Taking a break from my illicit activities over at Dick Move, I’ve come to the Blood of Kittens Network to wax musical on another race from the 40k Galaxy. As the title would lead you to believe, today we’re going to talk about the followers of Tzeentch, the Lord of Change. Rather than try and do one jumbo post on the Chaos Space Marines and another post on the Daemons of Chaos, I’ve decided to do 4 smaller posts for each of the gods of chaos and possibly a follow-up with one or two CSM chapters at some distant juncture, if I can find enough material.
Musically defining a god of magic and mutability should be fairly straightforward, so let’s start laying down what we know about him to get started. He is a god of psychic sorcery and magic, with a library of all magical knowledge in his crystal palace. While this is sounding a hell of a lot like the Dark Crystal all of a sudden, I think this provides us a good starting point- songs that get us in the mood to Tzeentch it up should probably involve magic.
What’s more, he’s a god of change, deceit, and trickery. Buried in the heart of an ever changing maze that would madden the living we find our god. Change should be easy to cover by finding songs that might have a loose structure, lots of chord/key changes, dynamics, or anything else that gets us out of the verse-chorus verse-chorus paradigm of modern music. We can even go a bit further and throw that maddening effect in there by finding something with a really crazy or erratic structure, timing, or what have you. Deceit and treachery, though, I think we will have to define thematically, as I can’t really think of a musical analog- unless you’re one of those guys who “gets” jazz jokes. Haha, he played a diminished 7th chord when he should have played a minor…… Sorry to you serious jazz aficianados, but I think we’ll be skipping that for today.
Now I assure you that I didn’t just search for songs with “magic” in the title in my iTunes, but the first selection for the day is Megadeth’s “5 Magics.” I probably don’t need to say much to introduce this band, as most of you probably know who Megadeth is, but with frontman Dave Mustaine at the helm I can guarantee that you will be assaulted by a flurry of mind-bending guitar solos that come out of freaking nowhere- surprise! This song also bounces around between tempos and time signatures pretty freely, so it gives us that crazy mutating structure that we’re looking for. Plus it’s about magic. All 5 kinds. If that weren’t enough, somewhere in the middle of the song you’ll hear Dave sing a duet with some kind of demon. This song really has all of the cheese and virtuosity I’ve come to expect from these guys.
Next, and partly because people have been requesting more classical music, we have Camille Saint-Saëns with “Danse Macabre.” Without words, perhaps a little background is needed for this song. It is based on a poem by Cazalis which explores an old French superstition about death clicking his heels on tombs and then playing a waltz for the dead, which come to life and dance for him. There’s your magic. I love the smell of necromancy in the morning. While the song keeps a relatively constant 3/4 meter and tempo throughout, the structure doesn’t follow modern conventions as ever shifting parts appear and disappear with little warning and little structure. When you listen to the last minute especially, you’ll hear a lot of crazy runs and repetition of themes in the violins that are almost maddening. Let us not also ignore the fact that, subject matter notwithstanding, this song is really eerie. There’s just something unsettling about the whole thing that I can’t put my finger on. We’ll just call that Tzeentch’s influence for the sake of argument.
Last up in our Tzeentch playlist, we’ve go Alien Sex Fiend’s “Magic.” Dating back to the early 80s Bat Cave days this death rock group from London has been pumping out extremely creepy music for years. Eschewing most musical conventions, this song is essentially the same throughout, being based on a looped guitar ostinato. Various instruments and rhythms come and go, but this is not your regular top 40 pop radio fare to be sure. Prominently featuring various Middle Eastern wind instruments and percussion, mixed with a slide guitar this song has an otherworldly feel which, when added to the subtle textural shifts, give me the feel that I’m trapped in an ever-changing maze. Couple that with the fact that the singer’s voice and the foreign instruments don’t quite jive in terms of tuning and we’ve got a maddening head trip about sorcery worthy of the Lord of Change himself.
Bonus Tracks- That’s it for the main segment, but I wanted to share some of the songs that almost made the list for me. Tzeentch gave me a lot to work with this week, so I felt bad leaving stuff on the cutting room floor. These songs didn’t work out for a number of reasons, but I thought I’d give you some insight into the research that I do in fleshing out 40k armies. Enjoy the bonus tracks and let me know the songs that get you thinking about Tzeentch.
Great band and great song. Almost made the cut, but really had too much structure to fit in.
I wanted this song to work so badly since it’s about a freaking magic chicken, but 3rd wave ska is just way too happy to get me excited about the forces of chaos. Sad times.
This is about the only thing that I could think of that really summed up deceit for me, as all of the lyrics are built around autobiographical lies. Fun fact- the lyrics were actually pieced together Mad Lib styles in collaboration with fans. Unfortunately, this song is just way too subdued to make me think about 40k. It’s a shame though as this is a great band. If you want to know what rocking cellos is all about go check out some of her other songs like this one (no guitars were used in this song. It’s all cello and drum machine).
Words cannot express how much I wish I could have found a way to work this song into the article, but it was not to be.