BLACKCELL | THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND | 40K MUSIC | NO NARRATION

[@miloreddaway3074]

Glory to the King of Kings!! About time the big man received an appropriate tribute.

[@blackcellaudio]

There is one also up with some narration and cooler visuals :)

[@SignedWithBlood]

The Emperor's track is just on a different level, like he's above it all. Excellent work!

[@blackcellaudio]

Thanks! :) I think so, am pretty happy with it

[@plombirslurry2622]

Omnissiah protect

[@blackcellaudio]

🤖

[@WarmasterHorus96]

Ave Imperator!

[@blackcellaudio]

👦👦🦅i.e. double headed eagle :)

[@redcherep6418]

Great job! Hopefully there will be something about Miriael Sabathiel in the future

[@Aedrion-]

YES!

[@Razzy-sr4oq]

I just saw this and I immediately told everyone in my house to NOT SPEAK to me, don't make noise, don't even BREATHE around me, while I enjoy this for 16 minutes. Will update with results. UPDATE 1: I like to picture music playing out in evocative scenes in my minds' eye. I _may_ have gotten a little carried away, but.... goddammit, THIS GAVE ME CHILLS, SIR! My hairs are still standing on end and I've listened at least 5 times! I've been moved by this, and I goddamn love it. Telling the story of the Emperor of Mankind in music form is something Holst would be hard-pressed to do, and that man is a musical genius. So imagine my _utter bamboozlement_ when you took this challenge on and you not only managed to make some incredible music, but I feel you did the subject justice! Honestly, bravo my good man! A standing ovation for you, and another right after! Drink some champagne and then smash the glass, because nothing else deserves to be toasted with that glass after this! The very descriptive paragraphs that follow were written while I was caught up in the music and I must beg for your indulgence should you choose to read what follows. (I do wonder if I got any of it right, though!) UPDATE 2: I am writing this after each movement. Firstly, SIR, you have assuredly have spoiled us all with this early holiday gift of this music. Goddamn. I mean _goddamn!_ The first movement is harsh, rough, and I envision this to be the early days of Humanity, when the Emperor first walked among us mortals. Each heavy beat falls like a hammer, and all I can see in my minds eye is the Emperor hammering humanity into shape the way a smith would fashion a spear head. Each smaller arc within the first 5 minutes has a sudden finality, only to spiral up once more. In this, I merely see the glowing metal being plunged into water, as the shape humanity was taking had been set back, either by the great collapse of Rome, or the ravaging of known world by the Black Plague, either way, each was a 'tempering' and then forging a little more, and a little more, roughing humanity into a final shape. Each sour twist is an impurity being hammered out. Each time music spirals upward in a dazzling display, it evokes great wonders, from the building of pyramids and steam engines to the launching of colony ships. As for the second movement, from 5:06 to 7:05 I see sparkling stars and nebula scrolled out before Humanity like pearls across the cosmos, ours for the taking. We stride between them effortlessly, assured in our power. We are noble and enlightened, explorers that fear nothing save falling short of our true greatness. In these lissome notes, I see humanity sail on the calm, pearlescent waters of the Warp. We spread art, culture, and technology and make discoveries that gracefully twist reality to heel. The stars are made for us and they do not exceed our grasp; indeed, we _dance_ between them, silver dripping from our fingertips to create cities and Edenic worlds from every glinting drop. But something sickens the silvery blood at 7:06. Screaming and slaughter. The Warp shatters. The appropriately _Gothic_ themes enter at 7:30, with peril, panic and danger. We are being hunted. The stars that we basked under without fear are swiftly going out. I feel like the shift to soft choral music at 8:30 is simply a threnody -- a song of mourning and loss. Humanity's silver wings aren't cut, they're ruthlessly ripped out by brute force. Our grand civilization is mangled, mutilated. _We. Are. Falling._ Until each stab of the organ denotes a mushroom of nuclear fire lighting up on Terra itself, waves of fire boiling oceans and blackening the earth. This is when we, as a species, teeter on the brink. We've forgotten the stars, we've no use for music or poetry or philosophy. We're animals, trying to survive in the ashen husks of our forgotten, burnt glory. At 10:05, the turmoil of our homeworld begins to quiet. The death knell of what we were is heralded by a great bell. The death of all we once knew. But also, it heralds an arrival. The Emperor of Mankind will no longer stay in the shadows. He casts off the cloak of obscurity and then, 10:50, begins the drums of a new war. It is as definitive as lightning splitting the sky. No longer do we fight to survive -- we will fight to take back our legacy and damn any who try to stop us! We fight! We WIN! _We reclaim what is ours._ At 12:05, we discordant notes of strife, conflict, unforeseen troubles. Plans go awry, something is lost, but the purpose is strong, it carries through even though the shambling noise tries to impede it. And we have a brief callback to the hazy mirage of past. I wonder if the Emperor ever missed those early days, where only a bright future lay ahead, and not living in the shadow of our former greatness. By 13:07, we have reached space yet again. No silver wings now. No pearlescent skies. The cosmos want us dead and we meet it with the battle cry of humanity as we stride for the cruel stars in blood-stained fortresses bristling with our burgeoning might. 13:30, we are marching again, implacable, taking back star after star, throwing down bolts of cleansing fire if need be. The Great Crusade. By 14:05, we have calm -- 'Any xenos species out there is dead or dying. Who's there to threaten us?' (I swear I can just envision the Eye of Terror STARING at Terra within the uncomfortable strings in the back. Breath before the storm?) The calm is brief. Within 5 seconds, I envision a sudden convulsion in unanimity of the Imperium. Betrayal. With little time, we're thrust into a barrage of music that is warning, danger, mortal peril. There is no plan, or careful formations, it's _urgency._ Every thrum of the piano here is a persistent reminder of imminent doom close at heel like a black dog. 14:28 Is a shift, a fraught turning of the tide where every beat feels like a slogging step taken through piled bodies. Each step is difficult, painful. It's not just war, it's bitter loss made heavier by the duty that empowers each measure forward. I truly envision the Emperor climbing a pile of broken bodies, pushing against weight pulling at his limbs. We've fallen into minor chords, now; this is _loss,_ this is a _pain_ and _suffering._ Each measure (each step higher on the mountain of bodies) is slower and slower. It's harder and harder to climb until-- The Emperor sits upon the Golden Throne.

