Christmas Music blog: Cruxshadows, O Holy Night

Yes, another version.



But it works.

Being interviewed.

Did I mention that I and my friend Allan were being interviewed for our book Codename: Winterborn?



No?



Well, we are, right here.



Enjoy, all.

Week in Review: 6-25-2011

Monday was my Father's Day post. All about my father.



The music blog was one part Two Steps from Hell, one part Tom Smith.





Tuesday was my review of the man who should be running all of Star Wars: Timothy Zahn. So the post was called The Wrath of Zahn.  There's a bonus if you can ID what the blog post title references..



The music blog for Tuesday had a super villian in love, and muppets.



Could I make that up?



I have mentioned in a few other places my character Hashim Abasi. He shows up in A Pius Man, and he's a cop ... from Egypt.  The post is about writing with current events.



The music was an interesting counterpoint: with evil pizza, evil computers, and a body count.



And, for a bonus: my friend Jason discusses leaving Afghanistan.



My week ended with an Index: if you wanted my Lenten and Easter series, it's all here. Have fun. Or try to.



Then, we enter: The Eye of the Storm.



And, if you've been keeping track, my self defense columns from the week are

Evaluating a self defense class 

Defending against chokes from the front

And a review of a local, New York self defense school.

Music: the Eye of the Storm: Fenton

If you are allergic to strangeness, you might want to play the first video last. If not, play in whatever order you like....



First up....



Cruxshadows, the Eye of the Storm. They've been mentioned before on this blog. They're a little weird. I'm not sure if they want to be a Goth band when they grow up (to go by their costumes) or if they wanted to write Greek mythology (to go by some of their song content.)



For this song, you can enjoy the eye candy based around the Final Fantasy VII franchise, you can enjoy the music, or both.



If you can, guess where I discovered this song from.....







Next up .... Have you ever gotten annoyed with horror franchises? How they seem endless and they never, ever go away?  Tom Smith takes a whack at it.







And then, the sequel you saw coming.

Tom Smith, Doctor Who, Cruxshadows,

By now, you might have a bit of a pattern going.  Monday to Wednesday will have two blogs a day, one of which is a music blog.  Thursday is just a music blog, and Friday is a week in review.



And They Say I've Got Talent





Tom Smith: Operation Desert Storm. ..

Hint; this has nothing to do with Iraq







And a neat little Two Steps from Hell cinimatic.









Cruxshadows ... Remember a while ago, I posted a music video to a song called Winterborn? Well, this  is a surprisingly different version, from Fortress in Flames.

 

And, because I like it, the Doctor Who theme.

 

 

 

Music to Write to: Cruxshadows, Nightwish, and Doctor Who ... sort of.

Yup, another music blog. What do you have to lose?



To start with, as always, there has to be at least one cut from Two Steps from Hell. The title Protectors of the Earth, always makes me think of Doctor Who.

I tripped over this one recently. I had been playing through videos for "This is War" (previous post) and uncovered this tune by accident. I think it works.

 Nightwish isn't a band I use all that often during my writing, though it's got a beat, and you can kill legions of dark forces to it .... Not that writing vampire novels have influenced my writing in any way. Muahahahaha.... Anyway, most of the visuals are taken from video games in the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises.

 And this one is a bit for shock value. Another Dragonforce piece ... I don't listen to them for the lyrics, which read like something from Terry Brooks, but they have some nice tunes, and interesting guitar riffs.

 This is going to be a little weird. I initially followed a Youtube link from "Winterborn" to this song. It was the first time I heard Greek mythology in a song ... like this (don't even ask me to guess what type it's supposed to be). I later heard the opera "Orpheus in the Underworld" .... the Cruxshadows condensed the entire myth in five minutes, and did a better job than an opera could in an hour and a half. Not a bad job.

Music to Write to: Cruxshadows, Nightwish, and Doctor Who ... sort of.

Yup, another music blog. What do you have to lose?



To start with, as always, there has to be at least one cut from Two Steps from Hell. The title Protectors of the Earth, always makes me think of Doctor Who.

I tripped over this one recently. I had been playing through videos for "This is War" (previous post) and uncovered this tune by accident. I think it works.

