The Megas

[Mastercougar]

(After much deliberation, I finally decided this goes in here.)

I recall a while back, Blivesy or Bluto or somebody asked me if I listened to the Megas. At the time, I'd heard one of their songs on OCRemix and sampled their other work a bit on their website, but I didn't get hooked at that point.

Sometime later, much more recently, I downloaded their album Get Equipped through PayPal, and I have this to say:

The Megas are flippin' awesome.

Seriously. If you've never heard of the Megas, they're musicians who've written rock reinterpretations of Mega Man music to tell the story of Mega Man in absolutely epic terms.

Each robot master comes alive under their brilliantly written lyrics. Air Man takes flight as a desperately psychopath, Bubble Man becomes desperate to redeem himself. Metal Man reveals a cocky thirst for battle, Flash Man a disturbing loneliness. It's truly amazing how well the album comes together. Not to mention the sound quality is crystal-clear and the lyrics are extremely catchy.

So after Get Equipped, the Megas created a prequel album with the band Entertainment System, appropriately titled Megatainment. After hearing their version of Elec Man's theme, which is only one of my favorite pieces of video game music of all time, I knew I had to get Megatainment, if only to own that song.

I still love Evolution of Circuitry. However, a close competitor for my affection is the fourth and final song on the album, a riff on Wily Stage One titled "Look What You've Done." It flabbergasts me how good that song is. It tells the story of Mega Man I from Wily's perspective, and it does so so brilliantly that it's caused me to reevaluate my own villains.

If you like Mega Man music or even just Mega Man in general, you've got to check them out:

themegas.com/main/main.html

[Blivsey]

A-ha. This is what you meant. Awesome indeed.

Don't mean to steal the thunder from ya, but I've got something else along those lines to throw at anybody unfamiliar: The Protomen. I could try to explain it, but that would probably end with some sort of a nerd-out over it. The TV Tropes wiki describes it fairly accurately, though:

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheProtomen

Basically, it's a rock opera set in an Orwellian dystopia, reflecting the Megaman scenario. Definitely worth a listen.

[Mastercougar]

Ah, yes, the Protomen are quite awesome as well. I particularly like to quote the near-opening lines of Hope Rides Alone inexplicably to random passer-by:

Light was a loner, a thinker, a man of ideas--ideas forbidden in Wily's society.
The society for which he worked, the society in which he lived, the society he would SET FREE!

But I need to get to now the Protomen better; I'm not as familiar with them as I am with the Megas.

I hear the Megas and the Protomen have played concerts together, which is so head-explodingly awesome I can't even imagine it.

[Blivsey]

Huh. I'm on the opposite end of the scale. More familiar with the Protomen by far, but wouldn't mind getting to know the Megas.

Of the Protomen, I'm particularly fond of the banter back-and-forth between Proto and Mega at the climax of their battle. And the utterly epic music that plays behind Sniper Joe's last stand. And, y'know, pretty much everything else on their albums.

Anyway, you're completely right about The Megas. The made a repertoire of awesome interpretations of the Megaman themes (oh, my childhood...) that give personality to all of the Robot Masters in such a way that I'll probably subconsciously associate them with these songs/personae from now on. And while there's plenty of other fiction out there to throw perspective on the grey-and-gray morality issue, The Megas don't exactly handle it poorly, either.

That and the fact that these songs are rather catchy (probably due in part to their source).

[Cursed Bluto]

Apparently, BrentalFloss and The Megas worked together on one of the tracks on his CD. Has that CD been released yet?