Board 8 > [VGMC] d23: Filthy Mind v Sand Canyon, Disco Necropolis v Jazzy NNYC, Double OT!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to today's topic for Video Game Music Contest 14, a tournament of the best tracks from games, as decided upon by you, the voters.

Links:
Contest info - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss/edit#gid=320804650
Bracket - http://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=473292
Discussion and results thread - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78524521
Bracket playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1REnVI_W6yELaDP6Zac8b0Wq
ToC playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1RE-TQMj19D0k5nm-0zeH12J
VGMC compability sheet -

Patience.

I can't believe there is a song called rumba of love in pokemon xd

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Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

Disco Necropolis is an eternal jam that I will move to even when all that's left of me is bones.
please just flip a coin already, please.

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Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Skeleton Boomerang - Disco Necropolis
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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Douwa Kairou

one of my biggest ytpmvs was of disco necropolis i can't not vote for it as much as i also love jazzy nnyc

Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Still Being Tested

The Filthy Mind vs Sand Canyon 3: Filthy Mind is just straight up filthy. Not a fan of the vibe on this track at all. Honestly its kinda grating to listen to as well. Sand Canyon is some pretty good kirbo stuff. Its pretty simple and I like that about it. Just another song doing its thing.

Disco Necropolis vs Jazzy NYCC: Disco Necropolis is such a banger. Only complaint is that it feels a bit too short but I feel thats nitpicking. Jazzy NYCC like the name suggests is pretty jazzy. Although this jazz isnt my type of jazz. I don't think the track is that bad though, but its a pass for me.

Flaming Bonds are Being Tested vs Douwa Kairou: ...

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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou
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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
ABSTAIN

hopefully that makes some sort of difference

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Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Skeleton Boomerang - Disco Necropolis
Tales of Zestiria - Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

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The Filthy Mind
Disco Necropolis
Douwa Kairou
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I listened to both the OT jams to help end this:

GITADORA OverDrive - Douwa Kairou

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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind) (8.5) / Sand Canyon 3 (7.5)
Disco Necropolis (6.5) / Jazzy NNYC (8.5)

Hive Mind is cool...!!! I would say it's my favorite TC music in the bracket. I enjoy the muted minor 2nd dissonances when the theme is introduced, and I actually really like the big electric basses shoving it into your face after that. The rhythmic patterns are really catchy and I like the note choices (very chromatic). Kind of a nice contrast with the fast piano stuff after and the alternating meters... very Halloweenish, which I guess is often a negative but not in this case. 0:48 when the flute comes in... very folksy, and I always LOVE that kind of thing mixed with metal. I enjoy the way the harmonies move to modulate from Eb to E, too. (kind of a Dorian feel there)

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The Filthy Mind
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind) at is my ???th favorite song in the contest!! I love DM DOKURO!! I love this song so much that I fought this boss for over an hour and a half with friends totally just so we could listen to it and not because our arena was shit and it was invincible 80% of the time. This is the kind of odd-time stuff I especially love (compare it to Strange Fruits metal cover). I don't know what it is most of the time, ask Mycro for that; I just know it's good. Good guitars good flute good song. I should really make a TCal song ranking but it's too difficult to choose. Regardless, I know this would be near the top.

Kirby's Dream Land 3 - Sand Canyon 3 at 8.7 is my ???th favorite song in the contest!! good korb

Skeleton Boomerang - Disco Necropolis at 8.4 is my ???th favorite song in the contest!! What a start! The rest doesn't live up to the hype. It's good, just not really in the mood for this right now. A year or too ago when I was in my big YASUI YASUI YASUI phase I'd be more for it (Yo-Kai Disco Necropolis)

Devil Engine - Jazzy NNYC at 9.1 is my ???th favorite song in the contest!! What a start! The rest lives up to the hype. This is what I wanted the song to do. Big sax boy HONK. Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khMw5hu06lU for some reason not sure if that's justifiable or not. Think it's the bwoo bwoos at :20 and how it does something different ten seconds later.
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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

