Tagged: Skog

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Music Kits Series 4: Let’s Get Radical!

I’ll admit that my interest in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has dropped off in recent months. There not being a lot of major updates is the main reason, but also because I love when they announce new music kits. Just when I thought Valve was basically saving 2017 to be the “year of CS:GO,” they drop a bomb on us:

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A bunch of gloves that are rare as a god damn knife, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about those darn music kit!

I know this whole project sounds silly, but I’m always interested in what musicians Valve can cajole into this project. This time, it’s all lumped into a $7 case called “The Radicals Box”, and they’re all “StatTrak” versions so any time you get an MVP in a competitive match, your teammates and enemies will know how awesome you are.

This time, we got seven more music kits. Three of them are from bands from Red Bull Records, which I covered previously, while three more are from a different record label, Hopeless Records, the band that notably had artists like Taking Back Sunday, Sum 41 and Yellowcard. Sadly those bands aren’t featured here, but instead we get the B-tier bands on their catalog. The last remaining kit is from a returning musician, and it fits with the theme of rock and metal. (Hint: It’s not Daniel Sadowski.)

Like before, I’ll link to a YouTube page and the CS:GO Stash page so you can listen along. That being said, let’s get rocking.

Beartooth, Aggressive

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DESCRIPTION: Beartooth is back for round two. This new music kit hits harder and is even more aggressive. We’ve also made the MVP anthem extra heavy so your opponents feel really bad after they’ve lost to you.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (through the official Red Bull Records YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Our first returning act, Beartooth has another pack based on their newest album, Aggressive. Their last music kit was one of those that took a while to warm up to, but this one’s actually damn good. All the tracks are various cuts from the album, in instrumental form. “Loser” highlights as the main menu track, and their other singles “Aggressive,” “Always Dead” and “Hated” contribute to various parts of the kit from action cues to bomb timers. But they even went for album cuts for the remaining sections, such as “Censored” being one of the round/action cue timers.

Since these are the instrumentals, they really do highlight the rocking metal feel of the tracks without someone screeching over them. This also didn’t take long for me to like it, compared to “Disgusting”, which took a while for me to warm up to.

VERDICT: Recommended. A lot less harsh than Disgusting, and is quite catchy in spots.

Blitz Kids, The Good Youth

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British Pop/Punk band Blitz Kids brings you the perfect music kit for rushing B while thinking about those night drives you had with your friends in High School. This kit is for going fast and feeling young.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (through the Red Bull Records official YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Another Red Bull Records contributor, Blitz Kids’ appearance here is a bit of an odd one. An alternative rock band, the music kit name and the songs are all from their second and final album, and their sole one with Red Bull Records.

Notice I said “second and final album.” Yeah, Blitz Kids disbanded in late 2015. I seriously hope that the disbanded band members are getting royalties from this kit, otherwise it’d be pretty scummy to make money off a band that’s no longer active.

The kit itself features “Run for Cover” as the main menu track, and much like the Beartooth kit above, Red Bull Records opted for lots of album cuts to round out the kit, such as “On my Own” being the bomb timer, “Sometimes” as the Choose Teamcue, and “Keep Swinging” being one of the action cues.

I like this kit because it’s got that nice alt-rock feel, with occasional synthesizer breaks and string sections, giving it a nice, grandiose feel to the music. Though, using the same song, “The Soul of a Lost Generation” as both the Win and Lose Round cues seem a bit off since they sound too similar. It’s not a deal breaker, but certainly weird.

Again, I hope Red Bull Records vetted this with the previous band members, otherwise they might be in legal trouble. It would be funny for a music kit to become “contraband” like gun skins did, though…

VERDICT: Like alternative rock? Want something a bit lighter than the harsher metal fare? This will work. Recommended.

Hundredth, Free

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DESCRIPTION: Hundredth is bringing heavy to the world with their unique take on melodic hardcore. Break free or return to Dust with this perfect soundtrack for fragging the unworthy.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (from the Hopeless Records official YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Our first collaborator from Hopeless Records, Hundredth is who you’d expect: Hard riffs, fast pacing, screeching vocals. If these guys were around just five years earlier, I’d see them being prime Rock Band Network candidates.

Now, at this point I’ve been lauding Red Bull Records and their PR/mixer guy using the entire album for various tracks in their music kits. I wish I could say the same about these guys.

