RATING: 7 / 13 – COM1NG D4NG3ROUSLY CLOS3 TO G1V1NG M3 4 C4S3 OF TH3 V4PORS
When I first saw the album title, I thought, SBURB EAST, odd, but okay. Where’s the WEST cut? But no, this isn’t a German mistranslation. This is the unofficial soundtrack to SBURB, the central ‘game-that-heralds-the-end-of-the-world’ in Homestuck. Mark “Shadolith” Nabors asked a simple question: while playing SBURB, what would the music behind the game sound like?
Dozens of contributors later, this massive compilation is the result. As an unofficial album, it’s available completely free of charge (you can download the main album and the album expansion pack (!) here).
Each song has a main title and a ‘setting’, so to speak. With the BONUS DLC, this album clocks in at well over three hours long. I wonder if it may have served better to break the album up into a couple of different cuts (maybe by song energy level or tone, like an SBURB and an SGRUB release).
‘Fan album’ sometimes (quite unfairly) implies connotations of amateur song-making, but SBURB OST is as good an example as I’ve heard to put that presumption to rest. It’s uniformly professional in sound and quality. The ‘background’ theme of the album holds it back a little bit, but that’s the nature of a high-concept project like this one.