Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 14! KillBeKilled v BloodRose, Tellur v Supervoid, Fortune v Madness

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to Video Game Music Contest 15, an annual celebration of the best of the best video game music according to the voters!

Important Links:
Bracket: https://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=474630
Contest info sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XAaBMDuUnQ4c5AxQNL9ZhvD7VG5kQyrXWWZxnkrn-o
Contest discussion thread: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79443554
Main bracket playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT3m7iohpL0xt7lOF1eB-H4NpAaF1yAnU
Compatibility sheet (courtesy of Haste!!): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iGYWo_ifr_p2uYpD_I6TwBQS2tm7zJtPCxYZfRJcG8I
Last years spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss
VGMC total stats sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1XdLWiUKB2kX99qYBgnRbLU_sCz4dvZSByKKJHCT6o
Discord: https://discord.gg/WDvMS4a

Rules:
- Listen to both songs in a given match, at least through the loop time provided (to make sure you don't skip before you've heard the whole thing!)
- Please consider the loop point listed when judging the song; if a video loops one minute 5 times, don't treat it as if it's a repetitive 5 minute song
- If it's a match between your favorite song ever and a song you despise, still LISTEN TO BOTH! Votes can and will be disqualified if there is suspicion songs are not being listened to, and you may be discounted for the rest of the contest for repeat offenses.
- No alt accounts, no rallying or begging, etc., etc.... You only get one vote! Swapping votes is alright, just make clear that you've already made a vote and are swapping.
- Make clear what your voting options are! Please keep votes separate from any comments, and use the titles given in the topic post.
- Voting in all matches is not mandatory, feel free to skip matches you do not wish to vote in.
- Vote based on the links provided, and not other sources of audio. Links are specifically chosen for best quality and the like.
- Don't discuss vote tallies in this thread, or in other threads, as they may influence votes. Likewise, please refrain from looking at the running tally before voting.

Voting Period:
- Today's matches will last 24 hours from the time of posting, or 24 hours from 10pm Eastern, whichever is the later time.
- Please note this may mean that two topics will be active at the same time!
- If you anticipate being unable to vote in a given day, please send an absentee vote to @banshiryuu or @Toxtricity, or post your absentee vote in the discussion thread!

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Match 1

No More Heroes 2: Desperate

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

gah who let this match happen r1
None of Supervoid's individual segments are anywhere as cool as Tellur Town, and some of them actively bore me a little. Shame though, the middle 2 minutes in that were really cool.
Fortune Favours the Bold feels like its building and building from a drop that never comes, so it feels like something is missing. Madness, at the very least, feels complete.

---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

I really liked Madness today, too. Decent day all-around.

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The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

I suddenly really like Kill or Be Killed tonight.
---

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

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It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

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Undertale
Tellurium
Need for Madness 2 featuring stolen .mod music from the internets

this is more what i expect from nmh than subuta. something that is by no means bad, but not something i am likely to vote for unless i'm in a very strange mood. the vocals are cheesy and the instrumental is cheesy, and they cancel out somehow so i'm left with an instrumental i like somewhat and vocals i dont care about at all. so it goes

that first section after the intro is not very interesting at all. it's odd time and that's about all it's got going for it. the whole dramatic mood is kind of falling flat for me. i think the song needs to take itself a lot less seriously. sacrifice some tension that seems unearned to me for something fun. make the chicka-chickas significantly more goofy. do something like tcal where all but the most dramatic songs have some kind of inherent playfulness. as it is, i'm just kind of bored. it's kind of generic

guess i'm in a weird mood today

tellur town is FUN ERMINE MUSIC. there's not much to say about it beyond that. it's like the arknights song except at all notable

music for normal people to listen to while thinking abot girls........

I don't think I like Chipzel very much. Didn't really care about his Necrodancer remixes, other misc stuff I've heard has been eh. The most I can say about this one is "just because you made a long intro doesn't inherently make the rest of the songer better to compensate". buildup for disappointment

i like einhander a lot but not this song that much

---

Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Super Void
Fortune Favours the Bold

Supervoid was a strange, but fascinating listen.

