I’m looking for songs or albums where a rock band was backed by a symphonic orchestra, like the Deep Purple album Concerto For Group And Orchestra, and songs where a rock band was backed by a choir, as in Dimmu Borgir’s “The Serpentine Offering” or Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Remember.” Anybody have any good suggestions?
So - not symphonies, as with Metallica’s S&M?
How about:
- Rolling Stones - You Can’t Always Get What you Want
- Sisters of Mercy - This Corrosion
Would Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall count?
ELO
Dimmu Borgir has a lot of symphonic stuff, and so does the traditionally black metal band Emperer in their later stuff.
Lots of the stuff Renaissance did was backed by a full orchestra. Try “Live at Carnegie Hall” for a starter.
CHOIRS
Pat Benatar - We Belong
Tina Turner - We Don’t Need Another Hero
Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is
You might like Therion or Lacrimosa. But on what planet is Dimmu Borgir a rock band?
The Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed, definitely. That was the London Festival Orchestra behind the Moodies.
You’ll also want to check out Procol Harum’s album Procol Harum Live with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, from which the song “Conquistador” came.
You may also want to look at a few things on Peter Gabriel’s first solo album–I believe (but am not sure) that some sort of symphonic emsemble was used on “Down the Dolce Vita.” The whole album is certainly worth a listen anyway.
If you’re thinking of genre by the way that say CD’s are organized at Best Buy they fall into the “Rock” category more than say the “R&B/Rap” or “World Music” categories.
Thanks for all the suggestions! Some of these are already favorites of mine (I have everything Renaissance ever did), and others are new stuff for me to explore.
I’m one of them old farts that consider genres like metal and punk to be subsets of rock.
On my iPod, most Dimmu Borgir has the genre “Rock: Metal: Symphonic.”
Well, actually, the song came from their first album. The orchestral version was the hit several years later.
How about the Siegel-Schwall Band performing “Three Pieces for Blues Band and Symphony Orchestra”?
Oh, and thanks for the link to the Wikipedia page, Cluricaun, but that’s actually what brought me here. It mentions piles of bands, many of which have huge canons of work, but doesn’t point me to specific songs.
Try checking out Project Playlist for a chance to hear some stuff for free, legitimately. If you like Dimmu Borgir you’ve got to check out the tune Progenies of the Great Apocolypse off of Death Cult Armageddon. It features the London Philharmonic.
Thanks, Cluricaun. I’ve been using iTunes and Amazon to listen to samples, but you only get 30 seconds, iTunes doesn’t have a lot of older stuff, and Amazon doesn’t have audio files for a lot of theirs. Project Playlist is a good addition to the toolbox.
This whole thread was worth it just for ultrafilter’s suggestion of Therion. I just bought their “Theli” album. I’m going to work my way through the rest of the suggestions over the next few days.
The New York Rock and Roll Ensemble is mostly forgotten now, and wasn’t that well known even in its day, but it has am important place in rock history. Remember, those were the pre-punk days when people thought that fusions of rock and other music were worth doing, that rock could aspire to higher realms than headbanging, and that instruments had to be practiced before one played them in public.
In addition, Michael Kamen was an important part of the band. He later became very well known for his movie scores, but I remember him for one particular concert in the early 1970s. He wrote a symphony for rock and orchestra that was backed by the Eastman Philharmonic Orchestra at the Eastman Theater. To the best of my knowledge, no recording of it was every made. A pity because it was simply the best meld of rock and classical I’ve ever heard.
Wiki also has an entry on symphonic rock but it’s not very complete. It doesn’t list the Ensemble or the Electric Prune’s Mass in F Minor.
Symphonic stuff is almost becoming a cliche in metal, but there are a few bands doing it well.
In the Dimmu Borgir realm, I’d be looking for the recent albums by Sigh and Scars of Chaos.
There’s a long list of bands doing the female fronted symphonic thing, but the frontrunners are Nightwish (In particular the last two albums), After Forever (The song Digital Deceit is a good start) and Within Temptation (In particular their last album)
Uriah Heep’s “Salisbury”
Pink Floyd’s "Atom Heart Mother "
yeah I’m an old fart
Mike Keneally + Metropole Orkest - The Universe Will Provide (obscure, but 5 stars on AMG)
Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover - Elements (really hard to find)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Works I (not my favorite album, but Pirates may be a good example of what you’re looking for…)
If you like the Trans Siberian stuff then you should check out Savatage, it’s basically the same group of guys doing the TSO work. There’s Dead Winter Dead which has the song Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24) which started the whole TSO group.
Pulp’s “This Is Hardcore” (the song, not the album of the same name), has a brass and strings section backing up the band. Very cinematic.