Today is "crazy close matches with songs I wasn't into at first but have grown on me to make matches hard now" day. What the heck. So The Filthy Mind unlike the other Terraria Calamity songs during nominations, just wasn't particularly great for me. Maybe that nasty intro partly turned me off. Maybe the other TC songs just work better for me. But at least standing on it's own it's not bad. Good dark dramatic. The sorts of keys/tones in the section from like :10 - :28 gives me a deep nostalgic feel as if it reminds me of somethings I played a while back, like Torin's Passage or DK64. I wasn't too happy with the intro of this song on it's own but when it kind of fades in and lingers in the partial distance, at 1:16, complete with a little unstable glitching, it works really well for the song. What really makes the song for me isn't the fast paced guitar stuff or drums but the backing tones. Which might be made from the high strings I keep complaining about, well tastes don't have to make sense. Less interested in the part at like :46 where those backing tones seem to be absent and instead we've got this whistle that feels like some western fighto. Drum beat during this part is at least pretty neat. Meanwhile the other song, it's a neat little calm peaceful cavernish tune but I don't like the calm peaceful genre it sets out to be. It's kind of a neat little atmosphere it puts me in though. I kinda like that ringy percussive instrument at the start. Hm, I sort of figured I'd have more to say about this. This match feels less close when I think about it but Sand Canyon 3 is alright.

So similar to what I had mentioned before, I wasn't entirely into Disco Necropolis during nominations. I loved +TEK's stuff in AGHR but was less interested in skeleton boomerang, maybe because I really do not care for corny halloween spookio stuff. Maybe because I feel like a lot of my childhood was robbed of Halloween but that's a story for another time. Anyway this IS still +TEK and I love a lot of their stuff which ultimately shines through here. When the instrumentation is not corny halloween junk it's the stuff I really love except for the saxophone which I can have mixed feelings on but it works okay here as neat jazzish. Also I really love the loop point here, it's like the beginning of the song works really well on it's own and yet at the same time it's also half of a "thought" that just runs smoothly during the loop. Nice stuff. Jazzy NNYC the saxophone comes off as less appealing to me than in DiscoNecropolis go figure like I said nothing makes sense. That said the full jazz paths that this song takes are all really good, pretty much all except the very first part which gets repeated but that's still okay. And then after a bunch of the fun jazz chaos it gives a downfalling moment of peace and the song's great okay.

Then we've got the toc which I've already said was close before but I didn't change my mind before lets see if I do this time. oh no it still feels super close quit tempting me to flipping. I think I'll stick with where I was. The other main matches today feel like they should be really close too but at the same time my decisions feel pretty confident about what I prefer compared to this.

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Sand Canyon 3
Jazzy NNYC
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

no comment on match 2

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

Sand Canyon 3
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

sand canyon 3 is one of my favorite pieces of music ever written sorry dokuro i could honestly go on for ages about what i love about this song

match 2 on the other hand is one of the hardest calls i've ever had to make in my life because on one hand i like yasui-adjacent skeleton music a LOT but on the other i like TF4-adjacent time signature shenanigans a LOTTTTTTTTTTT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA i don't want either going down so early but mannnnnnnn i have to go with jazzy nnyc it's just too good

i don't think i voted in the original match of this tiebreaker so let's do that. go shiina slaps but once again time signature prevails

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Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Devil Engine - Jazzy NNYC
Tales of Zestiria - Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

Match 1: It's a hard call, but The Filthy Mind is a strong contender for my favorite Terramity song. The part from 0:48 to 1:15 reminds me of a specific Power Metal band, but I can't remember which one exactly. I'd actually take Sand Canyon 1 over either of this match's songs, so you have the WRONG ONE, but it's still pretty decent Kirby music and not bad.

Match 2: Spooky Scary Skeletons Necrodancer, okay this is actually not bad. I was trying to remember what this reminded me of oh wait it's in the title and in the related videos (it's YO-KAI Disco). Jazzy NNYC is this super cool jazz that I love, actually this is a close match.

