FFVI Remix Album – Balance and Ruin Review – Disc 5

Howdy y’all, and welcome to the review of the LAST DISC of “Balance and Ruin”.  I’m super excited;  this is a bonus disc, so it’s basically just other remixes of some of the songs that have already been done.  Since I think we went through the entire soundtrack.  Which is effin’ boss.

Anyway, on to the music!  We’ll be using a rating scale of 1-5 Sabins.

Track 1 – Omen: I. Black Dawn (Opening Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard

Have you ever heard of the word “lugubrious”?  It’s one of my favorite words.  “Lugubrious”, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary online, means “exaggeratedly or affectively mournful”.  That’s basically how I feel about this first track, and not in a very good way.

The song takes its sweet time getting started, and I feel like it’s playing up its own importance.  This is the first time these guys have done a track since Disc 1, and I feel much the same way towards this one that I did their first effort – it just seems like they’re trying way too hard to make something a dark, glorious epic.  Like, it was okay, pretty badass, I guess, but it was just way too slow-moving for me.

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Track 2 – Omen: II. Terror March (Opening Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard

Impressive!  It’s like they heard me and took my advice or something!  :p

But seriously, this song has a different energy from the start.  It kicks right off and rocks on out throughout.  The song goes through many different movements throughout the 8 minutes, getting increasingly intense and double-bass-y as it progresses.

Towards the end (about 7:30), I started to lose it – it didn’t sound too terribly much besides anything but a jam-session, which was kind of annoying, but it worked out overall.  The last 10 seconds were great, transitioning into the next track.

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Track 3 – Omen: III. Daydream (Opening Theme, Battle Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard

Oh God, we’re right back to the lugubriousness again.  Look, I’m sorry, I understand what they’re trying to do, and yes, the original music is epic as fuck.  HOWEVER, you don’t make something MORE epic by simply slowing it down an absurd amount and using a guitar and double bass.  That’s just not how epic works.  I think the opening theme just ended, almost 6 minutes into this track.  Which means I’ve been listening to the opening theme for about 26, 27 minutes.  NO.

To make things worse, I’m almost a full minute into the “Battle Theme”, and literally the sound has changed once.  Is this supposed to build anticipation or bore me to death?

I’m sick of it.  One and one-half Sabins, just because I am, amazingly, still listening.

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Track 4 – Omen: IV. Polemos (Battle Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard

Great.  I’ve got a 10-and-a-half minute battle theme to listen to.  I’ll try to be objective.  Taking a deep breath…  Okay.  Here we go.

Okay.  Two minutes in, and it still sounds pretty badass.  It’s the “Battle Theme” we all know and love, with, of course, a bit of a metal twist.

Four minutes in, aaaaand I’m kind of losing it.  Oops, they brought it back at around 4:30, doing a little keyboard-y breakdown that isn’t bad, I guess.  I am wondering if all of this is necessary, however.  Especially after looking at the track list for the rest of the album (the next-longest song after these four is less than six minutes long…  Maybe they should take note of that?).

At around six minutes, it gets all right again.  I can tell where we are in the “Battle Theme”, at least.  Not much to comment on.

It sounded like it was about to stop abruptly around 8 minutes.  Excitedly, I look over, thinking that somehow, the full 10.5 minutes had passed.  I was wrong, and they just started “breakin’ it down” again.  Which I did not appreciate.

Long story short, if all of the songs above were less than five minutes, maybe I wouldn’t have a problem.  But they were all super long and pretty boring. Ick.  This one was…  better than the last one, but not my much.

Track 4 Rating:

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Rating as a cohesive piece, Tracks 1-4:

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Track 5 – Following Forgotten (The Mines of Narshe) by Patrick Burns

(NOTE:  I didn’t find this in my FLAC folder…  Is anyone else missing this track?  Anyway, it was in the MP3 folder, so I played that instead :D)

Sounds nice.  Peaceful and foreboding…  Yeah, I dunno, I think this one’s pretty weird.  I also think my speakers suck.

Anyway, I like the piano work.  However, I’m not sure if it was a super appropriate choice of style.  I know it’s “The Mines of Narshe”, but…  Again, too slow-moving for me.

