(full name)
9/14/23
10th grade Lit Comp. B
Week 2 essay - Final paper
Stained, Brutal Calamity: The Ultimate Song.
It’s rare for me to find a song that gets me hyped every single time I listen to it, but when I do, it’s almost always a song by DM Dokuro. Never before have I seen someone able to consistently make some of my favorite songs ever like it’s nothing. However, there is one song in his catalog of S tier songs that stands out like a blue diamond in a pile of emeralds. One song, with execution so perfect, from the instrument choice, to the chords, to the drums, that it will always give me the same chills I felt the first time I listened to it many months ago, and I'm here to tell you why. This is the Terraria Calamity mod’s Stained, Brutal Calamity.
Stained, Brutal Calamity is symphonic metal, meaning its instrumentation involves a lot of distorted guitars and such, but there are also a lot of orchestral elements, like something you’d hear in a Beethoven song. This really helps this piece to feel like the climactic final battle that it is. There are 4 main sections of Stained, Brutal Calamity: Grief, Lament, Epiphany, and Acceptance. The first 3 are pretty similar in terms of instrumentation, but Acceptance is a bit different. Grief starts with timpanis and bass strings, building tension along with the violins and choirs. This brings you into the next part where the song breaks into more stringed instruments, as well as a pipe organ and tubular bell, a very dramatic choice of instruments that instills a sense of dread into the listener and essentially tells the listener that this is it; their journey is over, this is the final frontier. So far, the song has pretty much just been symphonic rather than symphonic metal, but that’s about to change, because at 1 minute and 36 seconds in, there’s a dramatic shift in tone as all instruments suddenly drop out and are replaced by a single distorted electric guitar, perhaps aligning with when your final fight is about to begin. The song then breaks into a truer form of symphonic metal, beginning a war that will go down in history. At this point, we’re 2 minutes into a 12 minute song, and if it’s already this good, you can probably imagine how good the rest of the song must be. The instrumentation goes back and forth like this all the way until the very final section, Acceptance. This section is essentially the aftermath of the fight, primarily playing pessimistic pianos and cheerless church bells, both bearing remarkably roomy reverb. At this point, the war is over, the victor has been decided, and all that’s left is the scattered remains and debris. This is a very harsh contrast to the symphonic metal playing in the first 3 parts, but it really does tie all the other elements of the song together quite nicely.
On the surface, it may seem like Stained, Brutal Calamity’s melodies are somewhat simple, but they’re really crafted with expertise that I can only dream of achieving one day. Lament starts in C# minor, but later transitions seamlessly into E minor, which, might I add, key changes really aren’t easy to do right. This song also uses something called leitmotifs, which are essentially melodies that persist throughout multiple songs, in this case representing all the other foes you’ve had to face to reach this point. For example, a rendition of a melody in the title theme of Terraria Calamity, The Tale of a Cruel World, is used in Stained, Brutal Calamity, perhaps a testament to how far you’ve come. As you may have guessed, Lament is a bit sadder and less confident than Grief, and the melodies are part of how it achieves this. For one, the notes tend to be a bit longer than the ones in Grief, meaning less movement and more time to reflect on the decisions that led you up to this point. This part of the song is also overall a bit emptier than Grief and Epiphany, leaving room for your own lament. Such expertly crafted melodies are part of what makes this song so unforgettable.
Drums can make or break a song, and in this case they break it out of S tier and shoot it up to the stars above. Epiphany is the climax of this fight, and the drums only add to this excitement. The segment leading up to the drop plays a set of ride cymbals and toms in a rather strange rhythm that works surprisingly well for building suspense. Then… then the drop hits, and the drum fill brings you into arguably the best segment of the song… except, there's actually 2 drum fills, because there's a bit of a fake-out here. Now, I've listened to my fair share of fake-outs, and most of them are just ok, but this one somehow adds so much with so little, adding so much extra flare to this drop, not only bringing the listener into the drop more effectively, but making the drop itself hit harder. In general, the drums of Epiphany are a bit faster and more confident than the drums in Grief and Lament. For example, after the drop the snare hits every eighth note, with hi-hats accompanying, but a bit later it switches to every fourth note, which, at first glance, you might think would lower the intensity of the song, since the drums are going slower, right? Well actually, the kicks start going a lot faster in this section, plus the hi-hats are traded out for ride cymbals, so overall this part manages to keep the stakes high while still mixing things up quite nicely. Drum patterns like these are a big part of what makes this song so special.
Stained, Brutal Calamity is a favorite of many, and it's easy to see why. Instrumentation like the choirs and bells in Grief, melodies like the sweeping sustains in Lament, and drums like the hard-hitting fills in Epiphany all come together beautifully and create the ultimate song for the ultimate final battle. This probably goes without saying, but if you haven't already, you absolutely must listen to this song. I promise you, you won't regret it.
Works Cited
DM DOKURO. “Terraria Calamity Mod Music - "Stained, Brutal Calamity" - Theme of Supreme Calamitas.” YouTube, 5 October 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT6HTpY_OyE. Accessed 14 September 2023.
MarcoMeatball. “Opera Singer Reacts to Stained, Brutal Calamity.” YouTube, 17 October 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZtylHWlGOo. Accessed 14 September 2023.