the Bosses stick around as cast members and showing snapshots of further adventures and mishaps for them. They all come back for the finale so Peppino can reach his breaking point, and they all escape together, and they all settle a truce over free pizza at Peppino’s place, still not much but still intact, still in one piece, after everything Peppino put up with to save it.

None of these characters belong together but they clearly don't belong anywhere else either, they're all a part of the "Receding Hairline Celebration Party" as the credits theme puts it, all these weird greasy knock-offs stuck together in the dumps, getting into trouble and duking it out, and playing cards together after it all quiets down and there’s some time to breathe, or dance.

....

Five years, man, that celebration party is definitely well deserved.

#replies tag #pizza tower #videogames #peppino #peppino spaghetti #the noise #vigilante #pepperman #gustavo and brick

[mygreatadventurehasbegun]

What's the best theater production you've ever seen?

Most recently, I’d say the best was when I saw Come From Away on Broadway back in March of 2018.  It was the last show I saw before heading home (I saw seven during that trip), and it was incredible.  I really didn’t know too much about it other than their performance at the Tony’s...but I needed to see something, so I went for it and I’m really glad I did.  The show is about 100 minutes long and there is no intermission, and boy, what a ride.  It’s weird, when you hear it described, you’d think the creators were nuts to go ahead with this.  

It’s a musical about 9/11.  And you don’t leave the theater depressed, but uplifted.  It’s about a small town in Newfoundland, called Gander that has a mostly out of use airport (it became superfluous when jet planes were invented and planes didn’t need to stop to refuel), but when they closed the US airspace on September 11th, 38 planes were diverted there and the 7,000 passengers had a five day layover in Gander.  

Even though it is based around a horrible moment in history, the musical reminds you about just how much good there is in the world.  These people dropped everything to open their homes to strangers, they donated their time and their town and came together to help however they could.  

It is a musical that will make you laugh and cry.

And something I find incredible, is that that this show opened in February 2017, and all but three of the original cast are still with the production.  I feel like that is really rare.  Most Broadway contracts are one year, and a lot of people move on after that (especially in lead roles as they want to pursue other work), but these actors have stuck with it.  The cast is the same as when I saw it with the exception of one actor...and I saw it 18 months ago.  I think it really speaks to how incredible this show is, and what a great job it is for actors.  It really is an actor’s dream: a nonstop 100 minute musical where you get to play multiple roles...you get to comedy and drama, sing these amazing songs and just...create.  I would want to stick around, too.

And the music is amazing and so catchy.  I predicted at the end of my trip that of all the shows I saw, this would be the soundtrack I would listen to the most.  And I was right.  I listen to it all the time.  The music has a very Irish-inspired sound, and the band is kickass.  The curtain call is really just an excuse to listen to these guys rock out...and they had everyone one their feet (though most were already there by that point).

I highly recommend giving it a listen! 

#come from away #musical theatre #thanks for asking!

[ginger-snap-talkin-nonsense]

Musicals are rad, huh? Gimme your Top 3 best and worst! ^_^

Hmmmm, that’s a tricky one!

Best:

1.) Heathers for being better than the original and improving upon its themes while having a kickass soundtrack.

2.) Cabaret half because I was actually in a production for it in high school and it’s where me and my SO fell in love, and half because it’s super well written and great with the “surprise bitch-Nazis” reveal midway through. The commentary in it is still very relevant today and I highly recommend a watch to anyone who hasn’t seen it.

3.) Spongebob the musical for the sheer fact that it turned out breathtaking despite, ya know, it being spongebob the musical.

Worst:

1.) Love Never Dies for being an unholy abonimation and blight on theatre. I don’t need to say anymore, we all know what it did.

2.) Book of Mormon because despite the admittedly catchy songs it still has Parker and Stone’s stink all over it’s writing and no amount of catchy showtunes can mask that for me.

3.) Carousel. Ugh my favorite high school teacher would kill me for saying that. I don’t hate it, but the music isn’t very memorable and I just don’t care about the main character. It’s pacing is also very wonky. Clearly a product of its time, so I don’t hate it or anything, just boring and mediocre.

