Artist: This was a big project but a labor of love for sure. I'm a huge fan of FF6 and Dancing Mad so inspiration was overflowing! I tried to get the track into really heavy and extreme metal while still representing the original. Tier 3 got shaved down as I wanted the mood to stay dark and brutal which was just hard for me to do if I kept it all in. All in all I'm very happy with this track and thanks to some healthy back and forth in the project forum it turned into quite a beast.

Artist: I’ve previously covered music from the Final Fantasy series (Terra’s Theme) and have been wanting to do another one for a while now and this project gave me a reason to. I went with the Final Boss Theme from Final Fantasy 4 because…well it sounds badass. In terms of arrangement, it’s pretty conservative and if it was a political party it would be Republican. This is mostly because I liked the original arrangement as it was and didn’t want to make major changes to it. So I changed the instrumentation, extended some sections and added embellishments here and there whilst keeping the original themes as a foundation to build on.

Artist: Darksightedness is a track I just began making just for fun. It started to sound pretty good so I decided to sign it up for BadAss 3. Much to my excitement it was accepted and with the help of the staff I turned it into the powerful electro metal song it is now. The most difficult thing for me while writing this track was making realistic guitar sounds using samples.

Artist: Chernabogue: Digimon has always been something I loved from my childhood, and still like to play those old games when I get the occasion. I started an arrangement for BA3 but it wasn't epic enough for the album's style. Chris/AngelCityOutlaw came up with a new arrangement that sounded really great and I started mixing it with Furilas' bass recording. The arrangement doesn't sound too evil like other ones from the album, but the power metal inspiration really makes it sound epic, with super fast riffs, crazy synths, and great guitar solos. Thanks to Chris and Mac for their skill and time; to Pieter, Eino, and Tim for their feedback; and to the creators of Digimon for their awesome work!

AngelCityOutlaw: Alex wanted to do a metal remix of Machinedramon's theme. However, the original concept wasn't metal enough (for my tastes anyway) and so using magic wands made by Jackson and Ibanez, I re-arranged it into an attempt at European power metal of proportions so epic that playing it has the power to summon Kai Hansen. Alex took the stems and then, via alchemy, dark magic, and a touch of Furilas, he made it all come together in his cauldron of metal.

Artist: We chose to ReMix these two boss themes of TMNT III for BadAss 3, because this was one of our favorite games. When we initially joined BadAss 3 we started to make a ReMix of Final Fantasy VI's 'Decisive Battle', but we had problems with a former member of the band who didn't want to contribute anymore. We then decided to restart the process by choosing another game - which resulting in 'Warriors of Shredder'.

Artist: I decided to make use of that Damage Drum kit that I've been itching to use and man did it work well for this one, at least in my perspective. And as pu_freak wanted, I made "Jaded by Death" as evil as I could, employing the use of creepy orchestral and industrial influences, with some SFX and scary drones and stuff. I actually enjoyed making this remix and hope that you guys do too! One frustration I have were getting the mix sounding as good as can be; and another more distant but always nagging feeling is pleasing the J panel; always a strain for me, but luckily I don't focus on making music solely for OCR, else I'd probably suffer an aneurysm lol.

Artist: Since the first volume of BadAss, people requested that someone should arrange a boss theme from Pokémon, especially the final battle with ""Gary Motherf*ckin' Oak"" from the first generation. A remix of that track was in the works for the second volume, but it never happened. As I was working on a Digimon remix too, I thought I could also do something for the Pokémon fans.
The source from Pokémon RBY is very chaotic -- it sounds frenetic and not structured. I tried to make it sound as epic as possible, since epic is the theme for this final volume. Bombastic was the goal here, but I also added some darker/ominous sections, which I really love. Gary Oak is the final boss, the ultimate obstacle, the last trainer you have to best before finally earning your title of Pokémon Master. Are you ready? Because he really is.