First, no instrumentals, so these are the first music kits where we having singing and actual lyrics. Second, only three songs encompass the entire music kit, and they’re all album singles, and finally, lots and lots of awkward choices for tracks because they’re not instrumentals.

“Break Free,” “Unravel,” and “Inside Out” are the three songs used here, and they just seem so chopped together that they sound awful. It doesn’t help the “screechy heavy metal” is not my kind of genre, so this is one I have a hard time recommending to anyone, unless you’re familiar with the band itself. At least the MVP Anthem is probably enough to annoy people.

VERDICT: So lazily put together. Screeching vocals ruining good music, and using three songs to mash up into 6 minutes of music feels slapdash. Not recommended.

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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Music Kits Series 3: A goddamn smorgasbord.

About a day or so after I finished writing the last post about Counter-Life, I took a nap. When I woke up, I found out about this:

More CS:GO music kits.

Not only more of them, but practically doubling the total number of music kits from 16 to 30. I nearly fainted after that. This time it seems we’re getting a big variety sampler pack, from returning artists to new contributions from notable film composers, to even an interesting collaboration between Valve and a record label. In addition to the new music kits, they now added “StatTrak” variants that keep track of the times you’ve become the MVP in competitive matches. It seems a bit silly, almost like a joke someone made to Valve without saying they were kidding afterwards. But if you want it, it’s there for $6.99 if you want them, or on the marketplace for cheaper.

Since I’ve written about the previous ones before, it’d be remiss of me not to continue the tradition. Like before, I’m gonna write how I felt about each one, mentioning some of my favorite tracks, and whether or not it’s worth the $5-7 to grab, with a quick verdict at the end.

Now in the last collection, I had made videos of the new kits, but this time I passed on doing that. It’s not that it wasn’t fun to make, it’s that considering my meticulous nature for making these things, I would’ve taken a month to work on something that’s already been eclipsed by other YouTubers for lesser effort. So for the sake of this, I linked to other YouTubers or CSGOStash if you wanna listen along.

So without further ado, let’s get started…

AWOLNATION, I Am

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DESCRIPTION: AWOLNATION Alternative Rocker AWOLNATION brings you a music kit for the ages. This kit is jam-packed with an eclectic selection of tunes and includes cuts from singles ‘I Am’ and multi-platinum hit ‘Sail’.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (through the official Red Bull Records YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Over the past year or so, we’ve gotten fairly notable electronic musicians: Noisia, Feed Me, that sort of jazz. For this series of kits, Valve teamed up with Red Bull Records to bring three notable artists from their label, including AWOLNATION.

AWOLNATION (yes, in all caps) is a notable artist because of their multi-platinum award winning song “Sail.” A lot of this music kit features tracks from their recent album Run, though it’s all instrumental with the occasional shout here and there.

Alas my knowledge of the band comes from “Sail” and little else, so I had to hunt down what songs were used for each track thanks to Spotify.

The kit is named after one of the songs, “I Am.” Surprisingly, it’s not the main menu track as expected, but another track from the album, “Windows.” Other songs like “Hollow Moon (Bad Wolf)”, “Run” and “Jailbreak” are used for the Action cues, Bomb Timers and Lost Round/10 Second Timer, respectively. “I Am” shows up as one of the action cues, whereas their biggest hit “Sail”, the only song from their previous album, shows up as both an action cue and the MVP Anthem.

Yep, once you frag dudes and get the MVP, everyone will be hearing the keys along with Aaron Bruno yelling “SAIL!” at the end. It’s worth it just for that alone.

VERDICT: Recommended just on the MVP Anthem alone.

Beartooth, Disgusting!

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DESCRIPTION: Beartooth brings an agressive [sic] back-to-basics hardcore stomp that gets crowds moving and breaking stuff. A perfect soundtrack for your no-scope scout frags. Rock ’till you’re dead.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (through the official Red Bull Records YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Here’s Valve/Red Bull Records collab number two. Beartooth is a metalcore band by Caleb Shomo of Attack Attack! fame. (Just so we’re clear: We’re talking about the Attack Attack that did that awful guitar crab-walking to a song called “Stick Stickly,” not the Attack Attack from Wales that’s the infinitely superior band.)