[handsofdarkness]

The 10 best Within Temptation songs

Within Temptation have had some huge hits in their 22 year career, but what are their best songs? Let's find out!

Last week, in a world exclusive, we revealed that Within Temptation were back with a brand new album, Resist, coming December 14, and that they had landed their first ever Metal Hammer cover. To celebrate, we thought we'd bring together a list of the 10 greatest Within Temptation songs ever. If you're a newcomer to the Dutch metal machine, this is your place to start...

Mother Earth (Mother Earth, 2000)

This classic paean to the Big Green Lady is the track that introduced much of the world to Within Temptation, and it remains one of their hallmark anthems almost two decades later. Swaying synths swirl dramatically around stirring string sections, as Sharon Den Adel croons her way through a song so bombastic it could have been plucked straight out of something from the Lord Of The Ringssoundtrack. Probably during a song about Ents.

Ice Queen (Mother Earth, 2000)

That the title track wasn’t Mother Earth’s most overblown number speaks volumes of how big Within Temptation’s ambitions were from very early on, and this frost-tinted monster might just be symphonic metal’s finest moment. Big riffs, synths, strings, horn sections and what still may just stand as Sharon’s most powerful vocal performance. Metal rarely gets more ludicrous – or brilliant – than this.

Stand My Ground (The Silent Force, 2004)

A hint of the more rock-oriented waters that Within Temptation would dip into later in their career, while Stand My Ground might be far from the band’s heaviest track, it showed that they were finding their feet with penning big, catchy choruses. Catchy choruses still drowned in dramatic synth and big-ass riffs, mind. The lyrics, based around confronting your past and tackling your inner demons head-on, are a defiant call-to-arms.

Angels (The Silent Force, 2004)

A melancholic wave of synth introduces this, one of the Dutch band’s most well-known singles. And it’s well-known for good reason: Angels was the surest sign yet that Within Temptation were beginning to hone their songwriting without sacrificing any of the grandeur and glory that had made their early tracks such epics. One of the biggest choruses contemporary metal has produced, it’s a song that still sounds absolutely humongous live.

The Howling (The Heart Of Everything, 2007)

A spooky, supernatural humdinger of a song, The Howling not only boasts one of Within Temptation’s most memorable intros (come on, don’t pretend you don’t find yourself singing along with those Whoooooooo whooooo whooooos), but takes on a much more sinister edge lyrically, taking the listener through a nightmarish showdown with otherworldly beasties. Most likely including werewolves. How this song never got picked up for an Underworld movie we’ll never know.

Faster (The Unforgiving, 2011)

2011’s The Unforgiving saw Within Temptation make their biggest stride yet away from their symphonic-heavy roots, and it paid dividends – it’s a near-flawless record, stacked with killer, rock-heavy songs full of enough hooks to give the whole of Neverland the shits. This stomping single showed that the band had finally made the full transition from symphonic metal heavyweights to a rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse.

Iron (The Unforgiving, 2011)

Evidence that Within Temptation hadn’t yet left their penchant for bombast behind them, Iron is a full-blown, galloping heavy metal anthem, packed with strings, horns and a bassline ripped straight from Steve Harris’ notebook. A sinister, spoken-word segment designed to tie into the conceptually loaded theme at the heart of the record only adds more tension to what is one of the band’s most dramatic and urgent songs.

Sinéad (The Unforgiving, 2011)

Perhaps the best song on The Unforgiving is, in many ways, its least metal. Don’t let that put you off, though: Sinéad is essentially a kickass pop tune drenched in guitar, with a hook so catchy it’ll cause an outbreak and a chorus so infectious it’ll have you nodding your head for hours after the song’s finished. If Kelly Clarkson wrote this song it’d have been filling the guilty pleasure spot at rock nights for years after.

Paradise (What About Us?) (Hydra, 2014)

While Hydra felt like it wasn’t quite the leap forward that Within Temptation needed, it still gave us this killer cut. The symphonic metal dream team of Sharon den Adel and ex-Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen gave us an absolute beast of a lead single, the two singers’ voices complimenting each other perfectly and providing Within Temptation with one of their biggest singles ever. 53 million views and counting on YouTube doesn’t lie.

