One listen.

I’ve known of this song for years and years. From memory, I first heard it used in a video of a fight against Monster Hunter Dos‘ Yama Tsukami. I’d gotten a copy of the soundtrack the song is on and I’d played the whole thing maybe once or twice. There were some other songs on it that I liked and I ended up gravitating to those more. Decided to get another copy of the soundtrack recently after it popped back into my head and couldn’t find mine.

I tried to get something. I loosened up a bit toward the end, though I wish I had sooner. The way it goes, sometimes. I think this works. It could be a bit more cohesive, but I do think it works.

Susumu Hirasawa’s (平沢進) “Murder” is from Kenpū Denki Berserk: Original Soundtrack., the soundtrack for the 1997 anime adaptation of Berserk.

I hope you enjoy.

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Bubbling in a silent space, and those bubbles rise as a drone rises with them. The drone is akin to strings, and soon more sound, also akin to strings, come forward and rock back and forth. Builds on the foundation. More come in, expanding the form and shape, and that bubbling increases and it roils, and the strings change as that bubbling becomes something else and comes to the forefront, it’s still there. More sounds form, and the space is dark and pitch, and also coloured deeply and heavily, framing and pressing in and letting the space expand all the same.

Percussion and something like voices come in at the right time, and those voices rise and fall as the percussion strikes with specific flashes; specific glimpses, cutting out a lot of scenery. The bubbling rises and froths and seems almost ready to crash and burst forth, and falls away and comes back; it’s waves, and the sounds get stronger, more tense, and then the percussion changes.

More rapid, less striking and things seem lower; more “flowing” than before, driving and pushing underneath. The strings stir more obviously, and the striking returns, and everything moves toward what could be an inevitable conclusion. Everything pushes further into a breaking point, pushing, looking to find what comes next, trying to bring in a moment that they also are trying to prevent. Trying to prevent the inevitable.

It is a foreboding, dolesome moment, and what is is ornate, and it stirs and swells and rushes past like a strong wind trapping, creating a circle, swirling ever inward, violently tearing, gnashing. Closing in more and more, grand, eloquent and messy and violent, and the sounds don’t let up.

They exhibit a calmness to them, or perhaps it is a knowing, and a mourning at this point. But they keep on their pattern, and they don’t release, and they keep moving, and gradually they fade away. Voice and percussion remain prominent until they also leave and the song ends.