10 Most Epic Wrestling Entrance Themes You May Not Have Heard
Synthesising brilliance.
Even in 2017, hopelessly lost in a deadening creative malaise - the prospect of John Cena and Rusev feuding two years later, having undergone zero in the way of character development in the interim, is bloody depressing - WWE still excels at entrance themes.
Bobby Roode's 'Glorious Domination', penned by the excellent CFO$, is the aural translation of the word "epic", performed by what can only be described as a choir of warriors. With it, WWE managed in ten seconds what TNA failed to do in ten years: present Roode as a genuine superstar. Shinsuke Nakamura's 'The Rising Sun' blast beats/violin fusion is the sound of the language barrier being annihilated. Asuka's 'The Future' is a three minute-long cruel taunt. The booking may be criminal, but the entrances are blessed.
There is much to life outside of the WWE bubble. More expressionistic - often far superior - wrestling matches. Shows promoted in a more logical, sports-oriented context. And, ironically, more variety with nary a stipulation in sight. This also extends to the all-important entrance theme, which, if used correctly, does as much to get a performer over as years of painful graft and painstaking fine-tuning.
Even WCW, rightly derided for its dime store bargain bin knockoffs of classic WWF themes and grunge anthems, was the proverbial broken clock...
10. Riki Choshu - Power Hall
Susumu Hirasawa is a legend within avant garde musical circles - so much so that a (tenuous) association with the wacky world of pro wrestling was one of the less weird things about him.
Hirasawa, who composed this synth-based masterpiece under a pseudonym, was not a fan of puroresu. This was his guess at what "wrestling sounds like". If only it was. Hirasawa's vision of it is both relentless and beautifully ambient - an evocation of a late night teenage Tokyo joyride, with its spectral synths and juddering precision drum machine. Choshu's Revolution Army stable thundered through New Japan in the early 1980s. This, a bleeping, shuddering blast of hypersonic BPM, was the perfect soundtrack for that revolution.
Choshu was a hugely over hero of the youth movement in the mid 1980s. Though it may be a result of permanent millennial fascination with that decade, 'Power Hall' still sounds impossibly cutting edge in 2017. Imagine how cool, how futuristic, it must have sounded back then.
It works as a electronic masterpiece in its own right, with just enough swelling grandeur in the background to associate itself with the sport.