Artist: I always wanted to do something with Grahf's theme, because I thought it was one of the most powerful themes in Xenogears, and BadAss3 seemed like a great opportunity to do it. I originally wanted to make this a sort of Middle Eastern thing, but it took a sort of cinematic turn that retained some of those elements, such as the oud and the string timbre. I also really liked some of Grahf's lines from the game, so, being a voice actor, I thought why not? And out came this sort of slam poetry thing. Grahf's story is really kind of tragic and messed up, and you can evoke a lot of emotion just by trying to re-tell that story, which is what I tried to do here.

Artist: pu_freak asked if I wanted to ReMix this source and I've taken inspiration from this track from "To Mega Thirion" from Thirion's album Theli. This album was a very interesting endeavour on the production side. After several attempts at mastering it, I asked Tim (timaeus222) for some help. Thanks to Tim it sounds as much good as it possible with the stuff I recorded. The titanload of work he's done deserves a lot of respect! I'm thankful as hell!.

Artist:
Chernabogue: Believe it or not, but this mix was supposed to be released on BadAss II. That means I've been working on it for almost four years. Countless collaborators participated to its creation, and I can't thank enough those who patiently helped me.

Advance Wars is a series I enjoyed a lot on GBA, and Sturm always has been a problem, as the final boss. The music of those two games is really interesting, and Sturm's theme kept looping in my head -- I had to remix it. During this period, I was listening to a lot of Helloween (still do), and this remix is a tribute to their music that inspire me a lot. The metal fans may find out I was inspired by the song ""Are You Metal?"" by that band, and I decided to write a similar song for Sturm.
All riffs, solos, synths, and stuff in that remix were written from Sturm's theme, while the structure itself is inspired by Helloween's song.

As always, after the horrible MIDI arrangement, I contacted my recording buddies, Tuberz McGee and Furilas, in order to have live guitars, bass, and vocals. I also contacted Mirby to get a better version of my lyrics. After all, my English isn't the best -- vive la révolution!

The first version was rejected by the Judges and cut from BA2, despite my best attempts to master the beast. And when Pieter contacted me to help him on BA3, I knew it was the time to finish it. Not so strangely enough, it was the last track we finished for the album (searching for a good vocalist, re-recording of the guitars that were lost in a data transfer, etc.) but I think we really did something epic.

Thanks a bunch to everyone who helped -- especially Tuberz, Furilas, Mirby, and Brandon -- they were BadAss enough to keep Sturm alive. Now, enjoy this track and the rest of the album. \m/

Line-up:
Chernabogue -- arrangement, lyrics, mixing/mastering (v1)
Tuberz McGee -- lead and rhythm guitars
Furilas -- bass, vocals (v1)
Mirby -- lyrics
Brandon Strader -- vocals (v2), mixing/mastering (v2)

Mirby: Chernabogue needed better lyrics for this song so, being a fan of the series, I obliged and helped out, adding in more references to the games and the world in which they take place. It was fun to write.

Bradon Strader: The universe conspired against me finishing this song but it's done, so enjoy it!
Tuberz McGee: So Alex (the bae) asked me to do guitar things for a metal thing on an album thing and I said sure thing. So I loaded up the file and saw that he'd written some tough stuff so I actually had to practice, so whatever I guess that's a good thing right? Either way, this song is BadAss. Thanks for having me Alex (l).

Artist: "Opening the Way", is a take on Koh Ohtani’s "The Opened Way", one of the most prominent tracks in Shadows of the Colossus’ OST. My goal was to create a completely different atmosphere, while keeping some melodical material by Mr. Ohtani. The epic feeling has vanished and been replaced by a dark, twisted atmosphere. Shining somewhere within it, a slim ray of hope.

Artist: For BadAss 3, my aim was to create an album of mixes that make you feel evil, sinister, or twisted. To achieve that, people should either have something bombastic or epic in their mix (like the Imperial March), or make it creepy and twisted. I've always used one example for the latter category: the 'Blood Theme' from Dexter. To that end, I wanted to make a mix of my own in 'Blood Theme'-style.

