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Rating: Certainly, not all of you might know Nobuo Uematsu (whom I affectionately call Nobby); many of you will know Final Fantasy, the world's most famous Japanese console role-playing game saga.
Nobuo Uematsu plays the keyboard; and indeed he plays it in the group The Black Mages, with Tsuyoshi Sekito as the lead guitarist.
In reality, The Black Mages is a very special group: the repertoire of these eccentric Japanese rockers consists of more or less successful covers by Uematsu himself, who in fact is the composer of all the classic soundtracks of the Final Fantasy saga.
Soundtracks? Video games? Cheap music? No, sir, I would bet on it: after listening to some of his most successful pieces (among others orchestral, with a classical setup), I am sure you could not claim that.
"Darkness and Starlight" is the third album, characterized by novel progressive metal reworkings. Let's be clear: it's not on par with the previous ones, but it has a merit: it has brought back some of Uematsu's most remote and beautiful pieces, dating back to the early '90s, when this composer with a small off-key computer and lots of imagination was creating progressive rock. True Progressive Rock, with strong references to Keith Emerson, Gentle Giant, Rush...
Indeed, Mr. Uematsu has also been strongly influenced by romantic pop (and a bit "epic") of the '80s and electronic music, but the fact remains that in fifteen plus years of production he has never missed a soundtrack.
As I was saying, these pieces are progressive metal covers, here's a little guide to orient yourself:
1 "Bombing Mission"; There's a lot of '70s Prog Rock in this piece, which historically was the official "Intro" of the seventh installment of the saga and was inherited by subsequent spin-offs. The Piano is grand, the keyboards are excellent; one question, why must the guitar ruin everything?
2 "Neo EXDEATH"; And here the first tear falls (nostalgia for the good themes gone), Exdeath (Exodus) is the name of the bad guy to beat mercilessly in the fifth chapter. In the original version, the music merged between the gaming experience and visual expression, with the camera going crazy and schizophrenic lights. This time the guitar holds up very well, and our "master" attempts to emulate a horn section with his keyboard. A technically valid piece with sublime emotional charge.
3 "The Extreme"; Sure, reaching the album's peak after only three tracks feels a bit odd, but "The Extreme" (also an "extreme battle soundtrack, typical of Final Fantasy 8) is the piece that clearly blends epic and technical excellence due to both freshness and compositional elaboration: the guitarists give their all with daring arpeggios and fast passages, and if before Nobuo tried to emulate an orchestra with a single instrument, in this track, we can admit he succeeded perfectly.
4 "Assault of the Silver Dragons"; A piece directly from Final Fantasy 9, vintage sound but honestly not convincing to me; okay, Nobby, you want to emulate Emerson, but instead, you fall into his same mistakes, a very clean but absolutely anonymous keyboard, the guitar recovers at the end. A very bland track.
5 "KURAYAMINOKUMO"; A name unpronounceable (call it Dark Cloud)! Guys, you are geniuses. The original goes back even to the third chapter, with a "war" theme against the usual giant divine abomination... A remarkable work, full conversion of an acceptable "Dance" piece into a succession of psychedelic and engaging sounds between keyboard and distorted guitar. It's head-spinning.
6 "Distant World"; So much, so much contempt for this commercial and syrupy piece taken directly from chapter XI (an online game). Then you'll explain to me what it had to do with the album...
7 "Premonition"; Give me the right to retort on this piece, always Final Fantasy 8! So, "Premonition" was a dark and very dramatic piece mixing themes of Love, Power, Death, and War. This cover adds nothing, the guitar is much less expressive than required and Uematsu gets lost in completely superfluous organ passages... Rejected!
8 "Grand Cross"; Again Final Fantasy 9... Well, what is there to say... at the start, you hear moans, there's noise, and a bit of disjointed sounds... okay typical psychedelia. Then the piece starts instead: just a bit of jazz style, with shades between clear and dark (see album title). The truth is that after 6 epic tracks and one commercial, it doesn't add much to the album itself. As a concept, it's actually a very fitting track: the "Grand Cross" is the punishment that the entity representing the fear of death (Necrofobia) inflicts on those who dare challenge it.
9 "Darkness and Starlight"; Let's start by saying that the original is one of the main pieces of Final Fantasy 6, and it's a baroque, multifaceted, conceptual piece. But note: also very pleasant. The original even offered a text in Italian, Uematsu's tribute to Italian classical music, a great source of inspiration for the Japanese "cultured" musical world. This is the cover and to my ear, it seems a tad extreme, and the text is in Japanese (...). We can finally consider it a "collage" of many little organ pieces (which are actually meant to be understood as a single grand lyric: the love story between Maria and Draco, a tribute to Shakespeare) rearranged for the band. Anyway, if you like, you can consider it as one of those nice fifteen-minute pieces from the '70s: listening to it all the sound and the voice will appear sometimes funny or almost childish, but behind it there is good prog.
Extra track: "LIFE ~ in memory of KEITEN"; honestly I don't know for whom it was composed, I'll just tell you it's a piano piece, also quite well done, and really closes well a work between "shadows and lights".
Final comment: if you are true fans of Final Fantasy (and you've played even the III...), don't miss this album, it's a pity because it will move you; in the face of so much modern commerciality (both commercial and video game...) it has a vintage touch that you won't dislike. If you like prog rock and don't despise the metallic variant, listen to it, it has noteworthy points. If you like metal, I suppose you might be disappointed. I don't recommend it to others: it's a rather heavy, very conceptual album; a cameo to an exceptional series of video games, okay, but don't play it at parties...
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