[Nexus Album Challenge]
[ Download link: hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=7QONIKH7 ]
1.) Trocadero - Blood Gulch Blues
It's red versus red, / And blue versus blue. / It's I against I, / And me against you.
Produced specifically for "Red vs. Blue," one variation or another of this song had served as the opening theme for almost the entire series. (Exceptions are the very first few episodes, which had no theme, and a couple of miniseries spun off from the main series' events.) Also, parts of the lyrics capture the pointlessness and in-bickering that punctuated the Old Days, as Grif would put it, of having both squads in the Gulch and having to live with the reality of the bullshit civil war.
2.) The Police - Demolition Man
I'm a walking nightmare, an arsenal of doom. / I kill conversation as I walk into the room. / I'm a three line whip, I'm the sort of thing they ban. / I'm a walking disaster; I'm the Demolition Man.
This is more of what I would consider a theme for what SPARTANs are capable of, as embodied in everyone's hero, the Master Chief. The level of grim-faced badassitude that the lyrics present is perhaps a bit more than Grif is strictly capable of, but sometimes he aspires to it just for the cool factor.
3.) Guns N' Roses - Civil War
And all these things are swept aside / By bloody hands time can't deny / And are washed away by your genocide / And history hides the lies of our civil wars
Given Grif's anti-war preferences, some variety of protest song was more or less mandatory. Finding one that was both more modern than Bob Dylan's oeuvre and specifically references civil war (without being about a specific civil war) pleases me immensely, so here you go.
4.) Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori - The Last Spartan
An instrumental number from the "Halo 2" soundtrack. Grif is by no means the last of his kind -- indeed, by both Halo canon and especially the RvB variation of it, neither is the Master Chief himself -- but it's still a moving piece. Used first in the teaser trailer and later the equivalent portion of the game itself, the accompanying video shows the Master Chief going from a space station to a Covenant mothership... by opening a pressurized fighter bay and riding the current of air rushing out into vacuum.
-Sir, permission to leave the station.
-For what purpose, Master Chief?
-To give the Covenant back their bomb.
Again, an illustration of the level of badass to which Grif sometimes aspires, though he may never achieve it.
5.) Foo Fighters - The Pretender
I'm the voice inside your head / You refuse to hear. / I'm the face you have to face / Mirrored in your stare.
I'm a bit of a sucker for multiple contexts, when I can get them. In this case, on the one hand, this song sort of represents, to me, some of Grif's occasionally resurgent anger at the circumstances of being drafted and then stranded, and from there, his determination to use what they made him into for his own purposes. "What if I say I'm not like the others?" asks the refrain; he is, in fact, not like the others, as his status as the One Drafted Man makes him literally not like anyone else in the UNSC military, which also gives him a different perspective on the things they do.
On the other hand, the song can also be said to represent how Grif is himself, to some degree, a pretender, in that he is technically a SPARTAN but had, as far as anyone can determine, been selected for it purely by chance and not out of any true worthiness, and has never truly considered himself any sort of warrior. He's aware of this -- sometimes only too keenly so -- but has mostly reconciled himself to it and continues with it anyway. For all he knows, maybe faking it long enough will make it real, but even if it doesn't, he's okay with that.
6.) Creed - Bullets
Look at me... look at me / At least look at me when you shoot a bullet through my head
Yes, it's a Creed song. I'm sorry, but it's semi-canonical, via a PSA video, that Grif demands that people on the Internet give him the latest Creed CD. And I don't... entirely hate them myself please don't kill me. So, yes, I had to include at least one of their songs on here somewhere, and here we are with one that I can see as a certain amount of light angst and defiance at his draftee circumstances. (While Sarge has probably shot him before, and Simmons may have on Sarge's orders, it has probably never actually been in his head, but the sentiment's there.)
7.) Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori - Rock Anthem for Saving the World
An instrumental number from the soundtrack for the first Halo game. Where "The Last Spartan" is sweeping and lyrical, this is a shorter, more hard-driving piece, with bits of drumbeat and Juno-Reactor-esque chanting that possibly show some of how music in general has developed in the Halo future, among either humans or the Covenant. Also, the title is appropriate and I like the sense of it maybe being something Grif might listen to while he's in the middle of a battle.
8.) Oingo Boingo - Same Man I Was Before
I'm not the same boy I was before. / But I've not changed my desires, / I've not extinguished the fires. / I haven't lost wide-eyed wonder / I haven't lost, haven't lost, haven't lost / The stupid fear of thunder.
Given the gaps and fuzzinesses in Grif's memories, the degree to which those losses might've changed his essential nature is occasionally a bit of a concern to him, although he's pretty sure most of his changes have been as a result of new experiences.
9.) Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff
It's just one of those days, / When you don't wanna wake up. / Everything is fucked. / Everybody sucks! / You don't really know why, / But you want to justify / Rippin' someone's head off!
There's an early RvB pre-series trailer, back when they thought the series was going to be more action-y rather than mainly comedic, that was set to this song, thus calling for its inclusion. Also, much as with "The Pretender," it covers some of the anger that he's long had to swallow about how he got to where he is now, and which he's since been able to channel into deserving targets.
10.) Chumbawamba - Tubthumpin'
(Do I really have to quote lyrics for this one?)
Come on. It's a song about heavy alcohol consumption and persistence in the face of the world. It's an appropriate song, and also kind of fun in an admittedly doofy sports-anthem way. Seems like a nice way to close things out.