The mix starts the same as Magus' Castle theme, with brooding low strings and howling wind in the background. However, when playing the real Magus theme, I only use the two chords that are present in the Blood Theme (two chords that are twisted in itself). In the 0:29 - 1:20 part, I've used music bells that are very close the the background motif used in 'Blood Theme'. I couldn't do much else in terms of recreating the Blood Theme-vibe, since incorporating non-VGM is unwanted of course, but I think it's enough to remind people of the Blood Theme and to give the same creepy and twisted vibe. To increase the twisted feeling, I've made a dynamic panning and volume for the music bells, and the music box later in the mix. Furthermore, some intstruments (most notably the piano at the end) have a chorus effect, making them sound more distorted. Big differences in volume throughout will - hopefully - also instigate an unsettling effect and the mix featured brooding strings throughout. The uses of music bells and music boxes should also add to the creepy feeling. In terms of vibe, this mix combines the feeling of my Pokémon track on OCR and my Gilgamesh mix from BadAss 1.

The mix is a bit shorter than usual for me, but that's because you can only do so much with two chords (and I even cheated once at 1:16 by using two other chords). I've not fully used the source (which has to do with the very limited chord progression I could use), but the source - as well as my inspiration - is very recognizable I think. The title is also a nod to Dexter

Artist: Ever since the first BadAss I've been trying to find a way to remix Weskers theme; I was also hoping that someone else would come along & do it, but it never happened. With the 3rd Album I decided to make a remix of Wesker finally, & do it in the 28 weeks later style, cause you know, zombies. This track was done in 3 "movements" if you will, in the same vein as the Final Boss Battles in most RE games. Each section having it's own characteristics, while still being part of the whole, ending wih the bombast & the inevitable bittersweet ending (which sounds just like a basic song come to think of it). Mak Eightman came along towards the end to give the track an even creepier guitar, & I think we've reached complete global saturation, of peoples pants. Because it's so good.

Artist: It started as a dubstep experiment & morphed into Muse meets Yngwie.

Artist: This room, I've been here before. The thick musty smell and the dim sepia-toned light are so familiar. I'm in an enormous sand pit, enclosed by... walls? I can't escape, I must jump down below, must move forward. The ground rumbles as the room fills with even more dreaded sand. Suddenly from the floor bursts the most marvelous creature with sideways flapping lips... is this some kind of god?

Before I can organize my thoughts, the beast has gone back down beneath the sand. The Thing of Glory emerges partially to reveal a single magnificent purple tentacle. I am being drawn into the swirling eddy surrounding this godlike Entity. It seems I am destined to merge with It... but no, the fear is too great, I must resist. Instinctively I lash out; the terror is too powerful to do anything else. Ah, but the Beast speaks the language of pain. I slash away. I am rewarded with miniature copies of Itself!

The wormlike demigods leap and roar and hurl themselves at me. I am blinded by airborne sand. Paradoxically I am helpless against the aggressors until I draw them close to me! At the very moment they could most easily devour me, I have my advantage! I must kill them... I must... the Big One will have it no other way. Sometimes the murder provides me with a life-sustaining heart, but not always. The mini-beasts attack, more and more of them emerge from the sand, while their parent, the Primary, continues to taunt me from its position in the floor, waving toward me with its one sinister tentacle, surrounded by those two odd appendages, flapping hypnotically.

I must kill this Beast. It is him or me, I'm sure of this now; I am running out of lifeforce. The minions surround me, offering sparing, random chances to regain my strength. I need hearts desperately, running too low now... lower and lower health. I hear a strange beeping in my ears, getting louder and louder... Oh Godlike Creature! Please give me life-sustaining hearts! My beautiful Molgera, revered All-Powerful Being, all I wanted was for you to love me... MOLGERA, WHERE IS THE LOVE???

Chimpazilla: My first wip of 'Molgera's Love' was very upbeat electronic, and was quickly rejected as being too happy. Fortunately I knew just who to ask to help me make it dark and creepy: Redg. His minimalist, bitcrushed, filtered/effected/mangled style is just right for the feel I wanted. I sent Brent the file, and he used my midi and changed all the instrumentation. We continued to collab and add more detail to the arrangement. We think it turned out delightfully unsettling!

