🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #SoundOfCinema Howard Shore: 🎵 The Truth About Cats and Dogs "Cats and Dogs" #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #InTune Howard Shore, London Voices, London Philharmonic Orchestra & Howard Shore: 🎵 Lord of the Rings (Rivendell) #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #LondonVoices #LondonPhilharmonicOrchestra

Ein Film über Tempo, Beschleunigung und einen Mann, der nie stillsteht, weil er Angst vor sich selber hat. Martin Scorsese interessiert sich hier nicht für ein klassisches Genieporträt. Ihn reizt der totale Crash. Der Moment, in dem Ehrgeiz, Geld, Technik und Ego nicht mehr zusammenpassen. Howard Hughes war dafür die perfekte Figur. Die alte Oligarchen-Schule: Reich. Berühmt. Mächtig. Und innerlich komplett außer Kontrolle. (ARTE, Neu)

Saturday Night Live 🌃
#HowardShore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHy3dTA4S_g

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #SoundOfCinema Howard Shore & Le Balcon: 🎵 Esther Kahn (Paris Suite) #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #LeBalcon ▶️ 🪄 Automagic 🔊 show 📻 playlist on Spotify ▶️ Track on #Spotify:

Esther Kahn (Paris Suite)

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #SoundOfCinema Howard Shore: 🎵 The Fellowship of the Ring "Many Meetings" #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore ▶️ 🪄 Automagic 🔊 show 📻 playlist on Spotify ▶️ Track on #Spotify:

Many Meetings

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #WordsAndMusic Howard Shore, Ray Chen & Daniel Mutlu: 🎵 The Song of Names #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #RayChen #DanielMutlu

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #EssentialClassics Howard Shore, The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, Evan Jolly & Nic Raine: 🎵 The Fellowship (The Lord of the Rings) #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #TheCityofPraguePhilharmonicOrchestra #EvanJolly #NicRaine

Saturday Night Live 🌃
#HowardShore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yev_U2pN6fU

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #WordsAndMusic Howard Shore & Howard Shore: 🎵 Prologue: One Ring to Rule Them All #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore ▶️ 🪄 Automagic 🔊 show 📻 playlist on Spotify ▶️ Track on #Spotify:

Prologue: One Ring to Rule The...

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #SoundOfCinema Howard Shore, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France & Ludwig Wicki: 🎵 The Fellowship of the Ring "A Long Expected Party" #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #OrchestrephilharmoniquedeRadioFrance #LudwigWicki

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #SoundOfCinema Howard Shore, Studio Orchestra & Howard Shore: 🎵 Hugo "Winding It Up" #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #StudioOrchestra

#OnThisDay in 1946, #HowardShore, Canadian television and film composer (Lord of the Rings trilogy; 1st music director of Saturday Night Live), born in Toronto, Ontario.
#HappyBirthday #79 🎉🎂✨🍰🥳🎊

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #SoundOfCinema Howard Shore & Studio Orchestra: 🎵 The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring "Suite" #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #StudioOrchestra

Orbit Culture – Death Above Life Review

By Dear Hollow

Orbit Culture is a stellar band, so 2023’s Descent should have been an AOTY contender. An all-killer, no-filler blend of melodeath and thrash with a dark industrial edge sounds like a hodge-podge in the worst ways, but the Swedes have made it their brand with a fluidity that has defined them from the beginning. In this way, the quartet showed their songwriting prowess, with tracks like “Black Mountain” and “The Aisle of Fire” leading the charge in the death/thrash riffage that we’ve all come to know and love. But while the claustrophobic mix provided 2020’s Nija a bloodthirsty darkness, it made Descent impenetrable in its compressed muck – sinking it from formidable to forgettable. It was too much doing too much, with no breathing room to do it. Death Above Life offers a bit of a different feel, although it is undeniably Orbit Culture.

Don’t get me wrong, Death Above Life is claustrophobic and overloud, but its pitch-black overflow feels channeled into a better outlet. At its core a melodeath band with a healthy love for thrash, Orbit Culture has long incorporated a slough of djent and metalcore influences, which Death Above Life utilizes for choppy start-stop riffs and climactic breakdowns – emphasized by Humanity’s Last Breath multi-instrumentalist Buster Odeholm on mixing. While it sounds like a sellout, they provide reprieve for a band amplified to the max with ideas. Alongside this, we get our usual range of thrashy early-Metallica numbers to punishing pitch-black death metal cuts. There is more range in softer ballads and punishing ragers, and it is a production improvement over Descent, but Karlsson’s overloud and often awkward clean vocals are suddenly a nagging issue.

