OST 1.2 The Songs (Part 1) — Guilty Gear: Strive
From "Smell of the Game" to "Alone Infection".
Welcome to the meat of Offscreen Tunes, where I’ll be looking at the main themes of Guilty Gear: Strive and pair a similar, non-video game song. This entry covers the main theme, “Smell of the Game”, and the first seven character themes in the game’s soundtrack. The next entry will cover the themes for the rest of the base roster, and once the first DLC pack is released I’ll do another entry to cover those.
I’ve put together a Spotify playlist which contains all of the recommendations and a YouTube playlist that includes each song pairing. I’ll update both playlists with the remaining songs once I publish the next entry.
“Smell of the Game” (OP Theme): Queen — “Seven Seas of Rhye”
It’s well-established that Daisuke Ishiwatari’s favourite band is not a metal band, but Queen. It’s even in the game’s lore: Sol Badguy’s favourite album is supposed to be Queen’s third album, Sheer Heart Attack. (Sol himself is named after Freddie Mercury.) Queen’s influence might not seem obvious at first, but a lot of the vocal harmonies you can hear throughout the game’s soundtrack are very similar to those found in Queen’s songs. Fittingly, the main theme of Strive, “Smell of the Game”, contains a very explicit nod to Queen about two and a half minutes in. There’s a great guitar solo that slowly starts winding down with some harmonies reminiscent of Queen guitarist Brian May, who often double-tracked his own guitar harmonies. Then you get the big “what am I” section, as the vocalist loops over himself in a way reminiscent of none other than “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
I’m not pairing this with “Bohemian Rhapsody”, though, simply because that is one of the best-known songs ever - quite literally the most played song from the 20th century on Spotify, so that’s not very helpful to anyone. Instead I’ll spring for “Seven Seas of Rhye”, a track that captures the perfect interim period where Queen were still loudly a hard rock band while also showcasing some of the artier and poppier harmonies that would come to define the band’s legacy. (It was actually included in an incomplete, instrumental form on their first album before they completely reworked it for their second album.) On “Seven Seas”, Brian May’s self-harmonizing guitar fills are great examples of what he could do with just overdubs and effects pedals; exciting and charismatic peaks to complement the song’s heavy riffs. His guitar becomes another voice alongside a mass of actual voices harmonizing through one of the band’s most immediately catchy melodies. Freddie Mercury’s prowess as a singer are well-known, but just as important were May’s voice and drummer Roger Taylor’s, who become textual characters alongside Mercury’s star lead. Listen to how they fade down on the word “sister” at the same time the lead guitar does, and how it leads perfectly into the heavy riff taking the front stage - sublime!
Queen might not be the perfect band to encapsulate this game’s soundtrack, or even this particular song (which itself is a great snapshot of the soundtrack). But they are an enormously important band to Ishiwatari, and I can’t think of any better way to tribute Daisuke’s vision.
“Find Your One Way” (Sol’s Theme): Ministry — “So What”
As much as “The Smell of the Game” is a perfect lead-in to what makes this soundtrack unique, I’d argue “Find Your One Way” - the main theme of the main character - is a great expression of what makes the soundtrack unique. Right off the bat, the game’s giving you a cyclical riff that’s putting its energy towards making you move, not moving towards something but around a steady clapping bass drum, scratchy wah guitar, and even some bongos. This feels like the logical continuation of the groove that Ishiwatari was building in his previous Guilty Gear soundtracks, shaping the sounds he was familiar with into new territory, into an actual song.
So let’s respect that tradition and connect it to another song that feels connected but distant from its own origins: Ministry’s “So What”. One of the titans of industrial metal, Ministry achieved their machine-like sound through the rote precision and aggression of drum machines, riffs that felt like sheets of noise, and studio processing that gave a sharp edge to their music. This combination brought together aggression and danceability that makes their music easy to move to even when it’s making you uncomfortable. This eight-minute song is one of their best, building uneasy tension in the bassline at the same time as it gives you the same kind of steady handclap bass drum beat that we get in “Find Your One Way”. Those sections stretch on forever, but they don’t feel that way because they’re so easy to sway and dance to. By the time the guitars and vocals finally appear almost two minutes in, I’ve forgotten that I was ever waiting for a kind of release - and it sounds all the better for it.