Artist: Mad Jack's Drop is the second track I decided to make for Badass 3. The main idea was to try making a dubstep song for the first time. I think it turned out pretty well, the hardest part was just mixing everything together to fit nicely.

Artist: This track was a total blast to make! The moment I saw that Badass Volume 3 was still recruiting I knew I had to make something for one of my favorite villans Dark Samus. I wanted to make a remix to almost tell the story of Dark Samus's life but still fit as if you were playing the game and the remix became more of a medley which made things a little harder but more interesting.

The initial WIP came out pretty well but it took a lot of refinement for it to really shine. The great voice talent of XPRTNovice helped bring the track to life by reading a description I wrote of Dark Samus as if he was Samus's visor. The bonus evil laughs and ""Phazon"" line used was actually created by myself and helped add an extra level of creepy to the mix.

The hardest part that came with making this track was the cluttered and muddy sounds I initially had and trying to create a good climax. It took months of testing and playing around to finally find something I liked. Along the way many things were replaced or changed to help better the overall mix - drums, synths, etc. all remade over and over again to get the right sound. When all was said and done though the track sounded great and was well balanced thanks to all the help and feedback from the team.

Artist: I've been feeling pretty inspired lately, and after making some good progress on an original album of mine, I decided I'd incorporate some of those elements in a Vectorman ReMix. Both are Egyptian-themed, and I was thinking of combining in some of the Electro House tricks I had put together before in a Darkwing Duck and Mega Man 7 track I did for the WCRG 2013 compo. It wasn't too hard to pick out some nice pieces from Vectorman 1 and 2 to play around with, as they're all so good (the occasional offset panning for a stereo effect is pretty unusual on headphones, but sounds great on speakers).

After getting on solid ground with layering ISW Juggernaut samples in various contexts, I wanted to use those, along with some cool Tabla Tarangs and Indian Ragas vox from Crypto Cipher (who makes unique and useful Middle-Eastern sample libraries) and some other brand new mega-distorted FM bass sounds I synthesized in my free time to write a big ReMix that you can dance to and blast in your car. My goal was big, bold, and unrestrained (okay, maybe a little restrained so it's not super loud :P). I feel like I don't really write a lot of purely dance-able music that focuses mostly on the groove, punch, and development rather than the melodic content, so I figured, why not have one track in my repertoire that's like that?

While writing this, I suddenly thought of something that seemed crazy at first, before I looked it up: Didgeridoo Dubstep. Turns out some people have tried it, though they were either beatboxing or just otherwise playing around. Nothing wrong with that, of course, as now I get the chance to do that fer srs, bro, and with a few twists of my own! The climax was inspired by Zalem, a rather popular didgeridoo beatboxer, and zircon's 'Neurobazaar'. To really make things huge, I ended up sampling a bit of Nutritious's 'Distortion HQ' from the Deus Ex album for the sub bass frequencies at 2:19. When that part drops hard on ya, see if you can't tell the difference between the talkbox-and-glitch-mangled didgeridoo and the wobbles! :D

Artist:
timaeus222: When Jordan came to me with his concept of what this was going to be, I was pretty excited. At first I proposed to him that someone start a fresh WIP to help mesh our ideas together, and I ended up writing the intro. Jordan returns the favor on my birthday with the whole arrangement rehashed from his old, old version of this same ReMix for the second BadAss album. He had a bunch of notes written out in a neat lil' txt file at essay length as per yoozh™, but what I loved about it is that he included audio commentary over a copy of his take. :P It basically said, ""Take this, work your magic, and hold nothing back!"", so naturally, I obliged. Some of his early remarks:
1) "man, you don't play around AT ALL when it comes to heavy percussion and hard-hitting drums and slams. Timaeus, you are siiick, dawg. [...] y u gotta always work so quickly and shizz."
2) "see, now... why you gotta go on like that and just shit all over me by making some suuuper sick beats and ultra fat grooves?"

