GAME ON!

Wild ride through depths of game music take-ons. And pretty good ones. Indeed, you can say that these are covers, and technically yes, they are covers of 80s video games. But that's not holding Vangough from making them better (and bigger, faster, you know the saying). I personally have great relationship with game music, as it was part of my growing. Not exactly these songs, more like game music from 90s, but I can identify with these songs as well.

Obviously (as you can guess from tone of my previous paragraph), I think that Prog version of this kind of music is great idea. It indeed is, because (maybe it sounds like paradox), it makes this music more original.

Thanks Scott AtomicCrimsonRush for extensive info about each song. I'm not that skilled in console (Atari, Zx, Sega etc...) gaming and the farest place I went was my long time romance with Playstation 1. So I actually am not aware of original songs at all, but most of them I can imagine. After all, game music from this era wasn't that complex (actually very simple, MIDI based I suppose - even as we could see in form of Dune 2, Warcraft 2 & for example Wolfenstein 3d & Duke Nukem 3d, or Transport Tycoon, you can make solid music from MIDI as well).

I liked Vangough's previous album Manikin Parade and even this one is radically different, I like it as well, even I won't rate it so highly because these songs are after all just tribute.

4(-), but not less from me. Prog & Games can go together and this album is perfect example.

It's bold move and I don't think that there will be major revolutions and all will go crazy about finding Prog elements in Video Game music, but moves like this, like "Game On" are those that helps. It's one of many directions music makings can take and for me personally also very interesting one. I even wasn't alive when these games were released, but I admire them a lot. Combine this admiration with Prog music (reduced Prog Metal), reduce it all by sobriety and this rating is what you'll get.

It's not masterpiece of Prog and we all know it. I suppose that members of Vangough grew up on these games and planned this album as a little bit of "fun-to-themselves". But other people can gain from it as well. You know, like fans for example.