The Reckoning (Resist, 2018)

If the lead single from new album Resist is anything to go by, we are about to be in for something very, very special indeed. The Reckoning opens with one of the heaviest riffs Within Temptation have ever produced, sounding like something from a recent Korn album more than anything in their catalogue, and the abundance of electronic flourishes add a welcome new dimension to their sound. A well-worked cameo from Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix seals the deal nicely. Is this a sign of things to come? Well, you’ll have to pick up the new issue of Metal Hammer to find out...

#within temptation #mother earth #The Silent Force #The Heart of Everything #the unforgiving #hydra #resist

[fiothelemon]

december 15, 2018 takenobu mitsuyoshi 光吉 猛修

If you’ve ever played a 90′s era SEGA game, then you may recognize the work of Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. Takenobu has produced music on games such as Daytona USA, Virtua Racing, and even Shenmue. Whatever game he takes part in, it always gives me both a smile on my face, and makes me enjoy the game waaay more. Today on the first issue of FBoGCaTW, we look at my all time favorite video game composer: Takenobu Mitsuyoshi!

history

Takenobu Mitsuyoshi was born on Christmas of 1967 in the Fukuoka prefecture of Japan. Because of his father’s work, he moved around the country until they finally settled in Chiba, and then later in Sendai when he was in his second year of high school.

When Takenobu was in his elementary and middle school days, he despised music, music class, and anything relating to music theory. Despite the dislike of music, he did enjoy singing and singing popular anime theme songs from back then (that isn’t too different nowadays for him). One other thing he liked during elementary school was baseball, ending it while he was wrapping up his middle school days. Why he left is because when Takenobu began high school he started attending his school’s science club in search for something other than sports. In that science club, there were NEC PC-8001s in the class that could play music and this impressed takenobu, along with screwing with synthesizers. Of course, the science club did not 100% spark Takenobu’s musical interest. the band “Yellow Magic Orchestra” was a huge influence on him and also helped him build his fascination of music.

When Takenobu went out to college, he majored in economics, out of all things. He was considering a teaching job, but then he got a real taste of what being a teacher was like when he attended classes. But college is where he both joined several bands, and discovered SEGA, and thus aspired to work there when a friend showed him Galaxy Force. In an interview with Game Music Core, Takenobu said:

“Actually, I also attended a Sega job fair meeting, though it was for their business and administration positions, not games development. At the meeting, I was surprised when someone else raised their hand and asked “I want to do sound at Sega, how can I apply for that? [...] ”I remember they replied, “Just send in your demo tape.” -Takenobu Mitsuyoshi

Keep in mind that Takenobu was there for things such as business, and if it weren’t for that one guy... then we wouldn’t have his classic music now. And taking what that guy said in mind, Takenobu took work on producing a demo tape to show to SEGA, and produced 2 instrumental songs. All played by hand and using a multitrack recorder with sequenced drums. Takenobu had always had an interest in game music, so he also applied to other game companies such as Namco, Taito, Konami, and SNK. (Huh, the Daytona USA guy coulda done the music for Metal Slug!!) During the application for the other companies, Takenobu received an “unofficial offer” by SEGA, and the story of when he was tested on his skills deserves a paragraph to its own.

“Their entrance test was insane, too! They had an electric piano setup in the interview room, and they said, ‘Please listen to this melody. You will have 5 minutes to come up with an arrangement.’ [...] After that, I had to meet with the business managers, but my head was all muddled and I blurted out that I’d received an unofficial offer from SEGA.” -Takenobu Mitsuyoshi

In retrospect, he said how he should have backpedaled and was teetering on accepting the offer or not. Instead, he said to the interviewers how he “Just wanted to learn more about your company.” Even though this left them baffled, Takenobu was hired and for almost 30 years (since 1990), he has taken part in games such as Daytona USA, which he has particular fond memories of. The Virtua Fighter series (including the anime, oddly enough), Yakuza, and plenty more that I don’t have much time to mention here.