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Track 6 – Royal Blood, Fraternal Love (Edgar & Sabin) by pu_freak

As a piece of music, I think this remix is great.  I mean, I think that about most of the tracks on this album, but anyway.

Even though I called the previous song “too slow”, I really like the pacing of this remix.  I don’t think it captured the same regal essence as the original, but overall it was pretty legit.  I also always love beautiful piano.

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Track 7 – Bass of the Returners (The Returners) by bLiNd

Worrrrrrrd.  I actually knew which song this was a remix of, as opposed to the previous “Returners” remix on Disc 1.  It sounds way different from anything else on this album so far, which really is a godsend.

It sounds like bLiNd had some fun creating this remix;  it shows in his music.  Wonderfully done.

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Track 8 – Dark Blue Substance (Cyan) by Mattias Häggström Gerdt

Ooooh…  Once you get halfway through the song, it starts getting very peaceful, techno-y, and awesome.  I love what he did with the original theme at that point.  However, for much of the rest of the song, I’m left wondering what’s going on.  The little breakdown in the middle is easily the best part, and that part is great.  Unfortunately, I’m not a huge fan of what it’s sandwiched by.

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Track 9 – Savage Dance (Wild West) by McVaffe

Word, this one is pretty sweet – not deviating too much from the original, giving it just enough so that it has its own voice.  About halfway through it stops being quite so flat, a heavier beat giving needed texture to a pretty good song overall.

AND HEY, GUESS WHAT!?! IT’S LESS THAN 8 MINUTES LONG.  Take note, SnappleMan.

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Track 10 – The 6th Kingdom (Terra) by Jovette Rivera

ROCK THE BASS BASS ROCK THE BASS BASS
bass
bass
BASS

Yeah, this song was pretty fun.  It was very ridiculous.  Very, very insane.  But you know what?  I enjoyed it.  It was about two and a half minutes too long, but eh, at this point, whatever.

ROCK THE BASS BASS ROCK ROCK THE BASS BASS

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Track 11 – Slam Shufflin’ (Slam Shuffle) by bLiNd

Oooh, a super-danceable “Slam Shuffle” remix.  Pretty ballllllerrrrr, yo.

Again, I think it could be shorter, it seems pretty repetitive, but it’s more fun to listen to than anything else so far, at least.

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Track 12 – Jidoorian Rhapsody (The Wedding) by sphexic

Very impressive piano work, for sure.  Not really sure what else to say…  It was fun?  I guess?  There really wasn’t much to it, but the piano really was great.  I think it would’ve been better if it were accompanied with something – then again, I kinda like the whole solo-piano thing.  Better than average, regardless.

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Track 13 – Strange World (Another World of Beasts) by WillRock

Ooh, I very much enjoyed this one.  Nice pacing, nice buildup, nice ambience. Foreboding, dark, delicious.

Halfway through, it takes a turn for the SUPER intense.  With almost no warning, the sound exploded out of my speakers into a crazy mess of awesome.  Just as I was getting ready to yell at this song for being too long, too.  Very well done, WillRock.

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Track 14 – Umaro’s New Groove (Umaro) by Archangel

Overall, an enjoyable track.  Umaro is a super fun character with a fun, bouncy theme, so I feel like it’s necessary to keep all that bounciness intact in any remixes.  Archangel did a great job with that, and it wrapped this album up well.

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Overall

Well, here we are.  Five days and five discs later, I have to say that I’m extremely impressed by the quality of the songs that have come off this remix album.  I think it’s great that OCRemix has such a diverse community, submitting all sorts of different music to these albums.  This is their 40th album since their inception, and although I’ve only heard bits and pieces of others (their Donkey Kong Country 2 album is amazing, too), it seems like what they’ve got going is quite impressive indeed.

This disc picked up towards the end, which is good, since I was afraid it’d be a flop.  It turned out okay, and the album itself turned out incredibly.  Great job, OCRemixers!

Disc 5 Rating:

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Overall Album Rating:

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FFVI Remix Album – Balance and Ruin Review – Disc 4

Track 1 – A Glimmer of Hope (Searching for Friends) by Joshua Morse feat. Jeff Ball, Laura Intravia

This is a beautiful song.  Not one of my favorites, but there’s definitely nothing wrong with it.  Beautiful piano at the beginning reminds me of Mushi-Shi, which is one of my favorite anime.  Some strings and wind instruments pick up a nice, peaceful beat to make this song more than solid.

