It's been a while, but I just listened to it all the way through again. Brilliant. Utterly bonkers, but simply brilliant!

Burton's voice is astonishing. The bit where he's hiding in the basement is spine tingling….!

the new stage version was supposed to be immense with the lasers etc etc

"Suddenly the lid fell off!"

Ha, brilliant. Horsell Common and the Heat Ray popped up on shuffle this morning. Will listen in full later. Amazing album that scared the bejesus out of me as a child (and still does a little). Great cast too.

I can proudly say that this was the first album I bought 🙂

This is better. And I'm not even Welsh…

Abruptly, the sound ceased.

Abruptly, the sound ceased.

Thanks christ for that. Horrendous load of old tosh. In my opinion, like.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOlaghhhhhh

'Minds… immeasurably superior to ours'

Classic, though also kind of awful at the same time. 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBslZsTHUd4

Has anyone heard the new(ish) SACD version of this in 5.1 surround? I'd love to hear it like that.

I loved it when I was really little, then for some reason it massively spooked me when I was 4 or 5, and I stopped listening to it. I heard it again a few years ago and it seemed pretty good, though a bit dated in ways – some rather embarrassing disco sounds, IIRC.

WOTW is ace. Dad used to put it on in the car to shut me and my sister as kids, scared the crap out of us.

Drives me mad – many, many years ago I was part of a group of about 12 venture scouts from Leeds who did this community project in a village in India which had been badly affected by floods. Only one person had the foresight to bring a tape-recorder – unfortunately he only had about 2 tapes one of which was War of the Worlds, so after about 5 weeks of it being played 3 or 4 times a day I got to the point where any mention or hearing it drove me round the twist. Still not got over it 30 years on!

I first heard it in primary school when I must have been about 4 or thereabouts; I cried so much I got sent home… 🙄

I often have it on when driving now though, and seeing it at the NEC was grand (ooooo lasers!)

I'm ashamed to say despite being a bit of a Wells fan and WOTW being one of my favorite novels, I've never actually heard this – How close to the book is it?

How close to the book is it?

Well its set in the UK, not the USA, during the late 19th century, not the 20th/21st.
So a lot closer than any of the films.

Pretty close – apart from the singing.

Was Tom Cruise in that version?

I'm pretty sure that David Essex was in the book, however.

I love the art work on the album the whole thing is utterley brilliant Justin Haywards finest work IMO!

Has anyone heard the new(ish) SACD version of this in 5.1 surround? I'd love to hear it like that.

I bought the SACD when it came out (I'd just got a dvd player which could decode them) and it's pretty good, in fact I think I'll dig it out and have another listen later on. I think you can find it on one of the torrent sites as a DTS 5.1 DVD image if you can't play sacds.

Charlie Brooker uses it in every episode of Newswipe, so I pester my flatmates and various friends by going

bah bah BAAAAAH

bah bah BAAAAAH
…

I remember my Dad had the LP and when I was young I used to love looking at the art work, particularly the one where the aliens have first landed on the common and the humans have started to assemble to look at what it is – really quite spooky!

I borrowed the CD from my Dad a few weeks ago when I was driving down the A1 to pick my missus up from Heathrow about 4am and again was quite spooked by it.

I think you really have to have the right atmosphere to listen to it – it wouldn't be the same listening to it whilst on a tube or walking round a city…..

I used to listen to it on the walkman coming home from college; I could drop off, wake up and know where I was by the song playing.

I still get sweaty eyeballs when Thunderchild comes on.

Scared the li'l 'un by putting it on when driving upto Brum' one evening – but he loves it now.

Scared my lad with it on a late night car journey a few years back. Bless 'im.

Great soundtrack though

played it a couple of w/ends ago… still sounds great.