Void [8.5]
Destroy Resort [8.5]
Fortune [7]
Madness [6.5]
Tellur Town [6]
Bloody Rose [5]

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

i like the guy in the second half of kill or be killed
i kinda forgot how relatively low down this latter part of b1 was save for the shnabubula song. tellur town is cool but well not 8/10 cool no matter how unusually skewed my ranking/ratings have been so far
even if madness isn't my favourite einhander song i still can't believe i'm voting against it. i probably should check out other stuff chipzel's done since i haven't since uh... whenever i checked out the super hexagon soundtrack lol

15.To the Center of the Supervoid
26.Fortune Favours The Bold
31.Madness
55.Tellur Town (Autumn)
60.It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
72.The Bloody Rose
(out of the songs so far)

The Bloody Rose
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

Destroy Resort is kinda like a Persona song but not one of the better ones. Still solid. And then we move from Atlus-esque to actual Atlus. I'm much more into this! Always liked how Trauma Center songs sound like JRPG boss battle music.

Tellur Town very nice! Maybe the best Pokemon song in the contest! Fun celtic feel to it. Supervoid kinda has an okay melody at points, but I hate the instrumentation a lot.

Third match is tough. I like the best parts of Fortune better than the best parts of Madness, but also the worst parts of Fortune are much worse than the worst parts of Madness. Madness does it a little more overall for me, I think.

The Bloody Rose > Tellur Town (Autumn) > It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort > Madness > Fortune > Supervoid
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It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

Trauma Team - The Bloody Rose
Pokkn Tournament - Tellur Town (Autumn)
Dicey Dungeons - Fortune Favours The Bold

---

Trauma Team - The Bloody Rose
Pokkn Tournament - Tellur Town (Autumn)
Einhnder - Madness
---

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

---

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

---

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

---

The Bloody Rose
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

Match 2 is a doozy :(

NMH2 - I might've voted for Subuta a few days ago, but apart from the jazzy feel and the nice bassline, I just kinda can't get into this track at all except for the very beginning and the ending. The lyrics are so cheesy I can't quite shake my distaste of it.
Trauma Team - Starts off with a Silent Hill-esque intro, and then goes really freaking hard into the percussion and drums, and then swaps back and forth between that and a nice melody.

Pokken - If I didn't know any better, I'd think this was an OCRemix of Route 210 (the Smash version, so a remix of a remix?) Yes, I know the melody isn't the same, but I'm enjoying it much all the same. Also, see Arknights from yesterday.
Supervoid - Now this is peculiar. It's simultaneously pleasing and unsettling at the same time. Then 2:00 hits, and it gets more menacing. It does a LOT of interesting things until the end, ultimately boiling down to "fever dream in sci-fi Castlevania." I was initially leaning towards Pokken, but Supervoid kind of won out just by having the gall to do a bunch of stuff different and, to my tastes, making it actually *work.*

Dicey Dungeons - I think I was in a similar mood as with Supervoid when I supported this track. It is a SLOW boil, but oh man, when it takes off, it has, what I feel, a little of something for everyone (except for lyrics or a slow pace, or a definitive ending.) Rare is the track that has a saxophone where I enjoy it (though that's just a personal hang-up) but this one worked great.
Einhander - Not a fan of the instrumentation of this one, and the track itself doesn't really vary enough to grab my attention for very long.

---

Destroy
Center
Madness
---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours the Bold

what a brit might say after pricking their hand on a thorny flower
good advice for a mayor with important information for his citizens (in a certain season)
something you probably shouldnt confuse with sparta

fortune favors vs madness is actually CLOSE. overall though i think i like the peaks of madness about as much as the peaks of fortune favors, and i like madness' brand of quirkiness during its non-peaks more than fortune favors'.

---

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

Of the NMH songs to have been featured in VGMCs, there doesn't seem to be any real consistent style between all of them. As for this one, I'm not a fan of the vocals. It has a few neat jazzy moments, but unfortunately reminds me a bit too much of Persona music at times.

