Mega Man: THE ROCK OPERA.

[YojimboMonkey]

Also Act II is pretty much all Meatloaf-style rock epics and I never did like Meatloaf but I dig the album


Also if you've heard their cover of Robert Tepper's "No Easy Way Out" from the Rocky IV soundtrack, which takes some of the spaghetti western sensibility that is so great about "Unrest in the House of Light" and infuses it with a big dose of 80s cheese you'd know, I think there must be some small amount of irony in what they're doing and probably in liking them as well, but that also they know what they're about and they're pretty good at it

[donblood]

There are some fun moments in the first album when they throw in some 8-bit stuff in the midst of a Meatloaf-style rock epic (See "The Stand" from Act I) and the juxtaposition is ridiculous and wonderful

Ah, I didn't hear any of that - I think we listened to the first 4-5 tracks or so, which I remember as mostly arena metal and plus one power ballad.  Some chiptunes in the mix probably would have changed my opinion.  I dunno, maybe I hate fun, but this didn't do it for me in the way a lot of very silly music does.

[Andrew_TSKS]

Wow, Jim, that cover of "No Easy Way Out" is kind of outstanding. Thanks for exposing me to it.

Also, I can remember seeing Robert Tepper do that song live on Solid Gold or some show like that back in 1985 or 86 or whenever it was. Dude went OFF. At that young an age, I'd never seen someone perform that intensely before.

Wonder what ever happened to him? I looked up his album on Amazon. It's out of print and the cheapest third-party seller copy they have is $40. I guess he has a cult following.

[YojimboMonkey]

Thanks dude I really like it ALOT


I have no idea what happened to Robert Tepper, frankly I had no idea who sang the original and had to google that shit, it's just not a name I remember from those days, though I remember the original song very well.  I think I thought Survivor did it but of course they didn't.

Anyway that cover is the B-side to their "Father of Death" single which was an Act II track released like 10 months before Act II came out.

[jm]

Yeah, maybe I just didn't hear enough of it, but I honestly couldn't put up with the first couple of tracks.  I'm with donblood here, and while I didn't think it was bad, I just didn't feel that it appealed to my musical sensibilities.  A little wuss-proggy (I like both wuss music and some small amount of prog music, to be fair) for me.

[Greg Nog]

Man, I love it! 

Also if you've heard their cover of Robert Tepper's "No Easy Way Out" from the Rocky IV soundtrack, which takes some of the spaghetti western sensibility that is so great about "Unrest in the House of Light" and infuses it with a big dose of 80s cheese you'd know, I think there must be some small amount of irony in what they're doing and probably in liking them as well, but that also they know what they're about and they're pretty good at it

It's interesting to think about how much "irony" there may be in the albums themselves, as my general opinion is that the success of both albums rests on the fact that they're trying to approach their subject matter as genuinely as possible.  It seems like they want to tell a story based around a pre-existing mythos, and are willing to not let themselves get hamstrung by the fact that the mythos they've chosen is sort of a silly, very-clearly-fictional one (as opposed to, say, a band writing about the Norse Gods, or even the Cthulhu mythos).  They play it all pretty straightforwardly, never really devolving into things like videogame sound effects or Nintendo-controller-pad visual-references or anything.  The first album initially hooked me because it was about Mega Man, but they've done an amazing job at building a narrative that doesn't rely on nostalgia or winking in any way.  I think it especially appeals to the Continuity Nerd side of me that likes seeing sorta underwhelming, half-formed ideas revisited by someone who sees the shittiness in the idea's first incarnation, but also sees room for fleshing out that incarnation in a way that'll make it more emotionally resonant.

[Thermofusion]

There should be a Contra opera. Like, an actual opera.

[Ignatius]

does contra have much plot besides 'two armed dudes go to island fortress to kill alien menace --> two armed dudes kill alien menace?' doesn't something have to happen in the middle?

[Andrew_TSKS]

Eight songs of killing?

[Ignatius]

An aria about gun powerups?

[Thermofusion]

You act like these are bad ideas! These are great!

[dieblucasdie]

[davy]

Is THAT what that is? I've been wondering what that image was about for days. Even when I clicked on it at p-fork or wherever, I couldn't glean enough information to figure it out.