this song is about leo’s ptsd and survivors guilt after serving as a commander(?) in the 100 year crusades that happened in the lore.

Fun Fact: As others have mentioned, this song is about Leo's survivor's guilt and possible PTSD after the Crudases- and during the Crusades, Leo was specifically fighting in Australia. The in-game lore library notes that the situation in Australia was so bad, humanity had to abandon the continent for several years, and the Gears living there unchecked would multiply explosively (and sometimes interbreed with the deadly wildlife), making Australia the most dangerous and terrifying front to fight at during the war.

The song intro is based off of the fact he is a king actually, but the song is about his ptsd from the crusades and also if you'd like, Requiem (I-No's theme) is a Guitar masterpiece, so I easily recommend it

The music absolutely plays during the matches. You can even pick what theme you want to bring into the fight in multi-player. You can picky any character theme from any game and even main themes. You can even be a sicko and force people to listen to ballads when fighting you.

The verse of this song is an homage to Queen's Stone Cold Crazy, and Leo Whitefang's name is likely a reference to White Lion

The music and the lyrics have such a great contrast

Smell of the Game ✔ Find Your One Way ✔ The Roar of the Spark ✔ The Disaster of Passion ❌ Out of the Box ❌ Play the Hero ✔ Armor-clad Faith ❌ Alone Infection ❌ Love the Subhuman Self ❌ Let Me Carve Your Way ❌ Necessary Discrepancy ❌ Hellfire ✔ What do you fight for ❌ Trigger ❌ Rock Parade ✔ Requiem ❌ Crawl ❌ The Kiss of Death ❌ Perfection Can't Please Me ❌ Drift ❌ Mirror of the World ✔ Like a Weed, Naturally, as a Matter of Course ❌ The Town Inside Me ❌ The Hourglass ❌ The Circle ✔ The Gravity ✔ Just Lean ❌ Extras ❌ Symphony ✔ Ups and Downs ❌

In Strive the songs only start playing immediately after the characters intros. The intros have their own sort of choir-like little track. Leo Whitefang was another person who fought in the Sacred Order of Holy Knights during the crusades aka the war against Justice and the Gears, altho we're never introduced to him until Xrd, where he's the 2nd king of the new country of Illyria, with Ky Kiske being the 1st king and a guy named Daryl being the 3rd. The naming scheme makes it sound like they ruled at different times but no, they all rule concurrently, they oversee different geographical areas of Illyria, a behemoth of a country that spans all of Europe, much of Northern Africa, and splits Asia in half with the other half being in the Federation of China. The 3 kings can butt heads but they work towards the same goals and collaborate a ton especially during big world events Hellfire I think has the most explicit most literal lyrics on the whole soundtrack. Requiem is also very literal but the stuff that song talks about is so crazy that it sounds like nonsense until you know the lore about I-No, but Hellfire is absolutely about PTSD and survivors guilt. He fought in the grizzly crusades, and even afterwards he continues to be involved with military affairs and even tho he's a monster on the battlefield he thinks himself a horrible strategist, and feels as tho he's just leading his men to their deaths by giving them commands. This trauma of his explains his fighting style in game quite well. Most of the time he's an all-rounder, specializing in counter-zoning with his excellent fireball, but by landing certain moves he can change into a stance where he faces away from the opponent instead of towards them, which gives him some absolutely insane moves but stops him from being able to jump or even block. Depending on how you interpret it, he's either at his strongest while fighting ready to die at any moment to follow his men into Valhalla, or he's at his strongest when he's facing away from his problems and guilt. Either way a kind of funny thing about this whole thing is that his trauma is never mentioned once in the story itself, it's a part of his story only told through this specific song, and I think that's honestly really cool. Leo has this facade of arrogance that he wears, believing himself to be infallible on the battlefield, but that whole exterior crumples away just for this song. Edit: I'll put it here that Ky Kiske is French, and so some of his moves have French in their names, while Leo is German so his move names are ALL in German. Daryl isn't playable as he's more of a diplomat than a warrior, and I don't think his nationality has ever been clarified but I see him as probably British or French again like Ky.

I know you don't like the lyrics and a lot of it has a language barrier problem but this one isn't one of those, this one is by no means cryptic. If you just want to focus on the instrumentation, don't be afraid to get technical! I love watching that deeper level music theory, lean in on that. Currently I feel like all of these video is just *stares at screen* and then saying "I liked the guitars! Not the vocals are not for me. Bye".

This song is my ringtone. As long as the intro lasts, I know I got time to pick up the phone, but when it ends I gotta hurry as most people stop calling by that point. Sounds sick and fulfills a function, win-win ringtone!

My favourite theme

Starting off the long thursday strong

Daisuke please let Leo be happy