Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Radio & Music >

Epic, Epic Songs

Jawsus-son Starship

22:20 / 01.07.06

Right, bored at work waiting for the England match to start, me and my compadres got into a discussion on what art the most epic songs we know - so far we've got;

-Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
- The PokeMon theme

Both epic. So when I go in next week, I want a play list of such epic songs, and being a little Van Bommled, neigh, Id go as far as to say I'm nepoleoned, I thought I'd seek the many sages out here in the wilds of Barbelith for help,

You better help, or this fist, this fist will begin to shake.

Brigade du jour

02:17 / 02.07.06

You just want a list? Ok then ... bung on Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir', that's about as epic as it gets.

Oh hang on, just re-read the summary, you want insight as well. Shit. Err ... it's got strings! And they come in straight away, as if the song is saying 'yeah fuck you dude, we're a pop group but we're going to need the London Philharmonic to help out with the live version and we don't care who laughs at us'.

And anyway, the song sounds like a big giant plodding through a desert. And that's just the drum track.

Keith, like a scientist

05:29 / 02.07.06

off the top of my head:

Slint - "Good Morning Captain" from Spiderland. Basically THE Slint song. Guy washes ashore, wanders about, finds some dude, craziness happens. Big huge drums, some screaming, and walls of guitar. Also see "Washer" from same album.

Blur - "Trimm Traub" from 13. Used to great effect in an episode of Millennium. Some funky jangling bass and atmospherics give way to a balls to the wall guitar scape.

Manyfingers -"Our Worn Shadow" from the album of the same name. Recent release, this guy makes fucking gorgeous slow burning piano, guitar, strings, horns, wicked drum epics.

There's a couple great Neil Young epics, my favorite of which is probably "Cortez The Killer."

Oh, and don't forget Iron Motherfucking Up The Irons MAIDEN. "To Tame A Land," "Where Eagles Dare," etc.

Oh, and Sabbath, duh.

foolish fat finger

20:58 / 02.07.06

I haven't heard the pokemon theme... is that an epic? methinks you may have your tongue in your cheek, good sir!

well, I'd say maybe, river deep, mountain high- it don't get much more epic than that... 'Eloise' by whoever dun it, or the Damned who did a cover... and er... the 'shake n' vac' song... man, that just builds and builds...

Jawsus-son Starship

23:57 / 02.07.06

I wanna be the very best
like no one ever was
To catch them is my real test
To train them is my cause
I will travel across the land
searching far and wide
Each pokemon to understand
the power that's inside
Pokemon! its you and me
I know its my destiny,
Pokemon! Oh you're my best friend
in a world we must defend
Pokemon! a heart so true
Our courage will pull us through,
You teach me and I'll teach you,
Poooooo-keeeeeeee-Mon!

Gotta catch 'em all
POKEMON!

If this isn't epic, well I don't know what is.

01:25 / 03.07.06

'The Ballad of the Edmund Fitzgerald' by Gordon Lightfoot.

that shit will bring the house down. I want a cover by Nick Cave though, with the usual Nick Cave 'adjustments'. Perhaps an appearance by the Kraken?

10:03 / 03.07.06

The Final Countdown (diddle-eee-dee, diddle-e-dee-dee) by Europe. As epic as it gets, mofos.

I also have a nice Mogwai single, something about Fathers and Kings, thats pretty much one riff contorted over 25 minutes... pretty bloody epic.

Also, Brit band Oceansize specialise in the epic, as their name might suggest. Music for a Nurse from the last album Everyone into Position should fit the bill pretty nicely.

10:20 / 03.07.06

Gonna Fly Now

By Bill Conti

The Rocky theme tune. Epic, inspiring and elevating music.

I think I may even take the stairs back from the canteen now I've started humming it.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

10:43 / 03.07.06

The Final Countdown (diddle-eee-dee, diddle-e-dee-dee) by Europe. As epic as it gets, mofos.

Except if you get Laibach to cover it in bombastic industrial techno style, with huger, hyprkinetic digital drums and the most gutteral voice in rock'n'roll. Their version makes Europe sound like, well, poodle-permed soft-rockers by comparison.

(I'll be back in a while with some epic suggestions of my own)

12:59 / 03.07.06

Except if you get Laibach to cover it in bombastic industrial techno style, with huger, hyprkinetic digital drums and the most gutteral voice in rock'n'roll.

*Oh*, a little bit a sexywee came out then... where can I find this gem??

14:06 / 03.07.06

If you want proper Epic, I refer you to the Power Metal thread. Epic is these boys' bread and butter.