As expected, the traditional thrash vibe is alive and well with Orbit Culture – even the more accessible cuts will rip you a new one. Mastermind vocalist/guitarist Niklas Karlsson continues to shift his Hetfield-inspired cleans more front and center, which adds a bit of gravelly (albeit imperfect) familiarity amid the breakneck riffs. Mostly, it’s easy to overlook, as speedy tempos and intense brutality grace the more traditional verse-chorus formats, in an early Soilwork-esque homage. This portion of Orbit Culture’s sound focuses on the range of emotion, as fury, melancholy, pride, and desperation collide in the mix of chord progressions, vocal varieties, and tasteful synth – highlighting their admiration for film composers Hans Zimmer and Howard Shore. Offer soaring chorus punctuated by djenty start-stop riffs (“Inferna,” “The Tales of War”), while more prominent clean vocals dominate thrashier and more subdued tracks alike (“Into the Waves,” “The Path I Walk”). There’s more metalcore influences as breakdowns add much-needed breathing room (“Inside the Waves,” “Hydra”) and more melodic fretboard wizardry and galloping riffs recall As I Lay Dying’s earlier material (“Nerve,” “The Storm”).1

The deathened intensity that pervades Death Above Life showcases the Orbit Culture’s newly capitalized fury. While many of the heavier tracks do feature clean vocals (“Hydra,” “Neural Collapse”), they are largely an afterthought to the beatdown – and are better for it. Ominous ambient textures and cinematic scope make the brutality all the more intense, with climactic solos and bloodthirsty roars focusing on establishing this misanthropy. The best tracks here are “Bloodhound” and “Death Above Life,” due to their absence of clean vocals and their cutthroat quality amplified by chunky Slipknot-esque rhythms, blazing tempos, and Karlsson’s most vicious performances to date. They put Karlsson’s clean vocals elsewhere to shame, existing as too blaring in the mix and damaging certain tracks with their jarring inclusions, worsened by protracted song-lengths and grating repetition (“Inside the Waves,” “Nerve,” “Neural Collapse,” “The Path I Walk”).

Death Above Life sounds better than Descent, but like any good game of Whack-a-Mole, the stuffy production value is quelled only for Karlsson’s overloud cleans to pop up as an issue, amplified by the album’s fifty-three-minute runtime. The riffs are first-rate, the harsh vocals are vicious, and the songwriting encompasses a range of emotion that reflects Orbit Culture’s respect for film composers – but the increasingly upfront vocal attack wears thin very quickly. It’s a solid release from a band who has earned their reputation as one of extreme metal’s best in a distinct blend of nostalgic thrash and modern melodeath – I just know they could do so much better.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: STREAM
Label: Century Media Records
Websites: orbitculture.bandcamp.com | orbitculture.com | facebook.com/OrbitCulture
Releases Worldwide: October 3rd, 2025

#25 #2025 #AsILayDying #CenturyMediaRecords #DeathAboveLife #DeathMetal #HansZimmer #HowardShore #HumanitySLastBreath #Industrial #MelodicDeathMetal #Metallica #Oct25 #OrbitCulture #Review #Reviews #Slipknot #Soilwork #SwedishMetal #ThrashMetal

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #Breakfast Howard Shore, The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra & David Temple: 🎵 Concerning Hobbits (The Fellowship of the Ring) #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #TheCityofPraguePhilharmonicOrchestra #DavidTemple

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #PrivatePassions Howard Shore & The Dwarf Cast: 🎵 Misty Mountains (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) #BBCRadio3 #HowardShore #TheDwarfCast

Deborah Lipstadts Plädoyer für die Wahrheit – „Verleugnung“ (2016)

Vier Jahre, von 1996 bis 2000, dauerte der Verleumdungsprozess, den der britische Historiker und Holocaustleugner David Irving gegen die amerikanische Professorin Deborah E. Lipstadt angezettelt hatte. Heraus kam ein denkwürdiger Sieg für Meinungsfreiheit und Gerechtigkeit kontra Geschichtsfälschung und Fanatismus. (ARD, WH)

Howard Shore deserves a lot more love as a film composer. Particularly his scrappy period before THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The older I get (and the more I compose), the more I appreciate his understated genius. Even in 1986, he brought real emotional poignancy to cheesy films like FIRE WITH FIRE (my friends and I grew up mocking it) that didn't deserve it.

https://youtu.be/xiHysdxZB-s?si=LNOwzgORkL-0Dk4U

#music #films #howardshore