[@blackcellaudio]

Has made my day to hear :) hope it gave you something 🙌

[@Razzy-sr4oq]

@@blackcellaudio My good sir, I have updated my comment. I had a LOT to share. Please forgive my exuberance. The music carried me away. 😅

[@blackcellaudio]

@@Razzy-sr4oq getting a coffee to read this haha

[@blackcellaudio]

Firstly thankyou for taking the time to write such detailed thoughts out :) I am surprised with the way you have interpreted it, but that is a good thing! The three parts from my perspective were meant to be divided up a bit in time, the first 5mins is his gathering of power culminating in the great crusade and ultimately his internment on the throne; his time spent as the god emperor is the second 5 minutes, hence the holier and perhaps more abstract feel, with colours of discordance and pain, that there is a certain rot underlying the austere and false holiness to the imperium, yet still he gathers might in ways not understood; the last 5 minutes is a hypothetical, him as the Starchild, reborn at last as a true warp enitity, perhaps one of order and by that element, fundamental change for humanity in the setting. There are so many beats that could have been in there but I didn't want to go too overboard, for instance if I was to go crazy with it I would have added in the following: - A longer start section reflecting the mythos surrounding his birth in the middle east. A great coven of psykers all sacrificing themselves and his more humble beginnings. - The start of the Great Crusade and its progression into the Heresy, including some sort of section about Horus, the SoT and his "death". - The second part would have included more form the 30k-40k timeline, Abaddon, rising of the Necrons and Tyranids, prophecies of the Eldar. - The last section would have had more also about the other factions, but this would have been so hard to do without breaking from the feel of the music and making it feel incoherent. I would have loved to suggest some sort of culmination of the great wars yet to come. (ones we will probably never know about due to GW needing to keep the setting fairly stagnant)