The picture in the background for Bloody Rose has this same vibe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_mLkNZwFJk
This one is DRAMATIC rock, and I dunno, it's okay I guess? Cool rhythm on the drum beat sort of.

---

Tellur Town is super fun FIDDLE music!! Very happy, jumpy, full of energy music, I could see myself nominating something like this several years back! This actually does the whole melodic Celtic music thing a lot better than yesterday's song.

Ah yes, acid trip baroque FM synth prog metal, my favorite music genre. To the Center of the Supervoid is absolutely bonkers and I love it. I don't even know what's going on, and I don't think I'm supposed to!

This match is a good illustration of the "Team Azuarc vs. Team Mycro" dynamic that was apparently a thing a few years ago. This represents two very different takes on "B8 taste" in VGM (both are good songs btw)

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I kinda get Fortune Favours The Bold, but I'm not feeling very bold today. This song is "messy" and mashes a bunch of stuff together, but not in a really cool way like Supervoid does.

Madness is ANGRY and FUN. Very retro '90s VGM sound here, and is one of my favorite songs from its soundtrack.

---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

---

Trauma Team - The Bloody Rose
Pokkn Tournament - Tellur Town (Autumn)
Einhnder - Madness

MATCH 1

I like It's Kill or Be Killed more than Subuta.1. It's not a fantastic song, but it's fine for what it does.

The Bloody Rose is more my style. I like it more melodically and there's some cool rhythmic elements to it as well.

MATCH 2

Tellur Town (Autumn) is really nice! I like the playfulness of the melody, especially in the violin. Special mention also goes to the intro. I think it's a really nice setup to the rest of the song. I don't know why, but I really like that initial guitar chord right at the beginning of the song. Makes me briefly think of the intro to Desert After Tears.

I honestly don't really find anything exciting about To the Center of the Supervoid. I can respect that baroque style of the song, but it's not particularly engaging for me here. I don't know a whole lot of classical music, but the first thing that popped into my mind to use as a comparison was the first movement of Bach's Concerto for Two Violins. I'd still take Tellur Town over that, but the Bach piece is more melodically appealing to me than To the Center of the Supervoid. I can't really say why, but what I can say is that I think To the Center of the Supervoid could possibly sound better to me while keeping the same style if it was a little different.

MATCH 3

I feel pretty similar about Fortune Favours the Bold as I feel about To the Center of the Supervoid in that I don't really find it very interesting. I feel like I could make similar complaints about this song that I did about Looting the Louvre. I could certainly be interested in a jazzy song like this, but not really how it appears here. I will say though that the song picks up a little bit from 5:03 until the end. Not a ton, but enough to make the song a little more interesting.

I haven't listened to the whole Einhander soundtrack, but I think Madness is one of my favorite songs that I've heard from it! Very neat, action-packed electronic song! Pretty catchy song overall, and a bit dancey too, honestly.

Tellur Town (Autumn) = Madness > The Bloody Rose > It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort > Fortune Favours the Bold > To the Center of the Supervoid

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

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It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

---

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold
---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

---

Bloody Rose
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness
---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

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The Bloody Rose
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness

-(the no more heroes song has REALLY fucking cool harmonies and chords/chord changes jeez welcome to the "funk jazz" this sounds like Louis Cole actually lol. this does things i wouldn't have liked years ago that i like now like all the blues scale emphasis, though part of that is the context in this scenario it comes across as COOL and not hokey so i like it. these synth chords are great...the sounds MORPH and stuff and that's so cool. and when other layers jump around these weird chord changes like the higher synth at 3:00-3:10 it's so FUN. the trumpet solo has cool stuff at 4:10 with the funky RIPPLE DOT ZERO fake polymeter pattern)-

