My Last Crusade

[atma]

So everyone and their mom knows I'm a huge metalhead. It's something I've been since I was a little kid and have been especially nourishing again in recent years. It's my genre. It's also a very hard genre for me to recommend to other people since there's so many subgenres and levels of harshness and themes that are uncomfortable to many.

So in part to celebrate my favorite genre and one of my favorite characters in fiction, I whipped up a fanmix designed to get people interested in metal, especially those who have no experience but want to try thanks to my ramblings.


My Last Crusade - A Completely Metal Ymir Fanmix
Listen here
By Atma
Art by exp

Most of these were chosen based on Ymir's (as of this date) incomplete backstory, what it hints to, her motivations, her hedonistic tendencies, her give no fuck attitude, how tough she likes to pretend she is but how hard it is for her to curtail her heroic tendencies, and a couple just remind me of how mushy she gets around Christa. It covers a wide range of subgenres. I tried to arrange it some kind of chronological order but whatever.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it together.



Brymir - Intro Pagan metal
Instrumental


Brymir - Unconquerable Pagan Metal
See this sleeping silence of snow
How she screams
This avalanche never-ending
Once seen in fearful dreams
And she shall rise
A phoenix in tears
Lost wisdom and justice
She shall kill

Full Lyrics


Deathspell Omega - Yells From The Abyss Black Metal
In fact Death is a sempiternal nightmare,
Where unknown tortures tear your soul to pieces
You left your body but you still feel the pain,
Imprisoned by infernal demons forever

Full Lyrics


Wintersun - Sleeping Stars Melodic Death Metal
Suddenly I feel a warmth go through my body
But I feel that a part of me has died, I sense the change in me
I must have been away so long
So please stay with me for a while

Full Lyrics


Monster Magnet - Last Patrol Stoner Rock
Baby, can you save my heart and take this gig into the stars
Melt the ghosts inside my head
The same ones who told me rock was dead
No more will those dogs pervert the life I've lead in motion blur
I'll fry the fools who'll never learn
and leave them in my after-burn

Full Lyrics


Korpiklaani - Beer Beer Folk Metal
For beer I'm working
For beer I'm fighting
For beer I'll do
Whatever I have to

Full Lyrics


Korpiklaani - Vodka Folk Metal
Drinking is good for you, soon you are unconstrained
Drinking is good for you, here comes the womanizer
Drinking is good for you, not anymore lonesome
Drinking is good for you, and you will feel awesome
And you will feel awesome.

Full Lyrics


Ensiferum - One More Magic Potion Folk/Viking Metal
Bring me a magic potion
it will heal my aching wounds
A taste so bitter that makes
my bleeding soul feel so good
It will make us sing and dance
in our endless feast
Or it might even unleash
the beast in me

Full Lyrics


The Sword - Cloak of Feathers Stoner/Alt Metal
Beneath her cloak of feathers
Lies a body soft and fine
Eyes of hazel green
Flowing hair as dark as wine
A thing of beauty to remember
But a sorrow to forget
She took all that I gave her
Till there was nothing left

Full Lyrics


Ayreon - Liquid Eternity Prog Metal/Rock Opera
Would you prefer the pain and suffering we had?
Would you prefer to be in peril, even dead?
Would you prefer to live the life we've learned to dread?
Would you prefer to live a mortal life instead?

Full Lyrics


Rhapsody Of Fire - Tornado Power/Symphonic Metal
Now condemned to be insane
Evil born, you will drown
Swallowed by oblivion
Once to darkness I belonged
Deep inside, you're the same
Godforsaken soul

Full Lyrics


Lyriel - Star Of The County Down (Irish Folk Song) Celtic/Goth Metal
And she smiled as she passed me by.
Oh she looked so sweet from her two bare feet
To the sheen of her nut brown hair
Such a coaxing elf, sure I shook myself
To be sure I was really there.

Full Lyrics


Arjen Lucassen - I'm The Slime (Frank Zappa Cover) Prog/Psych Rock
I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I'm the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

Full Lyrics


Turisas - No Good Story Ever Starts With Drinking Tea Folk/Symphonic Metal
Wine flowed in ashtrays,
Mea Culpa we cried,
Till the Balkan mob,
Took us for a ride.