“The Roar of the Spark” (Ky’s Theme): Blind Guardian — “Mirror Mirror”
One of the key things that makes Guilty Gear’s music so likeable, especially Strive’s music, is its catchy vocal melodies. Most metal genres have had a strained relationship with melody, because a sweet melody can often seem at odds with the heaviness that metal is trying to convey. (It’s to Ishiwatari’s credit that he and NAOKI can balance the two so well.) But power metal has no such qualms, because the genre is built on supreme, silly cheesiness. Their singers make hitting the high notes their main prerogative, trying to sing as triumphantly as possible about orcs and shit like that. How much of that cheesiness you can take is going to vary - my tolerance is generally pretty low - but one thing that makes NAOKI’s vocals work so well on this album is that his voice is almost always in a gruff, lower register that he still delivers as if he was a power metal singer. Like many choruses on this album, this song is a great one to shout along with. (“The roar of the spaaaaark!)
That’s fitting for Ky Kiske, whose name is an amalgamation of two members of the iconic power metal band Helloween. They’re a solid band in their own right, but they were also early progenitors of the power metal genre, which would come to be defined by its ludicrous grandiosity: big choruses and epic tales. Helloween were still tempered by early speed metal, not quite committing to the full vision of what the genre could be; it’s in a song like Blind Guardian’s “Mirror Mirror” that we can see what power metal can truly be, a song that peaks with a chorus about the mirror from Snow White and draws from medieval folk melodies. This is not a band that sounds like it’s taking itself seriously, but is intentionally using this silly concept of sounding “epic” to simply be fun. (Yet still with a sense of real emotion - there’s optimism in the way they sing “true hope lies beyond the coast”.) To take a well-known phrase like this and build it into a speedy, catchy chorus like this one invites some of the most joyous singalongs you could think of.
“Disaster of Passion” (May’s Theme): Charly Bliss — “Percolator”
May’s theme is a pretty sharp turn from the rest of the game’s metal, turning right into cheery power pop. The obvious precursors here are J-pop, what with the sugary singing and synthesizers, but I’m trying to avoid stuff the weebs are gonna find anyway. (Especially since the most obvious comparisons to me are from the soundtracks to anime series like K-On! and FLCL. Well, and Fall Out Boy I guess.) But that’s okay, because we should be talking about how AISHA as a singer sets herself apart from power pop from any continent through the R&B inflections in her voice. She’s still completely bright and cheery in the sugary power pop kind of way, but she’s also clearly a trained vocalist who employs vocal techniques you don’t often see in scraggly power pop. (Or metal, which makes her other songs quite interesting.) The complete clarity in her voice is what completes this song, already thrilling through its slide guitar, wild solo, and cheery keyboard melody.
Lyrically, AISHA declaring herself a “disaster of passion” opens the way for Western power pop where, ironically, singers often use the format to distill or distract from their melancholy. On “Percolator” by Charly Bliss - one of the sugariest, catchiest power pop bands from the last few years - lead singer essentially describes herself as a disaster of passion, singing “I cry all the time / I think that it’s cool / I’m in touch with my feelings” in a cute, high-pitched voice. The song is undoubtedly a feel-good song, though, and the general peppiness involved isn’t out of place. Much like May’s theme, she revels in her disaster, something that Hendricks described as “taking all those things people have said about me and spitting them back out and saying, ‘Fuck you.’” Power pop opens up a space where we can flip those emotions on their head into something more affirming.
“Out of the Box” (Axl’s Theme): Guns N’ Roses — “Mr. Brownstone”
I’ve generally avoided picking songs and artists that the characters in this game directly reference; usually it’s just not a good fit for that character’s actual theme. Even here, neither Axl nor his theme capture the sheer debauchery that defined much of the music made by Guns N’ Roses, whose lead singer Axl borrows a name and appearance from. But I’d also argue that there aren’t a lot of songs that do what “Out of the Box” does nearly as well. It’s a rock song driven by funky basslines and wah guitars, and unfortunately those elements often feel stilted when rock bands highlight them. Here, the funk has a distinct sheen to it that leads nicely into the soaring harmonies in the chorus, another thing that rarely sounds so clean in rock music.
