So I've had a couple of days to listen to this now and I've come to the conlcusion that this is indeed the better of the three albums that the Black Mages have recorded.
Tracks that instantly stood out to me are:
Distant Worlds - Incredibly Melodic with some great power-ballad rock
Nobuo Uematsu is the music director of the quintessential game series Final Fantasy, and the Black Mages is the rock band that performs the background music that accompanies the most beautiful and exciting battle scenes ever made in gaming history. Together, the director and the performers released their third album after making their fans wait for a total three years.
Like the previous albums, ten selected battle themes from Final Fantasy are remixed as hard rock versions. This is a tribute from Nobuo Uematsu and the Black Mages to the three million Final Fantasy fans in Japan and the hard rock fans throughout the world.
“植松伸夫”率いるロックバンド“THE BLACK MAGES”3rdアルバム！
全世界的ゲーム・ソフト「ファイナルファンタジー」のバトル曲を中心にアレンジするロック・バンド“THE BLACK MAGES”のサード・アルバムが3年の時を経て遂に完成。プロデュースはもちろんFF音楽を作り上げ、今やゲーム音楽の巨匠である作曲家・音楽プロデューサー「植松伸夫」。
今回も過去2作同様、『ファイナルファンタジーⅦオープニング～爆発ミッション』などFFシリーズのあまりにも有名な楽曲全10曲をハード・ロック・アレンジ。日本だけでも300万人以上存在する全てのFFファンや、全てのロックミュージック・リスナーへ向け、植松伸夫が渾身の力を込めお届けする「傑作」となっております。
An interesting concept... All of this music is all completely original. In their previous albums, they covered a bunch of FF tunes. This is particularly very good. You spoony mages! ;)
Spoom(1) on 27, May. 2008 08:41 (HKT)
Lackluster Unfortunately, I have to agree with the negative reviews of this album, especially in comparison to their previous works, to both of which I would enthusiastically have given five stars.
Darkness and Starlight takes good songs and makes great rearrangements out of them. However, the album is definitely missing the rock / metal vibe that their previous albums had, and suffers from the lack of it. The Black Mages seem to have resequenced much of the songs programatically, adding only the guitar tracks when necessary, and only sometimes. What Uematsu et al need to realize is that these guitar tracks are the rocking highlight of their albums, and the immense amounts of synth that this new album contains acts only as a filler, which is very unfortunate.
The Skies Above had several awesome tracks, not least of which is the title track that takes the Zanarkand theme from Final Fantasy X and rearranges it in a highly creative, unexpected way. In contrast, the songs on this album seem to be simple rearranges of the Final Fantasy tracks that they cover, not varying much from their original source other than containing updated instrumentation.
If you're a fan of The Black Mages, there's still a bit to like here, and I'd still probably recommend it. That said, OCRemix has many better rearrangements of the source material than this disc from the original composer, and for free to boot.
bennyboocore(1) on 25, May. 2008 12:31 (HKT)
Upsetting I beg to differ this is the worst Final Fantasy album/compilation I have ever listened too
Even being from the black mages after 4 years of wait this album was very dissapointing.
I am hearing more computer then music it actually sounds like a better quality version of classic songs but sounds worse if you catch my drift.
Worst Black Mages album I was expecting so much more.
Rhythmellon(5) on 29, Mar. 2008 13:42 (HKT)
Black Mages 3rd coming is a charm I got the disc yesterday and I love it!!!!
Do yourself a favor and get this CD NOW!!!
Marouku(4) on 28, Mar. 2008 02:56 (HKT)
Fantastic CD Nubuo Uematsu and the rest of The Black Mages have outdone themselves yet again with this masterpiece. As a huge fan of the music of Final Fantasy, it is always a delight to hear the songs in a harder, very cool style.
They may make us wait a while, but The Black Mages certainly deliver on an epic level.