ToC: Azuarc's Patience is Being Tested

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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Douwa Kairou

The start of Filthy Mind is real annoying, but the song's generally solid when it's not doing that. Sand Canyon's okayish I guess.

Disco Necropolis is boring. I hate the start of NNYC too, maybe more than Filthy Mind's.

I wish all of today's main bracket songs could lose...
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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Douwa Kairou

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Douwa Kairou

whoa my first listen to Filthy Mind I didn't realize it does an 11+9 thing that's a cute way to stay in 5/4. anyway it's a little gritty for my tastes but still very cool. Kirby song is fine I guess. funny contrast
second match eh. disco necropolis is more fun
"totto" - me

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"The Filthy Mind" - Theme of the Hive Mind (186th) vs Sand Canyon 3 (92nd)
Disco Necropolis (38th) vs Jazzy NNYC (STAGE 2) (105th)
Flaming Bonds Can Stop Being Tested They Have Been Proven vs Douwa Kairou

i'm tired i don't really wanannnaa type up about the songs 2day but it's a very good day!! i love disco necropolis A LOT as resident yasui man i must rave about the faux-yasui and how much i love +tek and everything he has ever done what a guy. sand canyon 3 and jazzy nnyc are both absolute certified bops!! filthy mind is annoying and i am very confused why everyone seems to like it so much why cant beelzebub or antarctic be here weeeeeeeehh

totto totto totto

Douwa Kairou > Disco Necropolis > Sand Canyon 3 > Jazzy NNYC (STAGE 2) > Blazing Bonds in Trial > "The Filthy Mind" - Theme of the Hive Mind

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind) is my 36th favorite in the contest! i think anyone who has an ounce of an understanding of my taste in music should not be surprised that i like this song. I like prog metal. i like glitchy things. i like odd time. i like "edgy" and "dark". I don't want to talk in too much detail about this, because again, i will go in plenty of detail when it's time for this one to show up in my topic, but yeah. It is not really too much a spoiler that I like this song

Sand Canyon 3 is my 62nd favorite in the contest! this is a good example of Kirby music being strangely intricate even when it's a simple short cute fun happy exterior like this. This is EXACTLY the type of chord progression I always explode about, pretty much every single chord change is a modulation, you can't just jam any given notes within some unchanging lame pentatonic scale on a shamisen over this, you have to hop all over the place and change scales basically every chord to do this justice. If judging purely on "what song do i think has the most attractive chord progression in the contest" this would be ranked near the top of my ranking, even though I ranked it down at 62. Only reason this is low as it is is because there's not as much to it as other things basically. Instrumentation is super fun, fake flute and fake tuned metallic percussion, it's BEAUTIFUl. I love all the snes delay echoes mmmmm~!

closer match than you'd think, despite the numbers (is that a ranking topic spoiler? who cares). I'd be more likely to go sand canyon if it were not so small but it is hard to compare something that is really small to something that is really big like filthy mind

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-[Disco Necropolis is my 182nd favorite in the contest! : ( I genuinely can not stand listening to this but I notice a lot of people with music taste similar to me love this track. i guess it isn't that surprising though, it has the kinds of timbres i'm attracted to (FM synth and FM synth mallet perc as a primary instrument at that!), and is intricate jazz-fusion-adjacent composition at parts. but i'm way more turned off by fast oom-pah loompa goofy carnival (especially "goofy carnival halloween"...please make halloween more edgy...) song than most people who like the stuff I like I guess. No other Skeleton Boomerang song would be ranked this low to me of what I know, I like the soundtrack's general style (I find +tek slightly more engaging than the yasui he imitates usually), but this just has too big of a portion of it that's banjo kazooie-y that no matter how cool everything else is i can't get into it. These harmonies are great, sound design is cool, it sounds like a more polished undertale track in some ways, i hope +tek keeps making cool music that sounds like this soundtrack but not this song!]-