I’m fairly picky about my taste of music. If there’s anything I hate about metal sometimes, it’s a guy screeching incomprehensible words into the microphone. If that’s all the talent you need to be a metal singer, then I should be auditioning to be one right now. Thank god the music kit is strictly instrumental, which unearths some pretty decent metal underneath.

All the songs here come from their 2014 album Disgusting. Their single “In Between” serves as the main menu track, whereas other songs like “Keep Your American Dream” and “Body Bag” are the action/round cues. There’s some pretty okay metal on these tracks, and if you loved stuff like Skog’s Metal from the original set of nine, this is right up your alley. I’d be okay with them releasing more stuff like this.

VERDICT: Lightly recommended, get it on the Steam marketplace for cheap. Great for those who want more rocking in their CS:GO soundtracks.

Daniel Sadowski, The 8-Bit Kit

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DESCRIPTION: Daniel Sadowski creates the first ever 8-bit Music Kit for Counter-Strike complete with authentic 8-bit sounds.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (courtesy of YouTube user DeezTurbed), CS:GO Stash

Our first returning composer, and I honestly wasn’t expecting him to return for a third time. This is Sadowski’s third music kit for CS:GO. This, along with the DOTA 2 music kit he also did recently, makes me think he’s practically a official composer for Valve considering how much he contributes to their games recently. It’s great, really.

Considering the name, you can guess this aims for a chiptune approach, which is drastically different from his previous offerings (Crimson Assault and Total Domination). While we got fairly close to chiptune with an unused MVP track in Feed Me’s High Noon, this is the first music kit to actually go for the retro game music approach, and he does a fine job here.

Some of my favorites include the Start Round, Choose Team and Start Action tunes. A lot of these fit right in line with NES-era music, which I consider to be a fairly difficult thing to master.

After hearing this, I’d love to actually see notable chiptune composers have their take on chiptune game music for CS:GO, such as Rushjet1, or Danny Baranowsky. If someone like Sadowski can make a solid retro game music soundtrack, I’d love to hear someone else’s take at this.

VERDICT: Recommended. Good for those who love chiptunes that actually are chiptunes and aren’t just someone adding samples to crappy MIDIs.

Darude, Moments CSGO

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DESCRIPTION: Yield freely in the soundscapes of Finnish producer Darude’s familiar musical flavours and tones. Enriching yourself with access to a heavy fusion of progressive overtones and scores of tingling melodic structure from the sounds banks of one of dance music’s most renowned pioneers.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (courtesy of YouTube user CSGOPoetry), CS:GO Stash

Ah yes, Darude. That guy who made that “Sandstorm” song that got popular in the early 2000s. Then it got popular again because Twitch chat users thought it’d be funny to go “DUDUDUDUDUDUDU Kappa” and make “Sandstorm” jokes on DOTA2 and CS:GO matches. It seems Darude has taken this in stride, at one point DJing at The International 4 after party and pretty much trolling the entire crowd by teasing “Sandstorm” the entire night before finishing it as the encore.

I’ll mention this upfront: No, “Sandstorm” is not in this kit. The kit itself has tracks that sound like “Sandstorm,” but none of the tracks are actually “Sandstorm.” Rather, it’s a unique track made specifically for the game, though it’s titled after his most recent album. Despite being named after an existing Darude song, “Moments,” it sounds nothing like the music kit featured here. In fact, I really couldn’t find the song he used here, so it’s likely an original composition named after his most recent work.

A lot of the tracks have the same catchy beat to it, with additional instrumentation where appropriate. The first Start Round/Action has good instrumentation, and I like the slowdown touches on the Round Loss and Deathcam cues. But a lot of it sounds similar, which is slightly disappointing, but hey, this is a bigger get than when DOTA2 got deadmau5.

VERDICT: Lightly recommended, get it on the Steam marketplace on discount. It’s not Sandstorm, but Darude made a good enough substitute.

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A look at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s original music kits.

So for the past month and a half, I’ve been fixated on something a bit unusual:

When you need some jams while getting the ace on Dust II.

Valve introduced “music kits” to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive back in October 2014. These special items replace the game’s default music with unique tracks by nine different musicians. You can get one of these offered randomly in-game for $4.99, or buy one on the Steam marketplace if you’re looking for a specific one. Alternatively while in-game, you can borrow anyone’s music kit if they have one equipped, so you can give it a try in action.

