By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin
A little lower in pitch, a little more minor key action, some spooky organ and growly, death-metal vocals… yeah, this is the villain’s strife track. Probably one who happens to like knives, and their edges especially.
Make a Wish (by Joren “Tensei” de Bruin) is the sole bonus track on the album. You can almost picture Tensei’s thought process during Strife’s conception. “Alright, your face has been melted sufficiently. Here. Try this on for size.” Not only is it a great cool-down, but it’s a really simple, relaxing acoustic guitar composition in its own right. It’s the ‘after-strife’ mint to top it all off.
RATING: 12 / 13 – fresher than your moms change of drawers
FINALLY. A way rude, wicked, sicknasty album that knows how to THRASH.
This is Strife! by Joren “Tensei” de Bruin. It’s not the longest of albums, but the quality’s jacked through the roof. Four songs make up the heart of this album – a STRIFE! theme for each of the four Beta kids. Most tracks feature heavily distorted electric guitar and synth at their core, but each kids’ song also features their own unique instrumention – piano for John, violin for Rose, turntables for Dave, and bass guitar for Jade.
The album’s all about the energy. After a brief introduction, the juice gets cranked up to 11, starting with Heir Conditioning. After that, Tensei never really lets the foot off the pedal. It’s meant to be fighting music, heavily influenced by video game soundtracks, and it succeeds wildly.
This is one of my favorite albums in the catalog. I like One Year Older just a little better, so far as the solo albums go, but it was an awfully tough choice (and they’re so different from one another, a direct comparison is almost pointless).
Click here for individual song reviews for Strife!
I set out to review all Homestuck albums. To that end, I’m pretty satisfied with the result. So now what?
Two things. First, in my exuberance to get the blog kicked off, I rushed through some of the albums a little too quickly. So I’m going to revisit some tracks I haven’t reviewed yet, especially from the Homestuck volume releases. I’ll tag ‘em as #deep tracks. I’m also going to branch out a little: you’ll see a couple of more unreleased tracks from the music team, some projects from the music team that aren’t Homestuck, and a few more fan compositions.
After all that, I’ve got one more big music thing planned. It’ll take a month or two of daily posts, and it’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
And then what? We’ll have to see, I suppose. Maybe the gigapause will be over by then (though I have my doubts). I’ll probably post comics once in a while, but until the gigapause is over, I probably won’t have daily updates (and even then, it won’t be on this blog, at least not for a while).
Until then, we’ve got some deep tracks to delve into. I’ll be back in a week or so with new music!
Potential Homestuck ending #1934: Aradia and Jake team up to plunder the secrets of the incipisphere. Coming to your local radio program.