-[this is an odd nom and i'm glad its in even though many will probably think this is boring. the kinds of chord changes i like all over the place, especially that intro, but also the NEWS STATION FINAL BOSS chords (i like music that sounds like news station stock music). i like 5/4 tho that has very little to do with why i like the song actually. the piano chords themselves are cool... the tough guitar in the background is a nice KNIFE. it's interesting i think of this as "big string orchesstra song" in my head, but in actuality i'm focusing on every element that isn't the strings when listening here. the piano arp at 2:30 is so ccool to me for some reason.]-

-{extremely tough match, like in my ranking these are right next to each other. honestly i think the nmh track is TOO "fun" for me and i dont like its exuded mood, i'd have to be in a really specific state of mind to appreciate it, even if i like it compositionally a ton. i like tthe bloody rose just barely more because it is so serious and angry instead. but i could flip and feel pretty equal about these two}-

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-(tellur town is like everything i dont like about shota kageyama. i dont wanna say something shallow like this is "soulless". it annoys me when other people will call stuff i like that with no explanation for why and i won't agree, so what do i mean by thaT? I think things like that are important to speak about rather than blanket 'this suks' dismissals with no bother to understand why. honestly my frustrations here remind me of my frustrations with dai's umineko contributions, where the music to me feels like it is trapped only in one scale, despite going out of their way to evoke something dramatic, it doesn't hit that to me because it's just playing the same notes over and over. something climactic would be best expressed to me with some sort of tonal change. this goes like every note in dorian (GOOD SCALE btw) Really FAst but too fast for me to feel the impact of any given note. so there's like these dramatic melody lines but they don't feel dramatic to me because i already heard all the notes in the scale too many times for any of the "new" notes that it touts as "the significant note that is being held out or something" to have any meaning anymore
~~~~~
I also think the edm backing to this harms it for me, it feels slapped on to a style i might like on its own a lot more. if this was all edm, or all folky celtic scottish european accordion mama i would be ok , but as much as i like combining electronic music with things that aren't, this feels like a really uncomfortable instance of that merging to me. this song has the backbones of something i would really like on paper, and all it might take is even different arrangement. if KEN NAKAGAWA arranged it in his own electronic+world combo style i would probably love it. but it is shota kageyama, who has made hundreds of songs for the pokemon series and i only like about 10. at least i really love those 10 songs (they are really good (Someone nom kalos power point next year))
~~~~~
i hate being negative so i will say what i like: I LOVE the instrumentation of the non-electronic layers. they're cool. The accordion especially feels really awesome when it comes in!!! and i like how it is "serious" and "sad". also as i said above i actually like the tonality (dorian alternating with minor, really good for european-ish folky or fantasy-esque stuff in particular) even if i think it's used haphazardly. i actually need to get back into this game, over time i've realized i actually like fighting games a lot (long ago i used to think i did not, and the people i usually play games with dislike them so i dont have any friends to play this with ;-;) and i like pokemon...and this game has a lot of pokemon i love in it!! and this song certainly fits the game nicely. it has the spanish guitar part in it that feels like Ace Combat Zero and i like that song (zero) rip chick corea)-

-[on the opposite end of things. Shnabubula is one of my favorite composers! and has been one of my favorite composers for quite a long time! To the Center of the Supervoid is my...least favorite song from this album...!? But it's shnabubula, even the stuff i like the least is fucking amazing to me. shnabubula is one of my top favorite musicians ever and i like when his wonderful helmet from walking in tokyo with sergio's cornaga jumps in with you. fancy out panels. Well this brain head man. i keep finding myself listening to this track over and over.
~~~~~
To the central supravoid (siivavoid) ((singavoid)) starts out with a cool evil space sound and then it turns into "the kind of classical music shnaubula likes a lot that i dont know anything about but i still think it's cool because it reminds me of igor stravinsky" and then it has a lot of lines that feel like they should be played by a harpsichord.
~~~~~
the funky 7/4 part in the middle starting at 2:30 is so fun, THIS is what "shnabubula" sounds like to me. all the layers that aren't aligned with the loop of 7 are doing their own rhythm patterns that are all really cool too...the particular line at 2:36 on that higher synth is particularly cool and mechanical. i especially like anything in rapid groups of 5. What i think is cool here is that the 7/4 acts like as an underlying container to suck you in to the "black hole" but it's not forceful about making you perceive that, even if it's actually quite a constant. lots of cool thick harmonies in this section too out of nowhere.
~~~~~
and at 3:26 it's all the COOL TUPLETS dedicated to Toxtricity with a fucking shut up just because you aren't in my building hole dum pink ball kirby stupid HATE.
~~~~~
this song is so DARK% 4:42 is such a good moment. IT's fits the title of the track so well and always gives me chills, and makes my ears feel very strange! it feels like "void", you're trapped in the middle of a darkness, sucked into another relam. and now everything is Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance and i am SO GLAD this is a tribute song to Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance because that is one of my favorite castlevania songs tracks! The gradual transition or the rest of the song into increasing intensity from this point is so good. this song is just structurally really cool (it's funny that i praise this considering that in-game this song is all scrambled up and you will not hear it in the form it is heard in here though)...shnabubula makes music that has so much TUPLET MANIA]-

