One of the fun things about VGM covers is the opportunity to do something new, be it completely changing the instrumentation of the source, modifying its genre, mashing up various tunes, or whatever else comes to mind really. Among these, one of the most interesting and controversial ideas is adding vocals to a tune that didn't have them, which often leads to some people furious at having to listen to another human voice. Of the artists in the VGM scene, one of the biggest proponents of this format is definitely TheManPF, with several vocal credits on his tracks. Another thing that PF is a big proponent of is the art of collaboration. It's extremely rare to see a solo PF track, especially since in the past few years he has basically adopted the talented Zach Chapman as his official bass player.

Anyway, about this particular entry, I'll let our featured remixer, TheManPF, do the introduction:

"This is a progressive metal/djent arrangement of several tracks from the SOMA soundtrack. This arrangement was originally released through Dwelling of Duels for a Free Month in July 2024, in a competition where it came 15th place out of 32 total tracks. No changes in this version other than artifact removal and a very slight tweak on the background screams @ 3:50.

A certain someone nudged me into submitting this arrangement, so here I am.

I'm a secret sucker for the work of Frictional Games, mostly the Penumbra games, the original Amnesia (haven't tried the other ones), and, of course, this 2015 gem called SOMA. It's a beautifully written game that was recommended to me by Zach. Last year, I was also listening a lot to TesseracT. In particular, I was obsessed with this song called "Legion", so I was inspired to make something in this prog/djent style (which is why you'll likely hear a LOT of similarities with this song).

Zach helped me with bass, as always, and he's once again taking over for lyric-writing, something he excels at. There's a lot of feelings in the lyrics, both related to the events of the game (in particular, the ending), as well as some other psychological feelings like identity crisis and anxiety, which can be associated to feelings of "drowning"."

Aside from Zach on bass, for this submission PF added renowned sax player newmajoe to pla- sing?! Well, this isn't really Joe's first credit singing, but choosing him to play the role of Dan Tompkins (TesseracT's singer) was inspired. Joe delivers a great emotional performance, very fitting for the heavy, haunting, and beautiful arrangement PF wrote.

Judge Seph writes: "Excellent handling of the arrangement; the source material shines through in the piano and vocals, and while I can tell this is influenced by Tesseract, TheManPF comes through in the section transitions, riffs, and vocal treatment." prophetik music noted: "Joe does a fantastic job with the singing on this one. Really stellar. Lots of breadth demonstrated here. The harmony stacks really sound fantastic."

This one was one of my favorite Dwelling of Duels entries of 2024 and while not everyone understood the vision then, I'm glad that my insistence ended with this track being posted here at OCR. TheManPF is a great arranger with a nice penchant for trying new and challenging things. Attempting to echo TesseracT's style was extremely ambitious but it was successfully achieved here, especially thanks to Joe accepting to step out of his comfort zone with an outstanding performance.