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Track 2 – Go-Go Gadget Gonkulator (Gogo) by XPRTNovice

After the first minute, this song really picks up.  XPRTNovice does a great job capturing the heart of Gogo in the song, I think – Always shifting and moving, never knowing quite what’s going on.  Very interesting.  Lots of movements – in the middle, it turns into a plodding, thunderous beat, very reminiscent of Steiner’s theme.  It takes a bit of a break, then goes right back to it at around 3:25.  Lots of fun.

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Track 3 – Katabasis (Epitaph) by Forrest Powell feat. Laura Intravia

Around two minutes, this song takes a turn for the epic with some great, gospel-y vocals and elegant strings.  It sounds solemn, yet not in a depressing way, and transcendent at the same time, a great balance for a song to strike.

It kind of clashes with the previous song, but I’ll allow it.  They’re both great.

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Track 4 – 13th Floor Demonstration (The Magic House) by Flexstyle

Whew!  Extremely intense song.  It’s a lot of fun, driving beats, but again, I think it clashes with the song before it – I mean, I know they’re doing it in the order to which you listen to them in the game, basically, but I’m sure they can be switched around a bit.

Then again, if their FFIX remix album were out yet, I’d probably say they should do it in the order which you find the music.   Ah well, I guess they can’t win.  Regardless, this song is sweet.

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Track 5 – The Narshemellow (Umaro) by XPRTNovice

XPRTNovice, I’m gonna be real with you right now – you can do no wrong in my book.  Every song that I’ve heard on this album by you, I have thoroughly enjoyed. You took another song, made it your own, but kept it close enough to the original.  You are really good at this.

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Track 6 – The Endless Stair (Fanatics) by Argle

Very creepy, very forboding.  Reminds me of Nine Inch Nails a bit, which makes my high-school self very happy.

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Track 7 – Trauermarsch (Last Dungeon) by Derek Oren, Jeremy Robson

I feel like this song tried too hard – again, the music itself was great, but it wasn’t very listenable to me.  I found it to get a bit boring;  I feel like it was rather similar throughout, which I couldn’t pay attention to for the full twelve minutes.  If it were shorter, it could definitely get a higher grade.

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Track 8 – Demon, Fiend & Goddess (Dancing Mad) by zircon, Sixto Sounds

… UUUUUGH.  Sweet LORD, was this good.  God, I swear, any song that has to do with Kefka has been remixed SO well throughout this album.

This was everything I could have hoped for in a remix.  Sixto Sounds and zircon treated this song perfectly.  Didn’t change the pace, didn’t try to do too much, but gave the song the perfect sound to fit in this album and make an amazing, amazing remix.

I’m extremely impressed.  It was gonna be hard to live up to my expectations for such a renowned song, but…  Six. Terras.

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Track 9 – Ending Suite (Ending Theme) by Shnabubula, Gabe Terracciano

I love strings, man.  I really do.  The violin in this suite was beautiful, graceful, and all-around awesome.  A great interpretation of the ending theme.  Reminds me of when I beat FFVI for the first time, and nostalgia is always a plus.

The piano picks it up very well and keeps it interesting and light.  Around the 8 minute mark, things start getting quite intense, and the mixture of the strings and piano is rather glorious, if I do say so myself.

… Which I do.

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Track 10 – Humble Beginnings, Great Expectations (The Prelude) by Disco Dan

I’m so happy that this one was done incredibly well.  One of the most popular tracks of the franchise, and it was done beautifully on this album.  Wraps up everything (except the bonus disc, of course) with a beautiful song.  Disco Dan, you haven’t done any tracks up ’til now, but very, very well done.

Overall:

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s the best disc on the album so far.  Great consistency mix with some pretty mindblowing works to make this the favorite.

I may not be able to finish up with disc 5 tomorrow – one of my buddies is getting married, and his bachelor party is tomorrow 🙂  rest assured that, if not tomorrow, the final installment of this review will be out on Sunday!

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