-(Jazzy NNYC is my 18th favorite in the contest! I can't believe i said disco necnckjnrgeokr was "jazz fusion adjacent" when it's in a match against this of all things lol. This is probably the most "accurately" any piece of vgm I know of has imitated the sound of like, this exact very specific tonally weird odd time synthy jazz fusion i guess haha. I tried to get this in last year but FAILED due to a technical error (it would've gotten in had it been listed properly and not accidentally split into two separate entries in the spreadsheet), so I guess i'm glad it's in NOW. i don't even know where to begin with this thing. like a big chunk of my fondness for it is because "it sounds like" it sounds like ALEX ARGENTO it sounds like VIRGIL DONATI it sounds like TRIBAL TECH (that one might be pushing it) like ok yeah it sounds like "jazz fusion" subgenre, but this is like the exact subsubgenre of jazz fusion I like most!!!!
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These warpy rubbery synth sounds are so fun! Chord chunks parallel harmonized transposing around like a VIDEO GAME SONG INSPIRED BY JAZZ FUSION. I love the FUSE out of the Devil Engine OST and this track's without a doubt my favorite from it. It's a rare gem to find something that sounds this tight to this style in VGM. It's kinda the opposite of what I said with Einhander lol, "this genre only exists in vgm", this is the opposite, there's very little VGM that is like this exact zone (despite how commonly "jazz fusion" is an inspiration to vgm composers), but there's entire nonvgm bands where every song sounds like this (though if this was on an album with most of that stuff, it'd still be among my favorites from them). Someone get allan holdsworth to do a game ost oh wait : ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( (
/
Maybe it's underselling something as unique as this to compare it to so many existing artists. The stuff this does is astounding and distinct, I value it just as much as anything else in it's sub-sub-sub-genre and it blows much adjacent stuff out of the water, thrilled this piece of music is in a video game.
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One thing I like about this is how it's not very upfront about the fact that it's in 7, I actually didn't notice it was in odd time at all the first time I listened, it's such an unusual (but somehow natural/smooth feeling) grouping(s) that it's easy for it to slip by in observation. It doesn't call attention to its unevenness with any patronizing guidance to express its rhythmic groupings, though it doesn't hide the fact that it's weird either. It's not uniformly accented in any one place and I love that about it. even though so much of my 'identity' is 'likes odd time signatures' a lot of the time odd time music pisses me off because it feels like it's trying so hard to help you keep count alongside it moreso than any actual 4/4 music ever does. "ONE-2-3-4-FIVE-6-7" spoken with really heavy rigid annunciation to make sure you don't get lost is how so much odd time stuff feels, but this isn't at all victim to that. It lets itself be what it is and leaves you to figure it out if you want. but you don't have to if you don't want to you can just listen to all the cool sounds in the song if you want!
/
Also it's actually not entirely just straight 7, there's one single 4/4 bar at :32 and a 15/16 right before the loop but it's so fucking subtle it's insane. the ambiguity of the transition to :38 is really appealing to me, the way the first sax hit doesn't land at all on beat one so it feels like the start of the bar is elsewhere. I could endlessly just list moments from this i love. haven't even begun to talk about the tonality beyond the vague stuff i said already but i don't feel like it so i won't sorry to the 3 people who'd care about that
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The really crystalline part at 1:24 is beautiful and a nice welcome breeze of fresh air when it comes in. It's also the most rhythmically

Kirby's Dream Land 3 - Sand Canyon 3
Skeleton Boomerang - Disco Necropolis
GITADORA OverDrive - Douwa Kairou

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Filthy
Disco
Tested

about damn time too!
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Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Still Being Tested

Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Douwa Kairou
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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

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Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Skeleton Boomerang - Disco Necropolis
Tales of Zestiria - Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

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Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

Reasonable day without anything really standing out strongly to me.

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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis

Sand Canyon 3
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

I still love you, Disco Necropolis.

Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Skeleton Boomerang - Disco Necropolis

GITADORA OverDrive - Douwa Kairou
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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

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Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

Flaming bonds are being tested
Flaming bonds are being tested
FLAMING BONDS ARE BEING TESTED

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Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Douwa Kairou

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

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Sand Canyon 3
Jazzy NNYC
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

Match 1 really shouldn't be as close as it is. I seem to like all of the Calamity songs that I've heard. They're a little metal, a little edgy, and a little weird, and all of that works great for me. But Kirby's Dream Land 3 has a particular sound that I've always been a fan of. It's really the only SNES game that I have any attachment to. I'd also say that this is one of the more distinctive songs from the game. During the nominations I said (or thought about saying; I may not have posted it) that I'd support any KDL3 nom other than Sand Canyon 1 (too overused in memes) and Sand Canyon 2 (taken from a prior Kirby game). So it's fitting that Sand Canyon 3 is the one song that ended up making it.

I feel like I should enjoy Disco Necropolis, but there's something about it that really bothers me. The best description that I can come up with is that it sounds the same way that the art style looks. Not sure of a better way to articulate it but maybe someone can look at the cover and see where I'm coming from. Meanwhile jazz songs can go in many different directions, but this one goes straight up above Disco Necropolis.

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Sand Canyon 3
Disco Necropolis
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested

As a saxophone player I hate hate hate hate the fact that sounds like in Jazzy NNYC is what the instrument is known for :(

Should have just picked oboe instead I guess.
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I also played saxophone, and I was never into jazz.

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Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Devil Engine - Jazzy NNYC
GITADORA OverDrive - Douwa Kairou

I'm okay with flipping a coin, so long as both sides are labeled "Douwa Kairou."

MATCH 1

I heard "decrease your electronic device's aural output" before this song, so when I heard The Filthy Mind for the first time, it was a little bit of a surprise lol. This song is really good though! Love those dark chord changes in the strings from 0:05-0:27. I also love the flute part from 0:48-1:15. I feel like instruments like flutes can actually work pretty well in metal when done right. Folk metal's a metal sub-genre I like a lot that does stuff like that. Metal is general is something I really enjoy, so naturally, this song's a great fit. I guess even more so because of good guitar riffs, rhythm, and the other stuff I outlined.

Sand Canyon 3's another example of Kirby music that I'm not really a fan of. Melodically, it's fine, but the pacing of this song reminds me of the feeling when you're doing an escort mission in an RPG and the character you're escorting walks at a snail's pace compared to how fast your character can walk. I don't mind slower songs in general, but with this song, it just kinda plods along and I feel like I want it to do more. There's some cool stuff from Kirby Super Star, so there is SNES Kirby music I can enjoy, but this song unfortunately isn't one of them.

MATCH 2

Disco Necropolis is a neat song. I can appreciate the cheesy spooky sound here because it makes good use of it. The melody from 0:33-0:58 is great and is definitely the biggest highlight of the song for me. There's no being laid to rest when this song comes on!

More lem-tox intersection with Jazzy NNYC! This is one case where proggy jazz fusion stuff hits all the right notes for me. I've mentioned this before, but stuff like this can be fairly hit or miss for me. This song does things like moving into dissonant melodic and harmonic lines but not in a way that bothers me, for whatever reason. It's also nice that it includes some more consonant rock melodies as well like at 1:23. Another really cool song that's outside of the stuff I normally listen to!

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind) > Jazzy NNYC = Douwa Kairou > Disco Necropolis > Flaming Bonds are Being Tested > Sand Canyon 3

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

-don't have time for meaty writeups today but wanted to remark on sand canyon 3-- this is very nice. I don't always take to somewhat sparse arrangements on the snes but this expresses a progression that's really interesting and fleshes it out enough to make it clear. it does quite a lot with the tools it uses and I like that a lot. made its match much closer in my head than what my first impression would have told me.

Terraria Calamity - The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Devil Engine - Jazzy NNYC
GITADORA OverDrive - Douwa Kairou and if this ties again then just throw these songs out and advance DEMON TRUCK - Neon Dead Hell City in their place

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Sand Canyon 3
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Flaming Bonds are Being Tested


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