 Nightwish isn't a band I use all that often during my writing, though it's got a beat, and you can kill legions of dark forces to it .... Not that writing vampire novels have influenced my writing in any way. Muahahahaha.... Anyway, most of the visuals are taken from video games in the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises.

 And this one is a bit for shock value. Another Dragonforce piece ... I don't listen to them for the lyrics, which read like something from Terry Brooks, but they have some nice tunes, and interesting guitar riffs.

 This is going to be a little weird. I initially followed a Youtube link from "Winterborn" to this song. It was the first time I heard Greek mythology in a song ... like this (don't even ask me to guess what type it's supposed to be). I later heard the opera "Orpheus in the Underworld" .... the Cruxshadows condensed the entire myth in five minutes, and did a better job than an opera could in an hour and a half. Not a bad job.

Music to Write To: Dragonforce, E Nomine, This is War, and Citadel

Yup, another music blog. Why? Because they're fun.

Two steps from hell.... they do movie trailer music. No, I'm not kidding.



Some things sound cooler in German. Even the Our Father. And, yes, this is the Our Father in German. Go with it. Trust me, what have you got to lose. I even hope to use this for a trailer at some point. The visuals are from a video game called Kingdom Hearts. The song is from a group called E Nomine. The song is called Vater Unser.

An exercise in epic nerdity. This is War by 30 seconds to Mars is a piece I tripped over by accident. I picked this vid from youtube since it has the most Star Wars visuals....

What part of "Nerd" do you not understand? :)

The next one is from the Cruxshadows, a nominally Goth band.  Citadel, by the Cruxshadows ... well, every time you try playing one of their tunes, when in doubt, think Greek mythology. Troy, usually.

This last group is called Dragonforce. Their group is hard to explain. Imagine a song with lyrics by Terry Brooks, played with electric guitars, probably while everyone involved is high on crystal meth.



This one song is called Through the Fire and the Flames. When I first saw this, is was in a John Ringo. novel called Choosers of the Slain. It was a sequence where a helicopter gunship is heading to wreak havoc on an entire mountain filled with terrorist infantry.



Which is why, everytime this piece conclude, I think "And then the mountain blew up."

Music to Write To: Winterborn, Cambreadth, and Over the Hills....

Sometimes your friends know best.



After months of doing non-fiction, "high-intellect" blog posts, some of my friends could see what it was doing to me better than I could. Let's just say that they could tell I was under a strain. Also, they found the posts boring.



So, time for something fun.



It's been a while since I posted a music blog, and I really think I should get back into the swing of posting whatever I like. Which include history, blowing stuff up on paper, and doing it to really cool music.



Here's some more stuff that I enjoy writing to.



"Winterborn," by the Cruxshadows. I never know what to do with this band. They are nominally "Goth,"  but they tend to use a lot of classical imagery. I first encountered from in a John Ringo novel called Ghost.(A book I will talk about at a later date, with a few cautionary notes ... it's not that bad, but there is one section that should carry a warning label)  I had no idea what the song was about, so I looked it up on YouTube. The title is taken from something that could be from the original Illiad -- that the bravest of those who died were born in winter.



In this case, the visuals are taken from the video game "Halo 2."







"March of Cambreadth," by Heath Alexander. I first discovered this song in a John Ringo novel called When the Devil Dances, a scifi military novel about a cannibalistic Mongol horde spreading through the galaxy, with only humans to stand in the way. While the author himself refers to it as carnography (which I can only presume means "carnage porn"), it's well designed, the characters fully developed, and there's enough scheming and political intrigue to fully screw up a war.... the images are from the tv show Babylong 5, which happens to also be a scifi war epic. I know this because I assembled the video myself.











"Over the Hills and Far Away."  It's an army song from the Napoleonic wars, and was first introduced to most people through the British tv movie series "Sharpe's Rifles." Richard Sharpe, the main character, was played by Sean Bean.... coincidentally the one who played Boromir in the video below.









"Over the Hills and Far Away," by Nightwish.  I found this one song while looking for the it's partner above. And, wow, was I in for a surprise.







And, a final one for today.  Remember all of those movie trailers, when you listen to the awesome soundtrack, and you expect to hear it in the movie... only to discover that it's not there, only in the trailer?



Odds are, it's Two Steps from Hell.