I occasionally find songs I like so much I feel I need to share my thoughts about them, even if no one pays attention at all. This is the case, and I'm fact, long ago I had the idea of making a top five to cover more songs, like the one's I do for the "artists recommendations" thing, but it didn't feel ok since I felt I talked very few about every song without actually analyzing. So, I decided whenever I do one of these I will talk about one specific song so I can deepen as much as I want.
This post, compared to the others, is not intended yet to be a series. I just wanna share a funny point of view, and I don't know if I will actually do this again in the future. Only time will show us. I also wanna sharpen both my music analysis and story writting abilities.
Deaths flashing before my eyes
By Lothyde
To me, this is one of the best soundtracks ever made around madness, and I'll tell you why: it embodies everything that makes madness series so cool, and explores a bit more in a way is so ridiculously emotive.
This song starts as expected: ominous and somewhat stressful, proper of many madness tracks. A build appears slowly as if it was telling us something is coming, but all of a sudden, the track quiets and presents us a melody. The melody design sounds like a dialogue due to it's complexity, even tho it feels very recognizable. Imagine is a grunt trying to say something, in whatever situation it is.
Suddenly, the madness releases, as the track begins to turn very chaotic, and presents us a different melody. This melody is simpler, but is faster and the instruments are very harsh sounding. Everything feels like a struggle, action has taken place. Probably a usual battle like the one's we see in a madness animation. This time however, we are not only spectating, but actually communicating with someone during the song, as if they were sharing us the events happening.
Out of nowhere, everything gets calm once again. However, melody is still loud and ominous: melody is not calm. Even more, it sounds panicked. The melody sounds like a traumatizing think. We're probably in the aftermath of the battle. As the only survivor (either the protagonist or a victim), our fellow appears to feel horrified of the things that happened. Now think about this: none of the protagonists in the madness series has shown fear for death at all (except for Sanford in recent episodes). However, every other character, like a regular grunt, or even the sheriff, has shown a fear of death many times. These are actually conscious of the consequences and actually care about themselves. This song is basically one of these grunts speaking to us.
In the next part of this song, the melody is modified a bit, in lower tones and a more subtle sounding instrument. Feels like an inner thought. Whoever survived, has realized everything that implies. Knowing you survived the unsurvivable, or that one single error could've made you shut down your eyes forever can be a life changing experience. In a brief moment, we return to the loud melody, as if the trauma became clearer now. It's obvious whoever passed through this wasn't having the time of their life.
Suddenly, the song gets back to were it all started, but feels different, as if something changed. Probably another battle is about to begin, and our fellow grunt knows it. The build up is the same as it was at the beginning, but it feels more terrifying. Since we have all this backstory behind, we already now what's gonna happen, yet cannot do nothing about it. Just embrace the fact the madness is always gonna show up.
And just then, action takes place again. We return to that struggling and active melody of before, and happens exactly the same as before, with low to no change, 'cause that's how the madness works: different origins, same results. This time, however, the melody of the thoughts appears as well while the song keeps aggressive. Let's analyze that: A thought full of trauma and remorse alongside with a constant sense of stress and continued action. Sounds like anxiety. The thoughts are happening while the action is still present. It's very depressing if you think about it: Our fellow grunt in this situation is beginning to question a lot of things while he still has to survive a death battle. Is like he was questioning his life decisions, which lead him to this point.
Which, ultimately, leads us to the songs title. "Deaths flashing before my eyes" sounds like a thought happening during a battle. That's what it was all about: a thought. All that happened in this song was basically to expose out the thought of someone in the middle of a battle. However, it's a neutral expression: Doesn't sound neither as a complaint nor as a good thing. Seems like pure acceptance. We also don't know if by "deaths" the song is refering to our protagonist near-deaths, or just the death of everyone at their surroundings. What is clear however, is that they accepted death as a normal thing. Questions or not, death is happening right here and right now.
That seems complete to me
This would be everything from my part. As I said above, i'm still not sure if this is gonna be a series of posts (I put the #1 'cause y not), but I wanted to share my thoughts on this song anyway, and on some others I like a lot. If you have any opinion or different perception for the song's analysis, i'd love to read it. For now, bye bye :D
-Emiliano
