"Human Campaign I" from Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal on the PC (1996)
Composer: Glenn Stafford
Album: Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal
Label: Blizzard Entertainment
Developer: Cyberlore Studios
Before we get down to the musics, just some clarifications about this song, the album, and other suchness that I at least feel requires a bit of explanation.
First off, the soundtrack for the first two Warcraft games were pulled from the CD that they were distributed on, and as such, there was no official soundtrack release. All you had to do was put the CD into your CD player/drive, and it would play like any normal CD (after you skipped the first track, which contained the game data). For this reason I decided to put Blizzard Entertainment as the label since they were the producers of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal.
Second, since there was no official soundtrack, the songs had no titles, so I labeled them as "Human Campaign I," "Orc Campaign III," "Orc Defeat" and so on. This particular track is the second song from "Human Campaign I" so I guess you could say that this is "Human Campaign Ib" but I decided to leave the title as such for today's posting.
Hokay, moving on.
So after the last month of using somewhat creepy music, or music from creepy games, I wanted to lighten up the mood a bit, so I landed on this great track from the first Warcraft II expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal. Had this been posted last week, I might have chosen one of the songs that plays during the Orc campaigns, but since we're kind of backin the land of the living (although not really since it is the final day of Día de Muertos), I felt a victorious sounding melody from the Human side of the war would be appropriate.
What I love about this track in particular is the unabashed heroic-ness of the theme when it hits 1:09. There is a constant building on the main theme from the moment the song starts and it just keeps growing until whatever-the-musical-term for what the brass are doing from 1:09 ~ 1:27 happens. Then from 1:28 ~ 1:50, the song does this "Adagio for Strings"-esque build that doesn't convey so much "calm" as it does the hope of calm after the battle. And something that I had not noticed before, was the harp, from about 2:10 is doing a run that reminds me a lot of "Prelude" from the Final Fantasy series, just something that struck me.
What I love about this track in particular is the unabashed heroic-ness of the theme when it hits 1:09. There is a constant building on the main theme from the moment the song starts and it just keeps growing until whatever-the-musical-term for what the brass are doing from 1:09 ~ 1:27 happens. Then from 1:28 ~ 1:50, the song does this "Adagio for Strings"-esque build that doesn't convey so much "calm" as it does the hope of calm after the battle. And something that I had not noticed before, was the harp, from about 2:10 is doing a run that reminds me a lot of "Prelude" from the Final Fantasy series, just something that struck me.
Listening again to this soundtrack, makes me feel like we should do a Game Scores article about the music from either each of the Warcraft games, or at least pull a couple of tracks from each, or do one with Humans music and the other with Orcs music. Either way, Glenn Stafford's composition for this song is great, and to reuse what I already said, unabashed heroic music for planning out the successful defense of Azeroth.
In closing, what is somewhat mind boggling to me, is that this song is 20 years old. That would be like listening to Chubby Checker's "The Twist" the year that I was born, and thinking, "You know, this is still a pretty damn good song." And I haven't heard anything from him compostions-wise since what, 2004 it looks like. Which makes me a little sad, but until he writes something new, I can always fall back on 20 years of compositions.
In closing, what is somewhat mind boggling to me, is that this song is 20 years old. That would be like listening to Chubby Checker's "The Twist" the year that I was born, and thinking, "You know, this is still a pretty damn good song." And I haven't heard anything from him compostions-wise since what, 2004 it looks like. Which makes me a little sad, but until he writes something new, I can always fall back on 20 years of compositions.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
That's always been one of my favorite game music tracks!
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