Goodman Games

vradiazei: this is my favorite band for DMing: all acoustic, mostly instrumental darkened folk
they have the whole album streaming free athttp://vradiazei.blogspot.com/

Kveldssanger by ulver: an incredibly beautiful norwegian folk record made by black metallers in the 90s

Welcome here again by Martin Hayes: slow and sad irish fiddling,

Times of Grace by Neurosis: really slow, heavy and epic metal.

Child ballads from the british library sound archive, or any field recordings of british irish or appalachian ballads.

Darker Days Ahead by Tragedy: slow and plodding dark-punk. extremely heavy

I'm actually planning on running a campaign based on Morbid Angel's albums A through G (or maybe H).

Times of Grace is their best, I actually synced up Tribes of Neurot "Grace" with that record. It's pretty cool.

I honestly don't like music for my games. I find the only exception has been Vampire:The Masquerade where I have once in a great while played music that might be going on where the pcs are. Usually though I find it too distracting.

I don't do a lot with music in my games, either, but when I do I usually look for movie soundtracks. VanHelsing for a dark campaign, Pirates of the Caribbean for a pirate game, that sort of thing. I also like the old Conan soundtrack (the first Arnie one) and Robin Hood (the Costner one).

I agree that instrumentals are a lot better than music with words.

I mostly only use music when running Shadowrun (typically electronica without lyrics), or games in modern or near-modern settings (where I play whatever is hear in-play).

For DCC, when the players are going to be locked in battle for a while and I want to get their blood pumping a little to set the mood, I play The Sword, Mastodon, or As I Lay Dying - one song a little loud to grab their attention, then I trim the volume and we roll-on.

The group I run with does a lot of Wolves in the Throne Room and. . .some band I can't remember at the moment.

Really, I just wanted to comment on the OPs name. I hope you're reference the 19th century novel by the Comte de Lautremont. If you ate, you are the coolest poster.

I use music sparingly, and only when dramatically appropriate to enhance the mood of a particular event, be that an epic clash or eerie encounter. Even then, I only use instrumental music as vocals are frequently too intrusive for my tastes.

The fact that this thread has name-dropped Tragedy and Wolves in the Throne Room is pretty awesome and just another reminder of how rad this game is.

I usually rock a lot of NWOBHM. Basically the stuff I was getting into when I first got turned onto D&D back in the day. My games are very influenced by the aesthetics of my headbanging youth.

I also play some mixtapes of occult rock and 70's prog, as well as proto-Black Metal like Bathory. It's usually just there to set a mood at the start, and once a record runs its course we're into the game and don't notice the lack of music.

Funny all the metal being suggested. Agree w/ The Sword. Sleep would be a great one too, also High on Fire.

Anything by Iron Maiden with low volume works perfectly for us.
(+the band is in town for a concert next week!)

Does that make me the third forum member here that has Wolves in the Throne Room on their ipod/iphone/ipad/zune/mp3 player?

Lovers of Wolves in the Throne Room should give a listen to Abigail Williams' latest, different from the others before: Becoming.
Saw them live a couple of months ago, they were intense.

I primarily use Jeremy Soule's stuff from all the Elder Scrolls soundtracks, I use the Skyrim Soundtrack (4CDs!) including an "atmosphere" track that runs for 45 mins. In addition, I stuff from Conan, LOTR etc. but the key is that I make playlists for things like Overland travel, Dungeons, Combat, etc... its all about getting the right track at the right time.

I've been known to use black lights for dungeon crawls too btw.