That cleanness is certainly not a trait of “Mr. Brownstone” - I’d be confused if a song about heroin addiction was tidy - but I do think that Guns N’ Roses are one of the only capital-R Rock bands that also had a funky edge to them. At their best, guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin had some of the most interesting guitar interplay I’ve heard in a rock band. Both of them had a very loose rhythm and an intuitive sense of how the differences in their playing and riffs could work together to fill space a lot. Their playing was heavily influenced by another great guitar duo, Joe Perry and Brad Whitford of Aerosmith, who in turn were influenced by Jimmy Nolen’s playing with funk legend James Brown. There’s a long lineage that leads to “Mr. Brownstone”, which is a peak representative of that funky guitar interplay, and that lineage also extends to “Out of the Box”.
“Play the Hero” (Chipp’s Theme): Judas Priest — “Freewheel Burning”
WOOOOOOOOO! “Play the Hero” is fast, much like Chipp, and it never fails to get me pumped up. The opening riff lets you know exactly what you’re in for, which puts it in a long tradition of songs that do the exact same thing, a quickly-plucked riff that grounds itself in a series of low notes shaping a different melody on the higher strings in the spaces in between. A lot of great riffs have been composed in that tradition, but the first one that came to my mind was Judas Priest’s relentless “Freewheel Burning”. The energy is exactly the same, right down to the lyrics that tell you exactly how to move. Judas Priest are also a great entry point to many different genres of metal as one of the only metal bands to release genuinely important albums in three different decades. (Unleashed in the East, Screaming for Vengeance, and Painkiller are what I’d call the best reference points.) “Freewheel Burning” might not have a ripping bass solo like “Play the Hero”, but its guitar solos are even better, delivered by the great guitar duo K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton. The former is more noisy while the latter’s more of a melodist; the former delivers a chaotic solo here while the latter builds up the harmonies. Pure kinetic energy.
“Armor-Clad Faith” (Potemkin’s Theme): Bolt Thrower — “The Killchain”
Potemkin’s theme is another song that jumps between a few styles, including one of the most explicit industrial metal sections in the whole soundtrack, but one universal constant through the song is that it’s both one of the heaviest and the grooviest songs on here. It’s a catchy song, and with its invocations of nirvana (that literally incorporates a sitar) it actually seems to be pushing towards spiritual ends - but sonically, it seems to push not to spiritual heights but weighty depths. These riffs are heavy: deep and crunchy sounds where the point isn’t to deliver a melody but to provide a shuffle you can sink yourself into.
I can’t think of any better band to draw upon, then, than Bolt Thrower, a death metal band with a long career whose primary appeal is that they have riffs for days. “The Killchain” is one of the best songs off of their final album, Those Once Loyal, which saw them shifting away from the awkward brutality that often defines death metal into territory with more of a groove. “The Killchain” slowly fades in with a fast blastbeat, but the meat of the song sits comfortably in a deep, head-bobbing rhythm completed by vocalist Karl Willetts gives you truly deep death growls that drive you even deeper into the heaviness. This song is a space to vibe with negative energies, move back and forth without ever needing to actually move ahead.
“Alone Infection” (Faust’s Theme): Converge — “Fault and Fracture”
What the fuck is this? Most of Strive’s songs go through a lot of sounds by their end, but Faust’s is really wild, flipping between about four or five different sounds over four and a half short minutes, some of those sounds not even being metal. We get a taste of both metalcore and death metal through screams and heavy riffs broken up by an eerie industrial section that leads into one of the catchiest power metal choruses in the entire game before eventually leading to a jokey section that sounds like a damn circus and leads around to a quiet section lifted almost verbatim from Radiohead’s “No Surprises” that builds in epic synths and somehow bleeds back to the power metal chorus being more epic than ever. You get all that? The song feels kind of random - befitting Faust, of course - but is also often a little unsettling, which also makes a lot of sense for Faust’s new gangly design.
The most aggressively disturbing music comes courtesy of the verses, whose screaming recalls that what you might find in metalcore acts. Converge is among the most unsettling of them, with “Fault and Fracture” arguably being the defining track from their defining album, Jane Doe. The word ‘fracture’ is accurate; the dissonant assault of guitars seem to be working along a broken guideline, falling apart with a descending fill every other second. The song never sits still, moving between so many sections so fast that you can never quite catch your footing in the song; and because it’s so dissonant, the song starts to blur together into an unreachable chaos of noise. If you want to catch the other parts of of “Alone Infection”, you might do better elsewhere - the humour of Primus’s “Tommy the Cat” would be a good place to start - but the instability of “Fault and Fracture” matches the attitude of “Alone Infection” and the sonics of its best section.