(high-res version)
RATING: 8 / 13 - hot sloppy shenanigans
The first half of the album is very strong. The stretch of songs from the beginning (Black Rose / Green Sun) all the way through Awakening (the ninth track) is solid. But like Homestuck Vol 6, it sputters a little in the second half.
It’s ambitious, though. Of all the volume albums to date, this one wanders from the comic’s roots the most. There’s very little chiptune to be found. It doesn’t necessarily improve or detract from the album’s quality, but it does mark an interesting departure.
I like quite a few songs on this album, but even better versions of many of them (Black Rose / Green Sun, Savior of the Dreaming Dead, and Even in Death, to name a few) are waiting in the wings, lurking on future albums. It’s one of the pitfalls of reviewing in hindsight.
Click here for individual song reviews for Homestuck Vol. 7.
‘Black Hole / Green Sun’ by Malcolm Brown. Solo piano, violin, guitar parts written and added by Toby “Radiation” Fox, featuring Joren “Tensei” de Bruin on electric guitar and Kelly Sadwin on violin
Black Hole / Green Sun begins at 10:48 in the Cascade medley. It’s only available as a stand-alone track when you purchase the album, but the album version is unchanged from the final few minutes of Cascade.
I like this remix better than its source (Black Rose / Green Sun), but only just. The changes aren’t huge: this track’s more like a driving classic rock anthem. The melodic guitar solo in the first half is great, and the soulful, Celtic violin refrain in the second half is even better.
And I love the extended chord that finishes things up. Now where’s that been done before?
By Clark “Plazmataz” Powell
Excellent. Just excellent. At its core it’s another simple piano tune. Starts off with a simple arpeggio – it’s a technique that’s quite common in the Homestuck library, and it’s almost always effective.
But the piano part – though superb – isn’t my favorite part of the song. It’s the percussion line that gets me. It reminds me a little of another song in that it’s very simple and static, but powerful in its own right.
This version of the song’s even better than the one featured in Cascade, in my opinion. It’s not forced to build up near the end (as required by the Flash animation), so it stands a little better as its own composition.
Arranged by Michael Guy Bowman. Original ‘Ocean Stars’ written by Mark Hadley
Great, easy listening. Starts off low key and builds slowly to a pretty cool groove. I’d have to call it a haunting refrain if it weren’t so damn cheerful and bouncy.
By Malcolm Brown
What an awesome, well-balanced combination of instrumentation. At its most basic level, it’s a duel between leads: chiptune, piano, electric guitar, string section, bass guitar. When one section takes over the main melody, parts of those prior leads add to the harmony.
A song like this could very easily feel stapled-together with so much variation, more like a medley than a single composition. Except for a rather abrupt break in the middle that adds a bit of character (and also proved helpful for the bifurcated Flash animation that features it), this track flows easily from one part to the next. It feels totally complete as a single piece. And to top it all off, the main hook is awesome, and it’s not overplayed or relied on too heavily. This is one of my favorite tracks in the library.