takenobu, seen on the right, in his early days of joining sega

music showcase

The first track of Takenobu’s I wanna show y’all that I think describes his style beautifully is an exclusive to an album he put out in 2003 called “From Loud 2 Low: Takenobu Mitsuyoshi Works.” It features mostly famous songs he made for famous SEGA games, but an extra 2 songs of the album are an exception, though. They were made only for the album, and weren’t featured in any SEGA game. One is called “Night In H.A.P.” and the other is “I Feel So Good…”

“I Feel So Good…”

“I Feel So Good…” shows a good example of what I like to call “Mitsuyoshi-ism.” I define it as cheery music based on jazz fusion, that also feature upbeat, optimistic vocals. A few other notable songs by Mitsuyoshi that display mitsuyoshi-ism well are some of his songs in Daytona USA such as “Sky High” or the famous “Let’s Go Away.” In case you enjoy this track, a lot like me, this and the album it was originally from are available on Apple Music and Spotify!

Speaking of Daytona USA…

This is “Sky High” from Daytona USA, released in 1993 for the SEGA Model 2 arcade board. Since it’s an arcade game from the time, that would explain the choppy vocals and sampled instruments. Nevertheless, Takenobu shines bright in this song with his signature singing and flexes his composing muscles. If this version of the song isn’t doing it for you, I don’t blame you. There was a SEGA Saturn version of the game released a year after the original, and it improves aaaaalllmost everything about the game, including music. Here is the cover made for the Saturn.

“Course Select”

When he first joined SEGA in 1990, one of the first games Takenobu was tasked with scoring for was Virtua Racing. It was made by the same development team as Daytona, AM2, and Takenobu is involved with the music, so think of it as sort of a precursor to Daytona, but the music won’t say so. Comparing Virtua Racing’s soundtrack to Daytona’s, VR has a more rock-ish feel to it than Daytona’s Pop-ey, Jazz-ish aesthetic. While it *may* not live up to the beast of a soundtrack that is Daytona, Virtua Racing *does* have some catchy tunes up its sleeve.

“Passing Breeze ~Arrange”

Takenobu was so good at making music for SEGA games, that he was promoted into the S.S.T. Band. S.S.T. stood for “SEGA Sound Team,” and as you could imagine, it was a band consisting of composers from SEGA games. Here is a cover by them of “Passing Breeze” from OutRun, composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi. In this arrangement, Takenobu is playing keyboard, in which he is also playing the melody of the song. Very relaxing cover, I prefer this one over the original arcade rendition!

a picture of takenobu with the S.S.T. band, circa 1991

“Burning Rangers”

When you’re talkin’ Takenobu, you CAN’T forget about his kickass vocals! This song from Burning Rangers called, um, Burning Rangers, is a great example of Takenobu’s vocal beauty. While this track wasn’t composed by him, and the original game is more obscure due to the game being released on the Saturn, and pretty much SEGA just shooting themselves in the foot during this time, thus you may not recognize this one. Despite the obscurity, this is a great recommendation! PLUS: shoutout to Dino Gavoni, who did the AMAZING sax solo around the 3 minute mark! (That alone is worth a listen, too!)

“Shenmue - Main Theme”

You may notice a pattern here, all of the songs before this one are all upbeat and high-energy. The main theme to shenmue takes a completely different turn to Takenobu’s style of composition, in that there are no vocals, no high tempo or energy, and only the energy of the orchestra. And this alone displays Takenobu’s flexibility of music, the last music he helped make before this was from Daytona USA 2, with music such as this ( youtube.com/watch?v=kbgD7VTM-MY ), and coming off from that to a huge, and I mean HUGE game like shenmue, also with a huge production team of composers behind it (10 composers!!) was daunting and impressive to say the least. Basically, the song and the soundtrack in general are amazing. So is the game. Have I mentioned how great shenmue is? It’s great. Play it. Now.

sources (in order of appearance)

Please look through some of these yourself, these interviews/articles are all way more informative than this blog!

