Best song on "The Empires Of The Worlds"

[profskett]

Well VDoP is quite a lot different from EotW. Although I would suggest that Empires should make metal history in the same way that Pantera did with Vulgar Dispay.

 

[jackchimono]

Totally. It's one of those albums that just sticks out as being something special.

 

[WinterSolstice]

I think your one of the first people to get that I know John was wandering when someone might pick up on it!

I thought it was pretty obvious. I guess no one said anything until now. So just for the sake of mentioning it: "Existenz" drops a few lines from the song "Eight Moons", as well.

As for the question, it's very hard to pick one favorite, considering that neither should really be mentioned without acknowledging any others. I do like "Survival" quite a bit that's probably because I wrote a song called "Mendacity" that is based around a similar triplet-riff in "Survival" and runs through the majority of the song. Another one I really dig is "Final Offense": that's the kind of composition that's so smoothly put together that it takes you away and you before you realize it, it's over.

Hey, Jon: how do you get the orchestral sounds? There's nothing in the liner notes mentioning an orchestra, and they're to realistic to be keyboards. How does the magician do it?

 

[WinterSolstice]

Guess I should have read the thread first. Someone already picked up on the "Existenz"/"Eight Moons" link.

BTW, to the person picking up Pantera, I'd recommend them all but Cowboys From Hell, Power Metal, and the Great Southern Trendkill are my personal favorites from them. Vulgar Display of Power has too many weak moments to me and Far Beyond Driven was a slight improvement over that.

Awesome Dimebag moment: All of Trendkill and the outro solo in "Domination".

 

[Jonoleth]

Good luck getting hold of 'Power Metal' legally! CDs are going for £100 plus on e-bay...

I never got the fuss with Pantera, half of it bores me to tears... Hugely over-rated band IMO.

 

[Biomechanoid#001]

Hey, Jon: how do you get the orchestral sounds? There's nothing in the liner notes mentioning an orchestra, and they're to realistic to be keyboards. How does the magician do it?

Hi there,

With the orchestral sounds I did use keyboards but I worked on them for a very long time. Before Biomechanical started happening I was emulating orchestral sounds for my film music demos. As it was before the PC Giga Studio era , I had to find a way of producing realistic orchestral sounds though conventional modules.

I found the best way was to overlay deferent modules and also samples from actual samplers (not soft synths) to create one sound.
For the legato stings for instance I used strings from the original sound canvas plus slightly detuned strings from the A3000 Yamaha sampler.

Same goes for everything else other than woodwinds and the percussions.

You also have to play the parts by hand and not to 'click the notes in' as they can sound very robotic when the notes are totally quantized. After all an orchestra is not machine perfect and little inflections on the performance give the orchestra a particular colour.

The choir is off course made from samples but it took a huge amount of time to articulate words for absolution.

So to sum it up I used Sound Canvas, M1 Korg (my own sounds), MU100R and a sampler for legato strings and piano.

 

[jackchimono]

Hi there,

You also have to play the parts by hand and not to 'click the notes in' as they can sound very robotic when the notes are totally quantized. After all an orchestra is not machine perfect and little inflections on the performance give the orchestra a particular colour.

Yeah, I've had that kind of trouble with A-Level composition on Cubase. I find that using VST instruments makes it better, but you can't really compare to manually played stuff.

 

[owentheyo]

Yeah, John was stoked when I asked him about it in the interview. There are so many little things like that in this album-John and all obviously busted their asses to make this the best record possible, and it shows. I'm anxious to crank out an extended review.

I read that interview ages ago.

Anyway, my favourite song from The Empires Of The World is Regenerated. Brilliant and action-packed, and the soloing is top-notch. It's my preferred album, and I prefer that song to anything off the first.

 

[AsModEe]

it would go like this:

Existenz
Regenerated (I noticed the link to The Awakening too...)
Survival
Truth Denied
Assaulter
Enemy Within
Disintegration
Long Time dead