#HugelDude

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 26/06/2023

voiceless

Season 2 Featured on: The SiIvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis – Original Soundtrack

Composition/Lyrics by dante, wolfman1405, MtH and Chaze the Chat Performed by Lea Jaffe Visuals by Sonicheroesfan1, HugelDude, Maggie and Jasper

Part of Voiceless Week!

That's right – to celebrate the track's 6-year anniversary, I've decided to dedicate this full week to coverage of voiceless from the SiIvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis. Hope you'll be able to bear with it for just this week: It's a track that's really important both to me and to the history of the channel

SiIvaGunner is, as we all know, a channel built on legacy. Okay, that's a pretty nebulous wording for it: What I mean is that SiIva's creative endeavors stem from and build upon other media, paying tribute whilst building its own identity. That's the inherent beauty of the channel, every part of it stems from some form of pop culture, bent and molded into the larger identity of SiIva. Even Wood Man, the inofficial face of the channel and effectively a fully original character in terms of his writing and characterization, still has his roots in a boss from an old Mega Man game. And though its what makes the channel what it is, it also makes it all the more exciting in the rare few moments that the channel produces something thats wholly unique to itself.

Not to say that voiceless isn't still a derivative work, in a sense. As sound director of the entire CCC and through his presence on the channel as a whole, dante has made it no secret that he's heavily inspired by the works of Hiroyuki Sawano, even crediting him in this song's Special Thanks section. Indeed, voiceless seems almost perfectly fit for a soundtrack like Xenoblade Chronicles X or Guilty Crown. But inspiration is still all it is: in its debut in Season 2 during the 8th episode of the CCC, it still absolutely shocked viewers on its debut out of just how viscerally "original" it was. The CCC, as I've shown before, already had an excellently defined soundscape, though it was again very much  one tied to other tracks part of SiIva's legacy. That's not to imply there's anything worse about that approach - far from it, it's what makes the channel what it is. Yet what it meant was that voiceless came as a completely unexpected, yet overwhelmingly positive shock to viewers.

With close to 10 people involved in its production, the track is an undeniably high-effort project with tons of love poured in from every angle. The lyrics and vocal performance hold up tremendously both as a standalone inspirational anthem, whilst also tying perfectly into the ongoing conflict and themes of the story - the fight against The Voice and his aims to restrict the creative output of the channel. On every front, its a performance that's emblematic of everything the CCC stands for, and by extension much of what the channel itself strives to be: a creative outlet for all kinds of creators to share equal spotlight. The vocal performance is also just genuinely fantastic, being very clear throughout whilst hitting goosebump-inducingly beautiful highs: It's genuine in a way that only truly heartfelt passion projects like SiIva can be, and Lea Jaffe did an outstanding performance even in working with lyrics she had no hand in making. Backing these vocals is of course the immaculate instrumentation, ebbing in and out of the hard-hitting drums and guitars alongside calmer moments of introspection. Its all too befitting of a the clash of ideals that the track is set to: Raw battle interspeced with moments of desperate understanding. Yes, even if the opponent just so happens to be Angry Joe.

All of this is wrapped in a beautiful and memorable melody, with an absolutely unforgettable chorus. The track is, as I mentioned before, six years old now, yet its melody has stuck with many old fans for so long: No other creators or music online uses or references the melody, yet its immediately recognized in rips using it at later points. The sheer impact and quality of voiceless has lent it the strength to sit toe to toe with other iconic anthems of the channel: ones whose popularity were in many cases built on an already existing legacy. In the coming days, I'll be covering rips of just that nature. Ones that highlight how SiIva isn't only a channel about celebrating memes from the rest of the world, but is also very capable of celebrating and adoring its own creations, right alongside the equally passionate fanbase.