seganerds.com/2014/05/23/takenobu-mitsuyoshi/

segaretro.org/Takenobu_Mitsuyoshi

shmuplations.com/sst/

www.ne.jp/asahi/v/hara/ga_core/ga_core1_1.html

tssznews.com/2013/03/28/interview-takenobu-mitsuyoshi/

segaretro.org/From_Loud_2_Low:_Takenobu_Mitsuyoshi_Works

segaretro.org/Burning_Rangers#Japanese_version

www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=42297

#sega #sega saturn #sega am2 #daytona usa #takenobu mitsuyoshi #game music #shenmue #retrogaming

[13thhr]

Episode #109: Brent Simon – Musician and Aerial Video Producer, Part 2 of 3

https://archive.org/download/Podcast110_201709/podcast%20110.mp3

Last week, we had our first episode of Brent Simon’s interview, and this week, we discuss things like bittorrent, movie that were probably inappropriate to be shown to children (but were), how we went around humming John Williams scores as kids, and more.  Lots of 80s movies references in this one!

In case you missed the backstory, in the beginning of the summer, during the interview with Jeff Finley (episodes 101 and 102), we talked about Jeff’s making of a little documentary that rocketed to the forefront of Youtube back in 2006 featuring none other than current guest Brent Simon.  Last week, we talked about the making of that short film (called “The Brentumentary,”) as well as the media explosion that happened afterwards resulting in a CD of synthesizer tunes.  It’s, unfortunately, really hard to find now for some reason.  I did manage to track down a copy of another CD Brent talked about last week, the infamously named “Vomit Gold” by the band he was in prior to all this happening, Bellevue:

You can hear Brent’s synthesizer action in the background just like he mentioned last week.  I’ll figure out how to get it to Brent.  Of all people, he should own this disc.

Speaking of musical things, at one point, Brent references a childhood favorite track, which was a disco version of the Star Wars theme.  I’m not sure this is the same one, but here’s one I did find a medley version on youtube, which has the main theme, the cantina theme, and a bit of the Force theme.

  We also discuss the notable lack of the Voltron theme in the new reboot, Tranzor Z (finally learned what that robot was called; see below), Transformers, Robotech, G.I. Joe, Thundercats, Prince Valiant (watch the intro here; always thought this was a kickass intro – the full song was done who the synth duo Exchange), and more.  We touch on a few movies my brother I rewatched a number of months ago (discussed in episodes 74 and 75) as well as a full discussion of some classic movie scores by folks such as James Horner (The Rocketeer, Willow,  The Journey of Natty Gann, etc).

Click on the picture for the original Japanese intro, which, true to form given the time period, has men singing in the background.

Find more Brent by going to the original source on Jeff Finley’s youtube channel or on FB at https://www.facebook.com/Brent-Simon-355981196166/?ref=br_rs and, believe it or not, on myspace (https://myspace.com/brentsimon/music/songs) – the music still (sometimes) works there.

At the end of the show, there a clip of one of the songs from Brent’s “Seven of Nine” CD, a very catchy tune with clever lyrics called “Alien Abduction.”  If you want to see a “live” performance (11 years ago), there’s a clip Jeff put up on his channel of Brent busting out a 20 min set with friends with a number of songs from the CD (not to mention a short breakdancing bit on cardboard, no less):

  And speaking of which, check out Jeff’s Soundcloud page for a number of new tracks he’s produced since coming on the show at the beginning of the summer.  His latest instrumental chillwave track:

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!  Next week more on Brent Simon!

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Listen to Long Ago Not So Far Away, the Thirteenth Hour soundtrack online at: https://joshuablum.bandcamp.com/ or Spotify.  Join the mailing list for a digital free copy.  You can also get it on CD or tape.

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #110: Musician and Aerial Video Producer Brent Simon Comes on the Show Part 2 of 3 Episode #109: Brent Simon - Musician and Aerial Video Producer, Part 2 of 3 Last week, we had our…

#13thhr #80smovies #80smusic #backtothefuture #backtothefuture2 #brentsimon #brentumentary #creativeprocess #gijoe #guest #indie #interview #jameshorner #jefffinley #keyboard #music #princevaliant #retro80s #risingsun #robocop #robotech #soundtrack #synth #synthesizer #thethirteenthhour #thirteenthhour #thundercats #tranzorz #voltron