In a similar, slightly more parodic vein, see also Spinal Tap's "The Majesty of Rock":

There's a pulse in the new-born sun;
A beat in the heat of noon;
There's a song as the day grows long,
And a tempo in the tides of the moon.
It's all around us and it's everywhere,
And it's deeper than Royal blue.
And it feels so real you can feel the feeling!
And that's The Majesty Of Rock!
The fantasy of Roll!
The ticking of the clock,
The wailing of the soul!
The prisoner in the dock,
The digger in the hole,
We're in this together...and ever...

Just typing the lyrics makes me want to run out and ROCK.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:15 / 03.07.06

*Oh*, a little bit a sexywee came out then... where can I find this gem??

It's on their album N.A.T.O. And it's every bit as good as TM suggests... except possibly a bit better.

Epic songs? Hmm...

Ghost Love Score by Nightwish (yeah, alright, fuck off) is truuuly epic, going through about a godzillion different movements and with a nice Morricone=orchestral bit in the middle, before charging into its "none-more-operatic-goth-metal" ending.

If you want "epic" in the sense that it builds and builds and fucking builds, then I'd have to go with Angels of Light (by, strangely enough, Angels of Light) which starts with a single acoustic guitar, adding a new instrument every few bars, until you get this absolutely insanely beautiful instrumental- which suddenly stops. To be replaced by the acoustic again, and this time the vocal, and which builds AGAIN, but this time with different instruments and a completely different arrangement. It's truly a thing of much wonderment, and I always feel simultaneously exhilerated and exhausted by the end, every time I listen to it.

Or, y'know, ANYTHING that Jim Steinman's been within a continent of.

Professor Silly

17:18 / 03.07.06

Allow me to suggest "3 Days" by Jane's Addiction.

Starts off with a wonderful bass line and lyrics painting a picture of the singer fucking two women, blending into a rocking bridge ("We saw shadows of the morning light, shadows of the evening sun, 'till the shadows and the light were one"). This goes into a tribalesque section that builds and builds into a ripping guitar solo which eventually leads to the epic heavy-metal ending ("all of us with wings!")

Really, I do consider this and the song which follows ("Then She Did") as one big piece...but they are two separate tracks, so I'll leave it at that.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:58 / 03.07.06

Ooh yeah, 3 Days... on a similar tip, Tool's Lost Keys/Rosetta Stoned is really one of the BIGGEST thing's I'm listening to at the moment. Beginning with a mystery guy being admitted to hospital, going through, afaict, a psychedelic/alien abduction experience, right up to the whole "being chosen to deliver a message to the world" thing, then the realisation that the narrator is too fucked to even remember what the message is and can't even control his own bowels, it's all good clean fun. (With Lost Keys' "Blame Hoffman" subtitle suggesting that perhaps these weren't even REAL aliens...) Musically complex, ikt really does run the gamut. It even has two- count 'em, TWO!!!- false endings. That HAS to make it epic, surely?

Well, that and the line "it's E motherfuckin' T!!!"

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

02:33 / 04.07.06

The only song that comes to mind when I think Epic is:

Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner by Warren Zevon. Live it reaches down, grabs you by the throat and forces you to stay in the car until it's over.

05:39 / 04.07.06

inna gadda davida

iron butterfly's epic one-song-on-a-side! wow, and gothic grunge at its earliest best. can't believe no-one yet mentioned it. no-one remember vinyl? tch, kids...

other classics...

layla by derek and the dominoes

evie [pts 1, 2 & 3] stevie wright (from great aussie early rock band, easybeats)

papa was a rolling stone temptations' original. yo, mo-fo. word.

s'what's ya list now, mathlete..? you err, have plenty time after england's epic demise... snicker, snicker....

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

08:56 / 04.07.06

The most epic song I know is "Jimmy Sharman's Boxers" by Midnight Oil. I'm not Australian, and only just looked up Jimmy Sharman in Wikipedia now, but I remember listening to Red Sails in the Sunset a LOT in high school and always being blown away by the massive build of that song. Haven't heard it in ages. I wonder if it holds up.

And anything by Godspeed You! Black Emperor definitely has crazy towering monolith power behind it. "Dead Flag Blues" is mighty as hell.

Jack The Bodiless

10:45 / 04.07.06

Marillion's 'Ocean Cloud', dedicated to Don Allum and the ocean rowers. About eighteen minutes long, several movements, refrain of chorus repeating over and over again in-between movements. Sounds like Godspeed...! and Pink Floyd having a fight on Tool's tourbus. If that makes any sense.