After making albums inspired by pretty much every playable class in Warcraft/Diablo, I suppose it was inevitable I’d make one about… blue space goats!
My main Draenei character was a shaman, and that definitely colors the album.
“Cut Scene of the Crash” attempts to capture the sensation of living through a video game cut scene from the point of view of the character who suddenly can’t move or do anything… only watch during this heightened moment as events unfold.
“Blue Goat Demons” directly addresses the fact that the aliens who’ve crashed on our fantasy world look like blue goat demons, and their crashed spaceship looks like a cathedral on the hill.
The Draenei and Shaman aspects of this album come together rather beautifully: the main character is new to the world, so learning the elements is both an aspect of training as a Shaman and simply becoming more familiar with the world.
Believe it or not, “I Don’t Need the Lore” is not the first song I’ve made about how I don’t like reading quest text when I play games. However, it may be the catchiest… and the previous one was pretty catchy too!
I really loved Zangarmarsh. So, ten albums into this project to convert everything I love about Warcraft and Diablo into little musicals, it finally earned a song — “Under the Mushroom Caps.” In fact, it’s really the main setting for this whole album.
“The Grind” is about those kinds of quests in Warcraft where you’re just killing and killing guys until you’ve collected enough of whatever thing it is they drop when they die. I actually kinda love those quests.
In each of these albums, the hero has some kind of companion creature. For our off-brand Draenei shaman, the companion is a trio of little elementals—fire, water, and wind. Little twisters scurrying around, causing trouble.
If there’s another song out there about being attacked by the seemingly endless tentacles of a sea monster, rising out of a swamp, then I don’t know about it. So, I made one! It’s pretty darn catchy.
“Make the Winds Sing for Me” is the climactic moment when our off-brand Draenei shaman calls on all the elements to fight off the thrashing tentacles of the sea monster, tearing up the swamp. It’s epic, catchy, and lots of fun.
“Wispin’ Away” was inspired by the Shaman spirit wolf form… but since my off-brand Draenei is also an off-brand shaman, I skipped the wolf aspect and made it just a sort of travel wisp form…
It turned out weirdly beautiful.
Any of these Warcraft-inspired albums could’ve ended on a song about the friendly hearth fires in inns all across the world, but it works especially well on the Draenei one, symbolizing finally feeling at home in their new world.