I love video game music. I also tend to get nerdy about the parts of video game music most people don’t notice. Naturally when this was announced, I was excited for something that was probably done to distract us from how broken the CZ75-Auto is in CS:GO (at the time). But I was curious on what each one sounded like, and if they were any good.

The first nine music kits introduced. A nice mix of game composers, DJs and hard rockers.

For the sake of this, I’m gonna give a review of each kit. Granted, I’m not an expert at reviewing music, but I’ll try to review it to the best of my abilities, and links that feature each kit so you can listen to them for yourself. Without further ado, let’s get started.

I’m not gonna review the stock default that’s been in the game since 2012, but I will say this: It’s fine. It works. It’s credited to just “Valve,” but some of it seems to be split between Valve composer mainstay Mike Morasky and DOTA2/Myst V composer Tim Larkin. It’s what I kinda hate about Valve’s philosophy of only crediting the company rather than specific employees: It makes it harder to credit who made who.

(Videos courtesy of YouTube user TheLeafyfille.)

Austin Wintory, Desert Fire

DESCRIPTION: Grammy nominated game composer Austin Wintory asks, why bother hunting your enemies when you can lure them in with a deadly, admittedly insane, tango?

LISTEN ON: YouTube, CS:GO Stash

Austin Wintory’s done music for most of thatgamecompany’s work, such as fl0w, and Journey, which I heard was a great game. (I still need to get around to playing that one.) Out of all the game composers featured here, barring Sean Murray, I’d say he’s probably the most famous game composer out of everyone here.

Wintory’s Desert Fire opts for an acoustic guitar with an orchestral accompaniment, fitting right at home on maps like Inferno, Mirage or Dust II. One of my favorites is the second action cue (startaction02) that plays immediately as a round starts, with a brassy horn section finely tuned to the action. The MVP Anthem is another favorite, with quick percussion and a flute solo, which fits perfectly for when you fragged the entire enemy team, or successfully defused a bomb.

It may be a bit cliche on the acoustic guitars and the woodwinds, but it works insanely well. We’re already off to a great start.

VERDICT: Highly recommended.

Daniel Sadowski, Crimson Assault

DESCRIPTION: Video Game Composer Daniel Sadowski delivers Edgy Action mixed with CRAZY FAT beats in this pulsating, exhilarating Music Pack.

LISTEN ON: YouTube, CS:GO Stash

I’ve never heard of Daniel Sadowski, but he’s done music here and there for some movies and games, most notable the 2009 A Boy and His Blob reboot, and doing music for something like Counter-Strike is enough to get you noticed more, so good on him.

Crimson Assault goes heavy on the techno, a 3-note motif appearing throughout all the tracks in his score, becoming the only notable thing about it. The score itself is very much pulse-pounding action, and the bomb timer music being one of the highlights, fitting perfectly with the suspense of bomb defusal mode.

This music kit took a good while to grow on me. At first, I felt it was bad techno and was probably the worst of the pack, but after a few listens and hearing it in action in-game, it fits in CS:GO. If you’re looking for something that will get your blood pumping, Crimson Assault’s not a bad choice.

VERDICT: Lightly recommended, get it on the Steam Marketplace on discount.

Dren, Death’s Head Demolition

DESCRIPTION: From game music composer Dren, this cinematic, superhero-metal inspired music pack puts the ‘ill’ into KILL!

LISTEN ON: YouTube, CS:GO Stash

For this first group of music kits, Valve really went all over the place with who they chose. Dren isn’t a composer I’m familiar with, but he’s done music for other games, mostly mobile games like Transformers: Age of Extinction. As I said, getting featured in a game like this gets you noticed, especially with his music kit.

Filled with heavy percussion and a chugging bass line, Death’s Head Demolition ends up being a good mix of dramatic orchestral score with subtle hints of rock, which does crop up on some other games like Call of Duty. It makes it feel very innocuous, which isn’t bad, it compliments the game without being too obnoxious. This was another one that I thought wasn’t great as first, but after a few listens and hearing it in-game, it fits perfectly fine in the game.

If CS:GO didn’t have a soundtrack in it already, Death’s Head Demolition would probably be the closest to an “official” soundtrack. It strikes a good balance of orchestra and rock, fitting right at home in a game like this. Death’s Head Demolition’s a good music kit, even if it’s not incredibly outstanding.

VERDICT: Recommended.

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