Hi, I am interested to know if anyone has experience with good atmospheric music for your Dark Heresy game. I am running a short Edge of Darkness game, and afterwards might continue towards Illumination, so I would be especially interested in hearing if anyone here has recommendations for background music for a dilapidated hive (Koskarla), a laboratory of insidious and horrific experiments (the Almshouse) traveling through space or a futuristic primitive city (as I picture the starting settlement in Iocantos).

I thought about using something from the Resident evil games or movies for the almhouse (maybe Seizure of power for the final fight with the Churgeon and the... rest), but I have yet to find a nice track. Iocantos may merit listening through, say, the soundtrack of Conan... any other ideas?

Thanks in advance and may the Emperor and Holy Kopyrka watch over you and your acolytes

I've found Lustmord to be very atmospheric and just about dead-on perfect for my games. It sits nicely in the background without overpowering the game while subtly adding to the feel and atmosphere of it.

A few samples from youtube if you're curious:

Prime (just kind of creepy)

Immersion (has a nice spacy feel)

Strange Attactor (good for any strange or unerving enviroment)

If these interest you, you can buy them for $0.89 - $0.99 a song from Amazon if you can't get or don't want to invest in a few albums before your game (though if you do; Heresy, Carbon/Core, and Metavoid offer the best tracks for the game IMHO).

I found the music from John Bergin very fitting for a Dark Heresy Campaign.

Here's a few suggestions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urMYkDphlW8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq5SNYFHfos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH8qZTlFV_g

My characters tend to spend a lot their time trying to be stealthy so I find a lot of MGS music works. I have often used music that the player characters would hear, so on hive worlds, Synth music, heavy 80's power ballards and that style, very Blade Runner. Classical for richer spires, and more "refined" tastes. Death metal and a like for the fighting pits. So on. Background music for atmosphere I tend towards classical, orchestral peices or Junk (Industrial music, made via junk) to add a level of either grit or opulance.

Valdek said:

Hey Valdek, please tell us more about this 'Junk' music. I think I know what you mean but I'm a bit out of touch with the industrial thing these days.

Cheers

Personally I think Nightwish would be very appropriate for a lot of games. Something about the symphonic rock just seems to fit the setting.

The_Shaman said:

Hi,

for your lab, I would suggest using "Serial Killer Blues" from the band "Bile".
for Koskarla, how about having "This is what you want / this is what you get" from the old electro group "Order of Death" ?

Port Suffering is a little tricky. The best thing might be to loot a theme from a pc game you have already installed on your computer

Gregorius21778 said:

Isn't this a PIL song (The Order of Death)?

L

I should've added this to my first post but I forgot. For background music in general I would recommend songs with little or no lyrics as players can be distracted by the lyrics and lyric-free songs often gives more mood, in my experience, than songs with lyrics.

Nox Arcana are usually pretty good and so are soundtracks from movies and games.

Hallo Shaman,

I don't like to play while music plays, for it diverts the attention: nonetheless, I think the Midnight Syndicate is a good choice for ambient music, even more so for Dark Heresy, since their music bends towards the horror side. You can find them here: www.midnightsyndicate.com/

Oh, and many years ago they even made some kind of "official" D&D soundtrack.

Hi:

I played Edge of Darkness using stuff like these:

Dead Can Dance - The Serpent's Egg, Within the Realm of a Dying Sun

The Shutter Island OST - especially Fog Tropes (this theme unnerved my players to no end)

For combat in the Hive I played Ministry (classic) & KMFDM

Youtube has an incredible amount of these, to check out.

HtH

L

@ Gurkhal - yes, I'm ideally looking for something either without lyrics altogether or in a language the players can't understand - ideally lyrics or folk music of some sort.

if none of your team speak german, i would recomend rammstein; german industrial rock, very good for hive and forge worlds

As requested, Junk was a musical style that used junk, rubbish bin lids the old metal kind, long plastic tubes the sort that would normally have gas piped through it. The BBC used it for their coming up next bits for some time and did a feature show on it. Group names i can think or are Stomp which is very tribal sounding, and Blue Man Group is another but their has more synth feel to it too.

And although it won't help with your games or muisc issues, it's well worth a watch

@ Gurkhal - yes, I'm ideally looking for something either without lyrics altogether or in a language the players can't understand - ideally lyrics or folk music of some sort.

How about this one for the labratory mentioned in the first post? Its "The nameless city" by Nox Arcana

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX8AbVw4iB0&feature=related

As an additional thought, a lot of Anime Themes would suit your purpose too, take the theme to Akira, it's epic, dramatic, and yet some how futuristic.

Check out the Danny the Dog soundtrack by Massive Attack - it's got a very grungy, apocalyptic vibe to it which suits not only 40k but also the Fallout universe.

Awsome, very creepy. Will use the Lustmord songs tonight at our session.

The Gears of war soundtracks has a few hits aswell.

This subject matter seems to crop up all the time. Might not be perfect but i always suggest the MMO Eve Online music, has a a certain 40K feel to it.

I´m just using sounds from this site:

http://www.freesound.org/index.php

Just search with the right tags . I udes it for our last adventure. We played the second from "Purge the unclean".

The Akolythes always said "cover" when I played the Warpbeasts´ sound