Prelude to War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlcUwUwjLrs
I’d read a lot about this song, “Prelude to War.” It was thrilling. It was legendary. It was, if you believed the reports, nothing less than a feat of modern musical genius. Everyone said so, so I downloaded it. The first time I listened to it, I was just like, “Meh. This is it? This is what everyone was raving about?” It just didn’t impress me. Yet somehow between that first listen and repeated plays it worked a combination lock in my head. Randomly flipping through songs a few months back I came across this one and didn’t even recognize it. Somehow I’d gone from, “This is ok,” to “Yeah, I guess I like this,” to “Oh, wow.” Today, it’s absolutely blowing my brain apart.
What’s funny is that there’s not much to it. It's not a complicated song. Basically it’s 8.5 minutes long and made up of essentially the same 30-second theme in many different variations. You have the theme low-key, the theme hyped up, the theme’s chord progression hovering idle, or the theme with just percussion. But you rarely ever actually get away from the theme. Sounds boring and predictable. It’s not. It hooks me within the first minute, and then the next thing I know I’m completely possessed, my body a conduit of musical expression. My teeth resonate with the drums, my circulatory system rushes with its rhythms, even my heartbeats are keeping time. It's coming out of my eyeballs, my pores. Freaking amazing.
Anyway, if you like film score music, you might like this. Give it a few listens before making up your mind.