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How do?

Right, up front? I’m six pints down on a school night. So I may start whimbreling. Yeah. Whimbreling.

But it just struck me, after 30 years in this hobby, we’ve no idea what the music of the 41st Millenium might sound like.

None of the fiction really deals with it. And as someone utterly blown away by Figrin Da’an and the Modal Nodes (aka the Cantina Band)? Why haven’t I considered this before?

I’m genuinely at a loss. Is it like Buck Rogers, where the future is low rent Disco? Or is it edgelord ultra brutalist *insert ridiculous elitist sub genre of metal only invented to make the inventor sound extra edgy’ Metal?

Or anything in between? What do the Lords and Ladies of The Imperium dance to? What would a Guardsman listen to in order to achieve hype before a battle? What would Imperial propaganda music be? What exactly is Goffik Rock? I’d ask the same question of Tau, except I’m pretty sure none of them, musically, advanced beyond ‘super sensitive and not at all predatory arsehole with rubbish piercings and an acoustic at college’ stage.

What say you, Dakka?

Surely you jest sir?

For a game born and birthed upon the front covers of metal albums in the 80s surely you can work it out. Clearly the music of their age is METAL in ALL its forms! Heavy, power, classical, synth (probably elfies), death, etc...
What else befits a world where you fly through HELL to reach places in space?!


Indeed was it not the great and wise Kirby who showed us the light recently and revealed that the Old World was not METAL enough and thus was done away. Swept aside by the insane mania of the Realms. The Age of Sigmar which not only has realms from the albums, but an entire METAL REALM!



Also what are you whimbreling about? The only thing I can find on that is Whimbrels and I don't think wading birds has anything to do with pubs?!

Aggressive yet anthematic war propaganda would be public access; everything else is an indulgence of the nobility.

Music is a vector of infection for Slaanesh cults. In Herbert's Dune, there is a form of music known as Semuta- it combines esoteric music and the use of psychedlics. This is exactly how Slaanesh would corrupt a hive city, and as such, it would be suppressed by the Ecclesiarchy, and the Adeptus Arbites or the Enforcers.

As in modern culture, music would be connected to tribalism. Think Necromunda; the Escher would have mostly female vocals, where Goliath might be Death Metal while Van Saar would dig techno, and Cawdor would be Gothic Choral.

Again, all of that would probably be illegal [except to nobles] because in the Imperium, the only acceptable subculture is Imperial Citizen.

Having just reread Eisenhorn, Mutants appear to favour a harsh discordant music called Pound. It comes up a few times through the books.

Actually the masses would likely listen to Gothic hymens of praise for the Emperor and the Imperium. Such wholesome holy music would not be capable of being tainted by the touch of Chaos.

Also there are the lovely children's songs like "the tracks of the land raider crush the heretics" which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be sung to the wheels on the bus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Actually the masses would likely listen to Gothic hymens of praise for the Emperor and the Imperium. Such wholesome holy music would not be capable of being tainted by the touch of Chaos.

Pretty sure that the 40k version of the music of the spheres involves grenades in some way

I had always assumed that the music is a weird mix of gothic chanting, speed metal, & indistrial.

So imagine if Benedictine Monks singing about biggiE while shredding on flying v's (like skwisgaar skwigelf)& KMFDM remixing the uggachaka dancing baby song on the fly all fed thru a fair amount of aural servitors(the tube kind) powered by the astronomicon.

 Overread wrote:
Actually the masses would likely listen to Gothic hymens

I think the word you were looking for is "hymns". Even for 40k, listening to hymens would be weird.

In the far future of the 41st Millennium there is only.....K-Pop.

To be a perfect dystopia, surely all music would be also-ran boyband drivel from the late 90's?

Take That in Slaanesh Dreadnought sarchophagi?

The Eisenhorn books describe something called "Pound music" which seems very much like industrial techno.

Other times orchestral instruments are described with a very classical feeling, to my mind.

Hymns too.

Some form of electronic music is mentioned in the second Uriel Ventris novel. To be honest, beyond propaganda music, I wouldn't be surprised if, given how decentralized the Imperium is, musical tastes varied widely from planet to planet. There could be a million Top 40 lists, all of them very different. Culture, values, economy, history, biology (think of all of the various abhuman races), all of these would affect a world's pop music. Then of course there are the feral and feudal worlds who probably don't have anything akin to modern pop music. Also, given how different their brains are, real humans and cyborgs/techpriests might listen to very different kinds of music.