Full Lyrics


Ibuki Mioda - Let My Feelings Reach You Too Death Metal
Bonus joke song from Super Dangan Ronpa 2

Comments

Notes and Thoughts

[atma]

Here's some thoughts I had while forming this mix and why I picked what I did and other miscellaneous thoughts about this endeavor.

SPOILERS for some of AoT so if you're one of those anime only types you might want to get the heck out of here!

The idea for this project in general came to me when I see how most fanmixes for most series are mostly pop and some punk and/or country now and again or instrumental pieces. There's nothing wrong with that, I just decided to diversify things up a bit.

I included on this post the part of the song, lyrically, I felt fit Ymir the best. Full lyrics are linked to in every song due to the fact a lot of harsh metal vocals are hard to decipher until you get used to listening to it like I have.

-I got really lucky I could lead in with a band that shares her name. (Brymir being an alternate name for the mythological Ymir.) Intro is a very short instrumental that flows directly into Unconquerable and honestly they sound way better together so think of this as one huge piece.

-Things immediately get dark and rough after. Deathspell Omega is a good go to dark Satanic style metal band but most of their songs are, uh, really amazingly unpleasant, lyrically, so I had a hard time picking something of theirs that wouldn't guarantee nobody ever talked to me again after hearing it. Wintersun is a bit nicer but still not happy and so many songs could have worked but I like the melody in this one a lot, so. This was the hardest part of the album to work out tbh. Both remind me of how she viewed being stuck in her titan form all that time and the exhaustion she clearly has from dealing with it.

-Last Patrol is the song that started this whole idea and gave me the inspiration to try a full metal fanmix. It's also the song with the lyrics I snagged for the album title. This is the song that reminds me of Ymir the most out of any of these so if you only listen to one song, pick this. Also, don't let the genre intimidate you if you're not into drugs or such; stoner rock/metal just implies it's usually of a slower tempo and/or has stronger, deeper riffs.

-Then I put 3 drinking songs in a row because I could.

-I added The Sword to help balance out the album. A few of their tunes could have worked but I decided to go with this at the last second over my original choices because it reminded me a bit of how Ymir sees Christa. Or something.

-Ayreon is my favorite band to exist in ever. Liquid Eternity is a song about reluctant immortality that I have used for a lot of characters that don't age or don't die (at least not die easily) so of course Ymir gets it in honor of the 60+ years of Hell she spent stuck in titan form aimlessly. Being able to regenerate indefinitely and appear young forever has its drawbacks.

-I included Rhapsody because everyone needs a cheesy power metal song from an album clearly based on someone's D+D campaign and you can't tell me otherwise. That and it reflects her reluctant heroism pretty well.

-I got extremely lucky with Lyriel existing. This is a song I've had forever and it's a metal cover of a traditional folk song. It's a love song about someone clearly smitten with a woman but what makes this cover good is it's also sung by a woman without changing any of it so it sounds really gay. Good female vocalists are hard to find in metal, especially as you get towards the harsher subgenres, so this is about a lucky a find as any.

-I'm The Slime is the least "metal" of the songs on this mix but damn if it just doesn't work thematically. Ymir is a gross person and embraces it without shame so I had to throw something in here to reflect this and this works. It's a cover done by the guy who does most of the writing and composing for Ayreon so it's close enough.

-This was added on a whim as a closing song since the gap between the last song and the fucking Ibuki song isn't quite done well enough so this is a quick, short, last minute addition. A good drinking/fight/rowdy song to close with.

-I put the goddamn Dang Rumps metal song on here as a joke. The joke came about when my gf said I needed another love song on here and I mentioned most metal love songs that exist are kind of mopey solos done by dudes and I put on one here by a woman already but it's almost too cute. So as I went to type "Well, that song from Dangan Ronpa exists, but can I really use that?" she said "Well you have that Dangan Ronpa one sung by Ibuki don't you?" and we hit enter pretty much at the same time so since our brains clearly crossed wires perfectly I had to include it. It's in Japanese. It's short and delightfully horrifying. And it's also actually competently done metal, no matter how the characters reacted to it in canon. So go away I don't want to hear it, just enjoy it.

I could have easily doubled the size of this mix but as is, it's already huge and full of very long pieces of music, but this should serve as a good sampler of metal in general. Feel free to ask me for any recommendations if you find you enjoy this.

pls to enjoying