Even when Stellar Blade’s soundtrack goes hard, there’s a sadness present

Writer Anthony John Agnello takes a journey through Stellar Blade music highlights, from sad piano to dancehall to jaunty cool jazz.

By Anthony John Agnello

My daughter and I were enjoying a lazy Sunday once, that kind of perfect lie-in morning where it’s drizzling outside, the smell of coffee lingers, and the uneaten crusts of cinnamon toast sit happily hardening on a plate in the living room until the sun finally stops fooling itself too. We were reading, my wife doing yoga in the next room, and I asked what music we should put on. “I don’t know, daddy, whatever I say you’re just going to put on sad piano music.” Savage. Absolutely savage. But she’s got me there: my appetite for piano-led melancholia is bottomless. Had I had my hands on this curated 4LP set of Stellar Blade, it would have been the ideal choice. 

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Check availability of the Stellar Blade (Original Soundtrack) 4LP box set and double LP, with Laced store Exclusive Editions. The sets were tracklisted by Jooeun Hwang, Sound Director of Stellar Blade.

See the rainy Sunday—you can see the fan art of EVE staring out the window beside a steaming cup of tea she can’t even drink in your brain too, right? It’s not just me?—needs the sad piano foundation before it can swell into a rich, supple emotional landscape of acoustic sounds, then adventuresome soaring, longing vocal anthems, and high romance. The rainy day starts with cinnamon toast and sad piano then builds to pillow forts, to action figure set ups and stuffed animal rebellions, to never-ending card games and replays of beloved games, maybe an umpteenth rewatch of a favorite movie, or even a ghost story.

Stellar Blade—the game by SHIFT UP—and Stellar Blade—the soundtrack by a veritable EVE Defence Force of composers—embodies that arc.

LP1 takes you on a full journey through the beginning of the game, from its elegiac menu right through the big dramatic intro before Eidos 7, the Platonic ideal of a sad-piano-music-in-the-rain opening stage. The sequence is a lovely primer for the game’s mix of methodically fluid brawling with truly wretched suppurating flesh pile enemies in decaying human environments for robots to puzzle over. “The Song of Destiny” and “Star Descent” set the perfect ascendant tone for the aural experience overall: quiet, reflective respite to aching, vocal drama that’s far more about feeling than literal lyrical content. 

Oliver Good’s tracks including “Star Descent”, “Shelter”, and “Flooded Commercial Sector” with its chiming synth strings and candied, bracing vocals act as a signifier for how Stellar Blade’s music is distinguished even from his own work alongside MONACA on NieR Replicant.

NieR, for as serious and dramatic as it all is, is funny, undercutting its dour tone with surreal gags. Stellar Blade is straight melodrama all the way down, even when you’re talking to an obese, faceless hair stylist and listening to jaunty cool jazz. (I’m getting ahead of myself, though. The shop tracks like “Gwen’s Hair Salon” are squirreled away on the eighth side of these discs and they’re like a delightful dessert tray waiting at the end of all the bathos.)

Even when Stellar Blade goes hard, it’s still full of that rainy day swooning. Keita Inoue’s tracks including “The Dawn of EVE” and “Wasteland” are on opposite ends of the Stellar Blade tonal spectrum at first blush; the former a driving character anthem run through with guitar heroics. Beneath that track’s titanic riffs, though, is a minor key refrain tying it directly to the latter’s emotional atmospherics.

See also big boss themes like ko.yo’s “Juggernaut.” When the big beat slows down just a bit at the halfway point, the heartfelt ascendant, chiming guitar tones would make U2’s Edge in his peak mid-80s earnest weirdo phase nod in approval. Same with the gorgeous background chanting in ko.yo’s “Abaddon.”

There’s your rainy day pillow forts and action figure set ups for sure. What about the stuffed animal rebellions and ghost stories? Plenty. Often served up specifically by Hyunmin Cho’s tracks. I adore the pulsing beat, A-Ha in their Minor Earth Major Sky-era ready string swells, alongside the crooning impressionist vocals in tracks like “Tachy Mode” and “Everglow,” the pop confection closing LP2. 

Come LP3, Youngjoon Lee provides the ghost story fodder with the literal operatics OF “Demoncrawler.” Pernelle’s opulent vocals on this song—still minor key despite their scale, naturally—are a delectable counterpoint to the pop vocals that typify most of the Stellar Blade soundtrack. (Pound for pound, this is my favorite boss theme in the collection and I’m glad to see it made the cut for this collection. That actual battle is a ghost story all on its own. Naytibas are gross.) 

Oliver Good’s clubby “Raven” and Seibin’s early 2010s EDM squalls in “Providence” have their dancehall readiness undercut by the gothic horns calling out in the background throughout both. Again: even when Stellar Blade goes hard, it softens it with some entrancing flourish, a low rumble of thunder following a flash of lightning as the Sunday storms fades into the distance. E

The fourth LP in the box is for the bedtime come down, looking out the window at the slick streets reflecting street light glow back up at you before you lower the shades. The sequencing on Laced’s set is such a treat in this record. Side G is almost entirely an unbroken run of Mothervibes’ sidequest themes, each one a weighted blanket lullaby for dozing off. My personal favorite is “Song of the Traveler,” because not only do you get sad piano flourishes but you also get bossa nova brushed drums, nylon string guitar and vibes to boot. Nice is so often used as a pejorative that it’s hard to remember that sometimes the very best things in the world can only be described that way.

So too are the Side H shop themes from ko.yo, seiben, and Youngjee. I gave “Gwen Hair Salon” the nod earlier, but my heart’s true weakness is “Sister’s Junk.” Again: I’m a sucker for vibes. The Gary Burton kind, obviously, not the idiot social media kind.

As I’m writing this, the sun is shining down from a perfect blue bowl sky, all springtime glory. It’s the kind of hopeful vision of renewal that never comes for EVE or any of the other ennui-racked robots in Stellar Blade, no matter what ending you choose at the end of the game. Maybe I’m a glutton or an irrepressible secret goth, but I cannot wait for the next rainy Sunday so I can throw this on and luxuriate in the journey that starts with good old fashioned sad piano music.

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Check availability of the Stellar Blade (Original Soundtrack) 4LP box set and double LP.