[@blackcellaudio]

There are quite a few little thematic nods in there as well, which I always like to add in if i'm feeling the project. For instance at 12:20 the horns play the start of the close encounters of the 3rd kind melody, and there's two times in this I've used chord progressions from the lord of the rings films because I thought thematically they work so well 😂

[@h3lio5]

Was listening to this while designing myself a new sit-stand audio desk. Its basically an imperator titan and for some reason has guns…lots of guns.

[@blackcellaudio]

Your desk has 🔫?

[@AutoHeadbanger]

Immediate click! Hell yeah!

[@blackcellaudio]

☺

[@GetsugaTensho85]

You know what is sad! That so much lore where Emperor takes center stage is just so badly written it isn't even funny. When TTS, a parody channel on YT has unintentionally written the best most cohesive character profile for the Emperor out of all of them, you know you messed up Galactically. The Emperor deserves better.

[@blackcellaudio]

I knowwwwww right, to throw in my 2 cents I am absolutely down with the idea that no-one can really be sure that they have seen or experienced the real entity that is him. He should have been almost conceivable before his Molech upgrade, but even then people like Oll who knew him before he became what he is are unreliable, the nature of his Molech power boost seems to imply some very weird shit happened, almost like he was always the Emperor. Maybe its in the same vein as the chaos gods extended forwards and backwards in time also. The problem has always been, even with the Primarchs too, that they are operating on such a level above baseline humanity that there actions and words sometimes will make no sense, because they have perceived and can do things which are just out of our realm of possibility. If you could peek inside even how a space marine thinks, I imagine it to be like those slow motion moments from the Downey Sherlock homes, faster, clearer thinking on every level. So how in Holy Terra's name does a group of human writers portray that? I think its better serviced by perspectives from more relatable characters i.e. what does the guardsmen on the wall hear and see and feel when Sanguinius gives his speech. What does Land see and feel when he meets the Emperor, just a pretty regular science dude? That's fine, its like us trying to conceptualise a 4d shape, we are only ever filtering through our limited senses an object which we can never see the whole of. I do think its just about ok as patchwork and as face palming as some of the moments are which feature Big E, but he could have been portrayed in such a cooler way. I do think Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the greatest writer out of everyone who's contributed to the Black Library, he just seems to have an edge about him, his stories are not overly simple bolter p**n, he somehow captures something great in the characters and lets them be virtuous and do cool things without seeming too unbelievable or ruining the grimdark of it all. More than once I've been reading a random book and thought "This is actually awesome, I'm totally lost in this world" and it turned out to be written by him. SoT is my favourite series as I love that whole setting and it absolutely peaks in Echoes of Eternity (which is ADB written), it's a perfect tee up for the massive ending, and then Dan Abnett decided to completely butcher it IMHO. I read a lot in general and I've never had to stop to search up a meaning of a word as regularly as I did in those books, and EVERY single time the awkward language didn't even add anything, totally pointless. No idea why the mini rant happened sorry haha. To the point though, I think it's ok for Big E to seem like a psychopath, a kind and gentle ruler, throw a temper tantrum, appear like an idiot, kill a god or two and seem to play games, they just needed to give it all a proper framing, a bit of "noone knows what the hell that was about, he probs has a plan though", or at least show that just one or two of his strange actions had an effect which came to fruition way down the line, leave the rest as mysterious

[@Aedrion-]

@@blackcellaudio Amen brother. The Big E should always be as he himself called himself, both Revelation and Anathema. He is what a human soul would be if it was immortal, lived for practically forever and was gifted with great intellect and power. He is both perfection and imperfection at once, he is the best and worst of us and the both the greatest and most terrible force for humanity that ever existed. The anathema is that it is so, the revelation is that it is possible.

[@blackcellaudio]

@@Aedrion- Thats actually really well put!