RATING: 8 / 13 - rEASONABLY INSPIRATIONAL,
Homestuck Vol. 1-4 contains virtually all of the webcomic’s music from the first few acts. It’s a great starting point for getting further into the catalog: the main volume albums tend to collect most of the music from the comic. That being said, albums a little further down the road surpass it in scope and quality.
In the first half of the album, bouncy chiptune tracks like Showtime (Imp Strife Remix) and Harlequin predominate. The songs are catchy, but it’s hard for them to stand up to repeated listening: they’re more on the ‘functional’ side, as they work very well within a brief Flash game or skit. The more ambitious tracks tend to be towards the end of the album, and it finishes strong with songs like Black and Ballad of Awakening.
It’s a good taste of the ‘homestuck’ genre of music, and it gets even better.
Click here for individual song reviews from Homestuck Vol. 1-4.
RATING: 12 / 13 - hard, peer-reviewed motherfuckin’ science
There aren’t many albums in the catalog that are better than Homestuck Volume 5.
Some of the best tunes in the Homestuck library are on this album (Homestuck, Descend, Sunslammer, and Savior of the Waking World, for starters). But it’s not just these songs that make this an excellent album.
Unlike Vol. 1-4, a significant portion of this album is not featured in any of the Flash animations in the comic. I had read the entire comic prior to purchasing any of the albums, and it was a lot of fun discovering brand new music on my first listen-through.
A few parts can get repetitive: there are no fewer than six Endless Climb remixes, and five Doctor remixes, though they’re salted out pretty well throughout the album. On the plus side, this helps to tie the album together: you’ll hear a new, interesting take on a familiar theme throughout.
The album’s a little more expensive than most, but that’s due to its sheer size (65 tracks for two and a half hours of runtime). If you’ve only got a few bucks to spend, and you can only afford one or two albums, this one’s pretty damn close to the best in the catalog.
Click here for individual song reviews from Homestuck Vol. 5.
RATING: 7 / 13 - im 0k with it. im 0k with a l0t 0f things
Perhaps it’s inevitable that the follow-up release to Homestuck Vol. 5 doesn’t quite reach the same heights as that album did.
Volume 6 is significantly shorter than Volume 5 (though with a somewhat reduced price). And it’s hit or miss: there’s some excellent tracks on the album, but it starts losing steam around the second half. The production values are there: there’s a great deal of experimentation, and some of the tracks tread on new ground. Umbral Ultimatum perhaps best illustrates this on the positive side. And then there’s tracks like Tribal Ebonpyre: it’s very well done, and it’s of a style completely foreign to the library so far, but it just doesn’t have that ‘hook’ that leads me to want to include it in a playlist.
Click here for individual song reviews from Homestuck Vol. 6.
(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.