Ok, so let’s start with Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
Yeah, the Nintendo game from 2000. It’s a follow up from Ocarina of Time that was released in 1998–the last year that any music you really, really, cared about came out.
So Majora’s Mask takes place in the city of Termina which is about to get destroyed by this giant moon unless you, the hero Link, can save it. It’s pretty great. The villain is this guy Skull Kid who buys Majora’s mask from a mysterious traveling salesman. I know, it’s weird and dark and set to music by Koji Kondo, who reworked a lot of the Ocarina stuff, and called it “an exotic Chinese-opera sound.”
So jump to present-day Bordeaux, France. The fancy wine place. A guy name Mobo lives there and runs a studio called Conkrete. They record mainly metal stuff. Apparently the area is good for grapes and metal.
Mobo just worked with the band Temnein. They’ve bee around for a decade, mainly playing Europe and Asia. They are kinda At The Gates-ish.
So Temnein are working with Mobo and decide to record an album all about pop culture universes, and they record this track called “Dirge for Termina,” all about Zelda. Bands just can’t resist! It’s awesome and hilarious, which I assume was the point.
Here are the lyrics (catch all the great Zelda references!):
New dawn on Termina
The sun is shy
Compared to the ominous moon
High in the sky
Lost in the woods, for so many years
He doesn’t even know
Who he is anymore, no friends no home
All by himself
So appears the happy salesman
And his masks
But there’s one far above the others
Above the others
Dark entity
Cursed artefact
Casting a spell on the lost kid
Skull kid was born
And the bell tolls
With the mask on his face
Skull kid brings doom over the land
The moon shed tear but, the one who cries
Wears a mask, to hide the pain
To hide the pain
To forget his misery
From the highest tower, in clock town
He’s waiting for someone
He’s waiting for a friend to deliver him
Time is running out
To save the land
Only 3 days before
The moon crashes
Dark entity
Cursed artefact
Casting a spell on the
And the bell tolls
Dirge for Termina
3 Days left
Evil spreads its shade
Hero of time, shall rise
To bring a new dawn, on Termina
The album is out today, check it out!
www.temnein.net