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[exmortis]

Hi to all.

Maybe it's a known fact but it was found out that DB used some piano ideas for their musicpiece "Sorgens Kammer" (Stormblast album, 1996) from an unknown mod file dated 1991. Unless the DB's keyboardist was a tracker-fan...

Original mod is here: agony2.mod - 0.17MB

Edit: Ok, let me point exactly:

This piece equals to the 00:12-00:30 region of agony2.mod (00:00-00:55 of the Sorgens Kammer):
sk_0012-0030.mp3 - 0.65MB
This piece equals to the 00:30-01:55 region of agony2.mod (02:50-04:00 of the Sorgens Kammer):
sk_0030-0155.mp3 - 1.11MB
These are almost exact matches between two musics, although mod's piano is "dirtier" with some unpleasant intervals and Sorgens Kammer has the appropriate pieces slightly altered: the first is enlarged and second trimmed down. Though, agony2.mod has some pieces not present in Sorgens Kammer and vice versa.

[Saga Musix]

i can't hear too much resemblance. sure, it's the same style, but the melody is quite different imo. but i think there was an issue just like this one, maybe even about the agony intro.

[exmortis]

Ok, I clipped exactly the pieces that match between two musics and indicated time regions. Updated links are in the first post.

[Ceekayed]

Yep, it's a clear rip-off and it's a rather well-known case already. Quite sad, but at least Dimmu Borgir polished the composition a bit and made it actually better than the original was.

And I don't know what have you been eating/smoking/drinking Jojo if you can't hear the undeniable similarities between the songs.

[Saga Musix]

i dunno, but a side-to-side comparison was rather hard to me when i just had the full tunes. Note that the download links in the first post didn't lead to excerpts but the complete tunes when i was writing my post.

[necro2607]

All links no longer working I was interested to hear this!  heh 

[necro2607]

Ahh I found this Youtube vid with a great side by side of the songs.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE6WFQR8Oik

[Saga Musix]

Thanks for the link! And after listening to the full rip again, I don't know what I was eating/smoking/drinking either, CK. It's pretty obvious. Maybe exmortis was linking to a different tune...

Trivia: The tune played in that video is actually the "original" title melody, which has never been used in Agony.
To quote exotica:

With regards to 'mod.agony intro' in the 'Direct_from_Composer' folder, Tim states that, "Interestingly, the version of the intro theme I've got here is the original version. 'What?' - yep, this is the original tune with the original samples. Y'see, when I sent the tune off for inclusion in the game a chap [Franck Sauer] changed the piano sounds for better ones. However one of them was at the wrong octave - I didn't find out until it hit the shelves, so it's always sounded wrong to me. Here's the real version."

On a final note, Tim goes on to say, "If you'd like to hear a cover version of the ['incorrect'] Agony Intro theme, then get hold of a copy of Stormblast (1996) by Dimmu Borgir. There's a track on there called "Sorgens Kammer" and it's a blatant rip-off of my music. I have contacted them, but they just give me excuses, and it's not worth suing them for the pennies I'd get back - oh well, life sucks!"

[necro2607]

Oh, yeah I actually grabbed the music files from http://psygnosis.org/games/agony/

The "agony2.xm" on modarchive.org  is not the same song (I grabbed it at first, and was totally confused.  In fact, the agony2.xm on this site was apparently not even used - Or at least, i assume so since it's in the "unused" folder in the .lha of songs from psygnosis.org)  ... OK, kind of run-on-sentence,but I'm in the middle of a ton of things right now. haha

And yeah, that dude is 100% entitled to royalties.  Not only that but he can sue due to the copyright infringement aspect...  but yeah, it'd be a real hassle.  It helps to have a friend who's a lawyer, in those kind of cases, for sure...