MZR is pleased as always to announce the release of a new item. Today, it is Sypha Nadon's "The Black Omen," which is the soundtrack to a non-existant computer game. This is the first full album of Sypha Nadon material since 2006's "Threnody for Zumb Zumb" (which was released on the This Plague of Dreaming netlabel).
From the liner notes:
"In the summer of 1995, I was contacted by a man named Alex Gibson, founder and CEO of Young Gods Studios, a tiny software development company that had formed earlier that year. Though they had yet to release a game, they had many ideas that were innovative and cutting-edge. In particular, they were inspired by another small software development company called Looking Glass Studios, who of course are well known for the Thief and System Shock series. In fact, Young Gods Studios was even based in the same building as Looking Glass Studios. At the time, Young Gods was working on a first person POV Sci-Fi horror/survival game known as “The Black Omen.” It was very much influenced by System Shock, which had come out the previous year to great critical acclaim. However, the Black Omen was to have had a more accessible UI, better graphics, and more action-packed gameplay. They wanted the complexity, atmosphere, and brains of System Shock along with the muscular brawn of Doom. The game was also influenced by films like the Alien series and the Evil Dead series, along with Stephen R. Donaldson’s Gap Cycle novels, along with a dollop of H.P. Lovecraft. I was hired to create the game’s soundtrack. They gave me a list of all the songs they needed for the game, including a main theme, a song for the opening cinema, a game over song, an end credits song, and music for the game itself, the songs that would be heard during the missions. Many of these songs were meant to be background music that was supposed to be looped repeatedly until the player completed the level. Which is why some of them are kind of bare bones. At the time, the music for many games was done using MIDI, so that’s what I used for the Black Omen soundtrack. Every single sound on the soundtrack came via MIDI; no samples of any sorts were used. The music I created was influenced by a lot of things, including Bobby Prince’s music for Doom (which was also all MIDI, with the exception of the game’s sound effects), industrial dance music that was popular in the 90’s (such as Front Line Assembly, Nine Inch Nails, and so on), stuff like that. Sadly, funding for the game ran out at a very late period in the game’s development and it was never officially released. However, bootlegs have been cropping up over the years, being sold at very high prices, mainly on eBay. Too bad, it was a great game; it could have sold well, even though it was very derivative of System Shock."
The album, as always, may be downloaded for free from the MZR page at the Internet Archive, here:
http://www.archive.org/details/MZR012
Thank you for your consideration.
