ReMix: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest 'DarkMadnessResurrection'

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Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

goat is good. Not only as chevon in a number of tasty Greek recipes (love that feta cheese), but also as a guitar-based ReMixer who's given us some great Castlevania 2 metal mixage before and does so again with his latest ode to the men and women of Club Kukeiha via shredded frets and slugger drums. The first minute here is actually rather mellow, with a clean, undistorted electric playing pleasant arpeggiated chord patterns (some of the changes in which reminded me of the music towards the end of the wonderful Truman's Show soundtrack), but things get decisively more menacing and ominous as screeches enter in, the volumes builds, and the guitar gets some teeth with thick metal distortion, accompanied by mucho-tom-fill drums, the classic Kukeiha goth organ, and a deep, picked electric bass. There's a section following the initial hits that rests on rapid-fire shred runs upward that does go on a little longer than I'd have liked, and if there's one downside it's that this is definitely a pattern-based ReMix, with arpeggios, trills, and repeated riffs dominating. But the intro and outro, with lovely solo melody, balance this aspect out and serve nicely as variant bookends. This isn't one of my favorite CV2 tracks, but goat's given it some bite and vitality with his arrangement. Definitely great listening for the many established fans of CV metal or 8-bit metal in general, featuring some very blistering riffs and clean mixing. Cool.

― djpretzel

Discussion: Latest 15 comments/reviews; view the complete thread or post your own.
Great intro, I love it.
Once the metalz comes in it works pretty well too, with some cool riffing and good rhythms. Lot of parts that I don't specifically recognize as castlevania melodies, but it certainly had the feel, so if it was original material, nice work. If not, I need to brush up on my CV listening. :-)
Nice playing, decent production, and a good flow. Rock fans have been requesting Goat since 2004, and with good reason. I'd love to hear what he's been up to recently. :-)

- OA on March 24, 2009
Really nice piece. The break around the 1:00 mark made me think something was going wrong with my car and freaked me out. The electric guitar shredding is the same stuff you've used throughout your mixing career and that's A-OK in my books. The classical guitar intro and outtro were really tasteful, but that transition back in the outtro at about 3:49 made me want to poke my eye out.
But seeing as how I know the way you've grown, I don't mind it too much.

- bladiator on June 10, 2008
This track couldn't be much better (and kudos for picking a neglected CV2 song). The darker side of CV is well captured and features my favorite use of gothic organ in a metal song outside of Avenged Sevenfold's "Eternal Rest." OCR has but a small sampling of goat's work. If you love his particular brand of CV Metal as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to check out http://www.powergoat.com. I didn't notice the link on his remixer page for a while, so I'm pointing it out for those who may have missed it.

- Taffin on August 30, 2005
Awesome! I want more! download this now if you haven't

- Zebceponaf on June 14, 2005
I don't really recognize the original tune (but then I never played very much CV2, hated that "wander around the towns aimlessly" 8bit RPG format) but this mix rocks anyway. The mood has a lot of range, going from solemn to desperate with the guitars, then the hauntin organs, then the agressive rage of the distorted electric guitars, and back again. Unique, interesting, and rockin.

- Gnam on July 24, 2003
Excellent work. Quite nostalgic, actually.
Anyway, I love the transition at 0:50.
All in all, a very good piece.

- PhantomMagi on February 12, 2003
This song is gorgeous.
I've never heard a song on OC that so strongly expresses emotion.
The intro and outro are simply beautiful, and the innards are very-well produced metal chuggage.
Could have stood a longer ending, but still excellent overall.

- danny B on February 10, 2003
WOW. I like. I was always a fan of the theme from Drac's castle in CV2. I think this piece did a wonderful job of remixing it. I'm not much of a remixer, though I do enjoy playing guitar. I basically don't bother figuring out entire songs, but just riffs that I like. I must say, after listening to the intro to this tune, I almost instinctively reached for my guitar to figure it out. Other's have mentioned the abrupt transitions from section to section, especially at 3:47, but I thought it worked quite well. I do think that it would have been an interesting idea to have the abrupt dropoff and then the fade in of that intro riff again as was mentioned in a previous post. But overall, I am thoroughly impressed and am looking forward to future submissions. Oh yeah, NoFleshAllowed also rocks, but that's a whole other post. Keep up the good work.

- Valhalla_Steed on February 9, 2003
Hey Goat.. Beautiful Stuff here, i dig the guitar work. A Few very minor things a don't like, but overall, an excellent piece of work, my Detailed review follows :P Worth the Download everyone, Especially fans of Castlevania music.. as everyone is.
0:01 - Excellent work here.. I love the introduction..Sounds Reallly good.
0:46 - Don't know about this part, but the title reaffirms my faith, this part fits it rather nicely.. The organ sounds Really good.
1:20 - Sounds like it needs something more in through this part.. I love what im hearing..i just think something else could push it even farther.
2:11 - Cool guitar work.
2:36 - Really Cool guitar work.
3:01 - Goood stuff here, A Very professional quality surrounding the entire thing, I love this part.
3:20 - A Few Shakey things here, but you quickly recover.
3:45 - Don't like the sudden change, It sounds like you just threw it right on top. Id prefer a nice ease out, or a Sudden drop..then this to kick back in slow and mellow-like..but its like an instant transversion which i don't like ..(is Transversion a word?)

- k-wix on February 8, 2003
2 reasons why i like this remix a lot. One, it screams professionalism and two, the remixer's name is Goat. my only gripe is the uneasy transition at 3:44

- neostormx on February 3, 2003
...are easily clear in this mix. Reminds me of when I whooped the crap outta this game, long, long ago.
CV2 is still one of my favorite games to this day, and this track is a beautiful reminder of that. The guitar riffs are well laid out and make a fine accompaniment.
Excellent.
-M.P. Reyart

- M.P. Reyart on February 2, 2003
WOW, that was some WONDER F'in TASTIC MOTHER F'n GUITAR WORK! like Dale said, little touchups and you got yourself some album matirial...PMM Heavy Metal tribut maybe?!?!? PLZ!! I'd write more...but I have to listen to it some more!!!
Gman

- Gman on February 2, 2003
To bad that at the ending of CastleVania 2 they didnt have an FMV of Dracula and Belmont busting out on gutars and one of thoses swamp guys on the drums playing that song.

- Snowman on February 1, 2003
To tell the truth.. this scared me when I first heard it.
Why? Because this is exactly how I pictured this song in my mind and I was going to do it this exact way.. well maybe a little different here and there but the guitar parts are like right on the dot.
Aside from that, this is really good, yummy, delicious, tasty.

- DarknessTear on February 1, 2003
Wow, great song....I wish we could have some more heavier guitar stuff, I just love it. Keep it up!

- IanthePez on January 31, 2003

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