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Music: Soundtracks to the Apocalypse

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      CommentAuthorzoem
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008
     (2335.1)
    I don't think this has been covered in other music threads: if so, bend, fold, mutilate.

    In Santa Cruz, there is nothing but flames. Anyone in that area, thoughts with you. But the sight of the orange glow and ashes on tv also stirred feelings, that certain combination of fear and awe. And I wondered...

    What songs or albums bring out that feeling of apocalyptic splendor in you? Dead cities, shells of buildings, ashes from the sky? Either in content or in atmosphere, what causes the loneliness of a crumbling civilization and the emotions that come with it burrow into your brain?

    Songs:
    Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Dead Flag Blues (and others)
    Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
    Autechre - Vletrmx
    Radiohead - Idioteque

    Albums:
    Massive Attack - Mezzanine (though this could be because of the sheer volume of drugs I have consumed while listening to it)

    Haujobb - Solutions For a Small Planet (I think. I lost my copy a long time ago so I haven't heard it in a while, but that's how I remember it)

    I know there are more I can't think of right now, and way more I haven't heard...
  2.  (2335.2)
    Not only discussed, but the soundtracks themselves have been created here!
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      CommentAuthorzoem
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008
     (2335.3)
    Bad on me. Please close!
  4.  (2335.4)
    Don't worry, it's a good subject!
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      CommentAuthornorton
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008
     (2335.5)
    Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin
  6.  (2335.6)
    Slayer

  7.  (2335.7)
    Val, that's cheating.

    I'd most likely use The Hold Steady's Boys And Girls In America as my top apocalypse album. It feels like dying at a lot of points, but it can also be triumphant.
    • CommentAuthorMitchB
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008 edited
     (2335.8)
    While most Neurosis albums would work in this context, I gotta say their most recent album "Given To The Rising" totally gives me vision of bleak, blackened skies and burnt-out husks of cities. Definitely apocalypse music.
    Also Gridlock's "Edit364". Absolutely beautiful and crushing powernoise/IDM/industrial (fucked I know how to classify music any more). Haunting synth lines with drums so distorted and menacing they sound like the planet's falling apart. Fantastic song.

    I'd second the previous mention of Huajobb's "Solutions For A Small Planet" as well.

    EDIT: Uploading Given To The Rising and Edit364 to the Muxtape.
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      CommentAuthorcurb
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2008
     (2335.9)
    Zoem, I'm going to steal that Talking Heads song from you, and add a Godspeed song of my own - 'East Hastings', mainly because of the 28 Days Later connection. For comic effect, 'Let the bad times roll' by The Vandals, and for to fill the 'booty shaking sleaze in the face of horror' category I'm taking 'How ya feelin' by Peeping Tom. Because when the end comes, I want to go out with a big grin on my face, partying like a motherfucker...
    • CommentAuthorGrimnir
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2008
     (2335.10)
    If you're down with the Godspeed and are looking for seriously apocalyptic rock, I heartily recommend you check out this Toronto band called Silver Mt Zion. Horses in the Sky is a good example of an album, a little better than their earlier stuff.

    I was once driving through a forest fire in Montana, blasting that album with the windows down and the smell of ash in the air, passing burnt-out rest areas still smoking, and charred black ground, pines burnt orange, and great billowing clouds of smoke rising up from behind the looming mountain. It was entirely appropriate, and fucking beautiful. The sign flashed 'No stopping for any reason'. I just sang along, straining my vocal chords in the dry mountain air, and counted the seconds leading up to the end of the world. Firefighters on the side of the road picked at the burning brush as I just sailed on through. No stopping for any reason was the theme of that trip, driving two days straight through, Billings to Syracuse.
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      CommentAuthorcurb
    • CommentTimeMay 25th 2008
     (2335.11)
    Man, that sounds like one of those classic cases of music and circumstance coming together in perfect harmony. I LOVE moments like that.

    Just been listening to some SFA, and now really feel I should have included 'It's not the end of the world' on my list.
  12.  (2335.12)

    World's End Girlfriend - The Lie Lady Land
    Bleaker than godspeed.

    We Are The Massacre

    a slightly less doom (but equally as gorgeous)

    Birthday Renaissance


    Warhammer 48k - Chicago Native End of the World Rock!


    Melt Banana - Cell Scrape
    Welcome to our meathook future, it's here sooner than expected.


    Xrin Arms - War Bonnet
    The World's Ended. We're just waiting for everyone to catch up.
    • CommentAuthorjzellis
    • CommentTimeMay 26th 2008
     (2335.13)
    A lot of Mogwai. In a less horrifying, more peaceful way, the Sigur Ros track "Njosnavelin" (aka the song from the end of VANILLA SKY).

    The first track off the Gutter Twins album, "The Stations", is pretty explicitly apocalyptic, not only lyrically but musically:

    I hear the rapture’s coming; they say he’ll be here soon
    Right now there’s demons crawling all around my room
    They say he lives within us; they say for me he died
    And now I hear his footsteps almost every night

    Beautiful idea of Scary Jesus coming back from the dead, isn't it?
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      CommentAuthorzoem
    • CommentTimeMay 26th 2008
     (2335.14)
    Ooh, I will go through some of these clips when I'm not eating muxtapes.

    Oh yeah - Mogwai! I forget about them on more or less an annual basis and then remember them. I have no idea why.

    Someone really has a band called Warhammer 48k? That... well, no words come.

    Grimnir - I cannot top that, but that kind of synchronicity can be incredible. I vividly recall being a passenger driving up to Mt. Hamilton (a very steep, very scary and winding mountain road with sheer drops) wtih my insane boyfriend at the time driving like a demon, with Aphex Twin : Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 playing, seeming to twist with every curve, every ominous sway of the trees, which seemed to harbor ghosts. It started raining and the road became slick, and I was almost certain I was going to die. We got to the top somehow, and as we did, it started hailing. I stood in it and at least was sure I was still alive by the sting on my skin. The descent was just as harrowing, though I don't recall as well what we were listening to.

    I hate him, but I miss his cars and his CD collection. Go figure that one.
    • CommentAuthorjzellis
    • CommentTimeMay 26th 2008
     (2335.15)
    Oh, God, SAW:V2 is horrifying in the right (wrong) context.

    I remember driving through a blizzard in northern Nebraska in 1995, when I was 17. We stopped at a truck stop and there, in between the Conway Twitty and Reba McEntire, was David Bowie's OUTSIDE. I didn't know much about Bowie at the time, but I thought it'd probably sound like "Let's Dance" or something.

    It didn't. I' can't recommend that album for driving through a blizzard in a desolate, empty landscape at night for hundreds of miles. Even though I love the album in general.
    • CommentAuthorSRT
    • CommentTimeMay 27th 2008
     (2335.16)
    If you're down with the Godspeed and are looking for seriously apocalyptic rock, I heartily recommend you check out this Toronto band called Silver Mt Zion.

    You might know this, but for those who don't, Silver Mt. Zion is something of a side-band to GY!BE, sharing several of the same members.

    Their latest album is great, too.
    • CommentAuthorThalia
    • CommentTimeMay 27th 2008 edited
     (2335.17)

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