Though I am not a huge fan of music during play, as it can often be distracting, I find that when writing up scenarios for games I am running helps get the creative juices flowing.

Found this awesome song, just listen to it while looking at the Dark Heresy Cover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vU22ts-Qcw

You should listen to more of his songs. They are very inspiring when writing DH or fantasy. I particularly like The Carny when writing on my fantasy campaign.

-L

Yeah, really talented group.

The sound track for the old Chaos Gate game is great too.

A group wounderful to use as soundtrack to use during play, is Qntal. Electronic latin choire rock/techno, sooooo useful on hive worlds etc.

And thematically as battle music love E Nominie for its religious themes and sound.

Immitiate useful is always extremly useful as well.

Or....

I has all those albums on vinyl still... much awesomeness, still like to give them a listen now and then. 4th Crusade has its meritous moments if only tho throw players witht he odd lyric ****** now and then..

Maybe it will not be for all the sessions, but i love the song " Hand of Doom" for warhammer 40000 and for Dark Heresy. It fits very well!

It is the only song i like from Manowar

dosan said:

You my friend need to listen to more Manowar.

But they fit a more Chaos or Marauder feel for Warhammer Fantasy.

Try some Iced Earth, Bolt Thrower, Black Majesty or Apocalyptica. Especially Iced Earth's Something Wicked series.

Then of course you have Disney's Manowar, I mean Hammerfall. And you can never go wrong with some Black Label Society. Blind Guardian (Another Stranger Me, A Twist in the Myth, Nightfall on Middle Earth), Demons and Wizards, Kataclysm.

And for good mood music, try The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc the soundtrack, Conan the Barbarian the soundtrack, The Phantom Menace Soundtrack and the likes.

Andof course Alice's Restaruant and the Ballad of Davey Crocket.

Peacekeeper_b said:

I see your Disney Manowar (aka Hammerfall) and raise you early Borknagar.

And for the true chaos warband feel you really cannot go wrong with Gwar. I've slid a few tracks in to my groups games, and when they realised what the lyrics were there was much popcorn thrown at me and for days they were plagued by the bouncy song about animals that was a kind of happy go lucky singalong type song thats true earworm material....

I've used a lot of Apocalyptica, Soundisciples (from the Undefined album and a couple of their earlier orchestral work) and a fair selection of game sound tracks like Mechwarrior series, Heavygear and Divine Divinity as they range from orchestral to industrial and back again in the same song.

Velvetears said:

I was getting worried that no one had mentioned GWAR yet. They are a fun live show, but to truly experience them you need to get into the pit and up to the front of the stage.

Rammstein and Static-X work well as background for low and mid hive bars.

Now I tend to have background music going when we play, and until recently it was simply my entire music collection on the laptop left on random. However after seeing various threads and reading a book called XDM i decided to put a little thought into it and last session of DH was played to the Unreal sound track, and the Red Alert soundtrack, with a few instrumental Led Zepplin and Lacuna Coil track thrown in for variety. It seemed to work really well, as it wasn't distracting for anyone but kept the room from being absolutely silent when the group was thinking about theree next moves.

Surak

Most of my CD collection is soundtracks, be they from movies, television shows or games, so I have a lot of word-less background music to put on during sessions. I've got everything from grand themes like Gladiator, to more subtle ones like the Firefly and Serenity soundtracks. The Battlestar Galactica soundtracks work very well.

The last use of music was the best I'd done IMO. The group had just found a mostly abandoned space station in their pursuit of the renegade AdMech Magos they've been after for 5 sessions strait, and new he was hiding somewhere up ahead. Their Auspex couldn't make out anything past this big ornate pressure door, so they were walking in blind. They got the door open and were faced with a very large chamber who's walls, floor and ceiling were covered in sticky living material, and this seemed to stretch on for quite some distance (I had gone from 1st Ed Space Hulk tiles to Tyranid Attack tiles, if anyone remembers those). At that exact moment I put play on the CD player and the sound track from Aliens started playing.

Over the next hour or so, as they explored the sticky mess of the space station, getting phantom sensor contacts, looking for signs of hostile life, and struggling to get overgrown doors open, the music kept them on their toes with its subtle low sense of foreboding punctuated by the occasional loud sting. When they eventually found and confronted the Magos (and then had to fight their way out of the slowly waking hordes of Genestealers), the music from Aliens' actions scenes kicked in, tying the themes from the scary silent bits to the faced-paced action bits.

It worked very well and everyone (bar one, it seems) had a great time.

BYE

Iron Maiden!!!