-{i don't know about you, but i'm like, so eadlly not the thetthe they}-

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[continued...]
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[...continued]

-(the layered juxtaposition of the constant clear 4/4 pulse and swung jazzy brass parts is a cool thing when that happens. basically any jazz elements in this song i think are cool. )-

-[mmmmm transposing chord samples yeah that's one of my favorite 90s dance music tropes. this song is so edgy and futuristic and has that cool sound that is called "in canada" because i said that it is. I LOVE the choir at :50 - with the weird gating pattern filter thing that is making it alternate between more pronounced and muffled versions of itself. backwards string swells with instant cutoffs at like 1:58/2:00 aaaahhh. and the nice big floaty chord changes around 2:17 that are why Einhander stands out to me above even other shmup osts i already love because it sounds like pat metheny gr-*Gets SHOT by the ANGRY ]-

-{einhanter}-

ranking positions
To the Center of the Supervoid (10th/82)
Madness (24th/82)
The Bloody Rose (34th/82)
It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort (35th/82)
Fortune Favours The Bold (70th/82)
Tellur Town (Autumn) (76th/82)
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It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

Hot damn FFTB was not what I expected out of a Dicey Dungeons song! I don't think this qualifies as electro swing, but it gives me similar visuals of a futuristic underground dance party, where some shady people are on the balconies discussing their illegal drug operations and whatnot.

---

Trauma Team - The Bloody Rose
Pokkn Tournament - Tellur Town (Autumn)
Einhnder - Madness
---

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Madness


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It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

Hey, another of my noms! It's cheesy and I adore it. It'd take a whopper to make me vote against it... which Bloody Rose isn't. First 2/3 of the songs are just too repetitive without building on it in a way that matters to me. It's not bad, but it's not very good.

Well, this is more delightful than I'd expected from something from Pokken Tournament of all things! I don't really have the vocabulary to say much other than "solid violin melody with solid percussion and accompaniment good" and "Why couldn't that Arknights song be more like this?" For its opponent: If it takes a minute for your song to start, then I don't care about it, especially if that minute wasn't very pleasant. Hell, much of the actual song sounds like what you'd hear from a high school band all warming up before rehearsal haphazardly. Someone wrote this deliberately? Now it's turned into an entirely separate song halfway through with no transition -- and then again. Please escort this clown to composer jail.

Oh, I remember this Dicey Dungeons song from noms! I don't remember who was signal boosting it a bit, but I believe it was someone with whom I often butt heads musically, so I originally checked it out just to see how bad it was. Turn out it's good! Takes a while to get going, but it actually does something with its extended intro, building tension up. Not a head turner but solid. I usually like Einhander music but for some reason, this doesn't click with me much.

---

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Madness

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It's Kill or Be Killed ~ Destroy Resort
To the Center of the Supervoid
Fortune Favours The Bold

The Bloody Rose
Tellur Town (Autumn)
Fortune Favours The Bold

I don't think I could ever get tired of listening to Fortune Favours the Bold. What a ride.