Black Mages III: Darkness and Starlight

Post by **Koren** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 6:52 am

I've never been crazy about the Black Mages albums, but I've generally liked them well enough to have a favorite track or two at least.

This one? Not very pleased with it at all. Yet another remix of the Bombing Mission from FFVII opens the CD up...and it's..alright. About as good as the original..which is pretty disappointing honestly when you consider what they have to work with in comparison.

And so it runs for pretty much the majority of the CD. The tracks aren't bad- some are plainly better than their source by far due to simply not being in 16 bit anymore...but after the last two albums, this one is definitely feeling uninspired.

And now for the 'star' of the album: the title track "Darkness and Starlight", which is a reworking of the ever famous FFVI Opera Scene. I had high hopes for this one- I should have recalled the last couple times the Black Mages tried to use vocals and lowered them quite a bit. Japanese just is not a language conductive to opera to start with - and the singers they used were...mediocre. Maria sounded like she was trying a little TOO hard to sound like a western opera singer when she really didn't have the voice for it. Draco was...weak. He hasn't quite caught on to the trick of how to support your voice for singing in that style either, as displayed by a few times he's taking an audible breath. Ralse wasn't half bad, but he wasn't amazingly good either. They also have not caught on to the symphonic metal band trick of mixing heavy metal and opera- what we get as a result is a bit of a muddled mishmash of attempts that sounded like it was from an old 70s americanized anime (see the Starblazers anime openers) on the parts of the chorus background and..something on the parts of the rest of the singers/instrumentation. What, exactly, I'm not sure...mess sounds close enough.

A very big let down. :( I had to run to my Distant Worlds musics to listen to the ever so nice version they did to make up for inflicting that on my ears.

So, as Black Mages albums go...let's hope they get the inspiration back by IV, if they do make one. This one just didn't live up to the prior two.

Post by **Kimiko** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:10 am

Is there anything symphonic metal from Japan or Asia?

Post by **Duran** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:03 am

I have their first album.

From what I've noticed, they use a lot of music from VII, which gets redundant...

Post by **Lumineux** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:59 am

The track selection is primarily what killed me on this one. They DO use too much from VII, and now from VIII... both of which are among some of my LEAST favorite Final Fantasy scores.

Oh, and... the Black Mages just need to give up trying to have vocals in their songs. It never works.

N-E-V-E-R.

Post by **ryoko126** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 3:33 pm

Yeah, I'll agree that album 2 and 3 were really uninspiring compared to the first album. Though I did like the final battle from FF 3 in the third album. But Dancing Mad was just the best.