Soundtracks: Gladiator, Aliens, several more "hard sci-fi" anime titles, Dawn of War I & II, Chaos Gate, Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, just about anything by John Williams (Star Wars stuff might be a bit too distracting for 40K though..), Paul Oakenfold stuff, some of the newer James Bond titles, Dune, Babylon 5

Rammstein, Appocalyptica, Slayer (for fighting Khorne cultists!), Dead Kennedys (especially "Police Truck" when Arbites roll out in their Rhinos!), Pantera, Ronnie Montrose, Rob Zombie/White Zombie, the Ramones ("Beat on the Brat" for a hive scrap...), Drowning Pool ("Let the bodies hit the floor"), Megadeth, Black Sabbath, KMFDM, Blue Oyster Cult ("Veteran of Psychic Wars"), Prodigy, Anthrax, Yngwie Malmstein, Alan Parsons Project

Bach, Holst, Beethoven, Wagner, Gregorian Chant

Assorted techno stuff for forges. The best techno is ALWAYS German. Period.

Japanese Taiko drums.

What self-respecting Scum would want to have a dramatic high stakes gambling scene without Motorhead "The Ace of Spades" or Lita Ford "Aces and Eights" playing in the background?

Most PX/AAFES locations should have a selection of cheap CDs with marching cadences. Of limited use, but might be just the thing for those Imperial Guard themed sessions.

To simulate Warp Shock you could try playing some Ashley Simpson without warning...

The Norwegian EBM-artist Apoptygma Berzerk's

ZillaPrime said:

Personally, I find that a lot of John Williams' best known stuff tends to sound quite similar anyway, and is often too iconic to be anything but distracting.

Other additions to the list - the soundtracks for the Mass Effect games have some good tracks, but you can't just put it on shuffle and let it play, as each track does have quite a specific tone. The Gears of War soundtracks are good general-purpose action tracks, but they fit 40k particularly well, particularly a few of the earlier tracks for Gears 2 (like

Since madness is a popular theme in the 40k universe, Disturbed is a great group.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Actually, the point about similarity is going to be true for many top-grade film music composers. Zimmer, James Horner (I swear, I while watching Avatar I was almost sure Willow would come a-waltzing any moment; it was literally the same theme).

Shore and Goldenthal are somehow refreshing in this respect (maybe because they don't seem to get as much work? just a perception - although haven't seen Williams scoring anything lately).

Also, Danny Elfman is quite the original in this department. Very conspicuous music, though - and I can't think of any theme fit for DH.

Seriously? No mention of X-Ray Dog yet? Sheesh, you people...

For staters, I always use this one during narrative investigations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATF2BGpWg4I

Ha, it's called crime tail, crazy, no? (Answer: YES)

Or this little ditty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wo_41oWn_4&feature=related

Great for space battles, or heroic deeds!

Need an epic ground based battle music? Look no furhter than these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNxDtio7Dzk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bItgVMSU47A

And who can forget the song that turns so many people on to X-Ray Dog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40FV11Sv3lQ

If you only listen to ONE of these tracks, listen to the one immediately above this sentence. Just... so **** EPIC... And this is in a world where thanks to wrongly entitled children, the word epic has lost all meaning. Until NOW.

Syzygy,

That is some pretty slick music. Bookmarked one of the links so I can go through them when I've more time and am less sleep deprived.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

Agreed.

But, how about ... and yes, I know I am giving away my age here ... Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, quite a few Rush tracks, and pre-Black Album Metallica?

Oh, and I will also second the nod to the almighty Iron Maiden!

Sister Cat said:

Some BOC I would agree. Especially songs like Veteran of the Psychic Wars or Black Blade; both of which were inspired by Elric of Melnibone. Iron Maiden is an excellent choice. Not as big on Deep Purple or Rush. Older Metallica I can see. Maybe some CrüxShadows, since much of that is inspired by various mythological stories. Manowar also has some appropriately epic songs.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

Yeah, for BOC, I was particularly thinking of Veteran of the Psychic Wars, The Pact, and their version of Heavy Metal. For Deep Purple, I was thinking of the title track from Perfect Strangers and just a few others I can't remember right now. For Rush, I was thinking that a lot of their stuff might make good background music in a mid-hive bar, or some such.

I agree with Manowar completely. Wish I'd thought of it.

Can't say I've ever heard of CrüxShadows, though.

Thanks for X-Ray Dog, never heard of them before .

Targetlock said:

GASP AND SURPRISE! (Except not really because it's expected)

Another , non-soundtracky suggestion would be "The Gears" by that one metal pseudo-band... I can't remember if they're called Metalocalypse or Deathklock or what, but that track is INTENSE and DARK.

Syzygy said:

I've never heard of X-Ray Dog, either.

The other band you're refering to would be DeathKlock from the animated series Metalocalypse. Micheal Jackson's Thriller came in very thematic for a zombie uprising. Shame our GM had a massive dummy spit and unplugged the speakers from the mp3 player.