It was confirmed today that The Black Mages have been disbanded for several reasons. However, Nobuo Uematsu will nevertheless continue some rock activities through his new bound, the Earthbound Papas. More info here. Thoughts? Are you disappointed or were you no longer a fan?

Eh, three albums and two concert DVDs is enough. It's mostly good stuff but that's about as much Final Fantasy synth-rock as I ever need to hear.

the overpowering keyboards solos that COULD have been done on guitar ruined it for me

I'm not really surprised. The albums have lost some of their allure over the years IMO.

Out of the three albums, I only liked what was on the first, and even then there was a whole lot of cruft - compare the Jenova arrangement on the first album to the better, more compact Advent Children take, for instance. I also agree with longhairmike's assessment that there was too much keyboard and not enough guitar.

If Squix does any more arrange albums in the future, I'd like them to take the approach of the Dark Chronicle Premium Arrange or Street Fighter Tribute Album and tap a wide selection of artists to submit one or two pieces each. Picture Jindo arranging Zeromus, Kawakami doing Man with the Machine Gun, Takada doing Gilgamesh's theme...all on the same album.

God, this was terrible on BMII.

I never heard any Black Mages Albums (I might have heard the first one, but at least I don't know what it was like) nor the two albums you mentions, but I'd appreciate something like Star Onion's Sanctuary. That's about SQEX's only recent arranged album with the correct approach despite the weak track selection. I think FF music is so colorful and has many highlights outside of the battle themes so more varied approach than piano only or rock only will make me happy.

All good things come to an end.

Fixed.

Haters, as usual, gonna hate. Sure, The Black Mages' arrangements and performances sometimes left a little to be desired, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to listen to tracks like "Clash on the Big Bridge" and "Maybe I'm a Lion" and tell me they didn't put out some quality work.

At any rate, while this is sad news, it's certainly not unexpected. I've had a feeling this was coming ever since the tracklist for TBM3 was announced, which was essentially a clearinghouse for all the remaining Uematsu-composed final battle themes. There's certainly enough material left in the FF series for another solid album or two, but that rush to get all the final battle themes covered indicates to me that they knew (or at least strongly suspected) that the end was at hand.

Here's hoping Uematsu makes good on his word and The Earthbound Papas deliver more cheesy rock goodness.

That they chose to focus largely on battle themes alone was the series' biggest shortcoming.  We needed more arrangements of benchmark FF pieces like Matoya's Cave; I still dream of energetic renditions of Prologue/Final Fantasy, Dear Friends, Main Theme of FF7, Eyes On Me, and FF5's Ending Theme.

And a Rock de Chocobo should've happened a long time ago.

I enjoyed all three of the Black Mages' albums so this was definitely sad news. That said, it did appear that this outcome was inevitable. I also think it opens up some neat possibilities for the future. Maybe the Earthbound Papas will be able to arrange a great variety of music and perhaps we'll see some different musical styles and band lineups. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the Earthbound Papas.

the BM version pales in comparison to this one http://www.youtube.com/user/kurikintonf … QdToYpppdo

The version of the FF7 main theme that the Black Mages did at the Square Enix Party in... 2007(?) was kinda cool.  Did that ever get released anywhere in any form?

Can't say it surprises me, but after BMIII, I won't mourn over this loss.

What? Oh, you mean DEATH METAL DE CHOCOBO!!

The first Black Mages album had a great sense of novelty to it for me; getting to here hard rock/heavy metal covers of FF themes at all? NICE!

Black Mages II had better quality audio, use of instruments,

I'll agree, that one was a drudgery; the slow pace killed it,

and Black Mages III had a serious obligatory feeling to it: "I think it's about time we put out another album..." "Do we gotta...?" "Well, we DO get paid for this gig..." "Tsh, fine..." Especially considering that not all of BM3 was FF themes, and the ones that were there sounded so uninspired, like they just did the theme straight, with just different instruments from the original synth, and they didn't bother improvising, or anything...

That, and the Black Mages were spreading themselves over other projects, too, like contributing tracks to Advent Children, or other S-E soundtracks, even if they only provided one bonus track, or so.

Long story short: I'm not surprised.

I just wish I knew where SSH went, after doing those 2 awesome hard rock/heavy metal arranges of Atelier Iris 1 & 2...I guess he thought he couldn't do anything for the subsequent games? Best to leave behind some good albums and quit, rather than release a crappy one, and THEN quit, I guess...

They had a decent run, all in all. The 3rd album was rather thrown together (come on guys, I'll give you the Keitan track, but do you HAVE to tap into FFXI and the opera scene minus the best part when there's so much AAA material still out there?), but they answered the call for some quality hard rock arranges of FF material when there were virtually none to be found (fanmade or official) and definitely left their mark.

For what it's worth, my top 5/bottom 5 for the Mages:

Top 5:

1. Battle on the Big Bridge
2. Force Your Way
3. Maybe I'm a Lion
4. Those Who Fight Further
5. Grand Cross

Bottom 5:

1. FFVI Battle Theme
2. Opera Scene
3. The Skies Above
4. Zeromus
5. Distant Worlds

So I guess it seems I'm not a fan of their experiments and more a fan of their more straightforward stuff, lol.