...So you know this is going to be something for the record books. ;) So, the ReMix itself? It's pretty much like this: I did much of the intro, glitching/mangling, scare-tactics wub wubz & FX, some geetah chugz and soloing (Shreddage 2X), cinematic impacts/slams, much of the drums, and mixing/mastering, while Jordan did the remaining 70% or somethin' of the electric geetahz/bass live, vocals (HOW DARE!) and choir, some sick NI Battery drums, a lil bitcrushed FM wobble here and thar, some ambient hit layers, cinematic textural sampling, LOTS of the arrangement, and uh... yeah, I could keep going on for hours, so let's just say we both did 50/50 and call it good. X) Jordan has some of the craziest ideas I've ever heard, and I'm glad he gave this another shot so that we could flesh it out, melting some faces and scraping, grinding, and busting a bajillion speakers in the process. I also got some new headphones in the middle of working on this and used them in the process to really nail dat bass, so what can I say, djp? You and I are headphone twins. ((( (]^o^[) ))) ...Well, OK, I guess you could say quadruplets with Flexstyle and zircon, but that'd be weirder probably.

With almost 90 (of 99!!) mixer tracks used, nearly 80 layers of stuff, and over 240 instrument/audio clip/automation instantiations (!!!) utilized in FL Studio, if there was ever a musical magnum opus I did something for, it would be this. I mean really, it takes a whopping 6 minutes for the project file to load, and I have to let FL freeze twice before it can scroll around or zoom in or out. It can be hard to pick your own best work, but I'm pretty set on this one being the one at the moment.

Darkmoocher: Where do we even start on this one?
In my attempt to make an incredibly long story short, basically I've had this idea since well before BadAss Vol I. It should be clear that as open I am to most games, I grew up primarily on the Sega Genesis, so eventually some more non-Sonic classics would be coming from me eventually. :)
I knew I wanted to take this arrangement down Buckethead lane and play off of 'Nuclear War-fare"" and dystopian fallout, but my 'killer studio chops' just....

...weren't killing... anything, really.

Jazzy and funky stuff came/comes natural, and I'd say I'm a pretty decent guitarist for the harder, rock stuff too, but I just knew on the mixing and production side of things I still had much to learn before I could level up beyond 'Mildly-Aggressive Studio Veggies.'
Not only did I hear about Volume 1 really late, but also the staff were blunt yet understanding about my original WIP by letting me know I had some potential but it honestly wasn't on par with the other tracks on the album; so I got benched but was given the chance to rework it for the next volume...
Fast-forward to Volume II and we've got the same thing... I'm making some decent progress, but it's just still... not killing anything. O___o

"Alright, BadAss Volume III... I've just GOTTA get it this time!"

I look at the director's prompt/album theme in the project thread... then I look at my current WIP.

I look at the current roster... then back at my WIP...

I A-B compare back and forth as much as possible to some Djentlemen, CHUGGA CHUGGA heavy stuff..... aaaaaaaaand then back at my WIP.

... Finally I just throw my hands up and knock on a certain person's door. "Ay yo, Timaeus? So I've got this weapons of mass destruction Buckethead kind of thing going on... and it's 'crazy,' yeah.... but not really nuclearically brutal enough. I've got the chemical process laid out basically, but you think maybe you can help me test this bomb?"

...

And then Timaeus came back to me with a demo saying ""WUUUBBB WUUBBBB WUUUB WOOOWOWOOOWWWOOOWWW RRRRRROOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR!!!"" so it was pretty much a wrap from there.
2014 was an incredibly shitty year for me so unfortunately I ended up as a deadweight for many projects outside of Zone Runners since it was hard to remain motivated on anything else, but I kept coming back slowly and slowly to the WIPs Timaeus would be sending. I'm sure I've had the staff and Timaeus pulling the impatient Sonic pose of crossing their arms and tapping their toes wondering ""where the in the world is Sir J?""
And in the veeery final stages of wrapping up the album I had to be an ass to Timaeus in order to keep going back to make fine adjustment after fine adjustment after fine adjustment.

And so that brings us to the WubWub ChuggaChugga chimaera you hear today. With a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, several months (years, really, on my part) of hair-pulling, and 200+ track stems and instances (each of our DAW projects combined) later....we present to you 'Become Death.'

It is certainly one of the most ambitious remixes I've ever worked on, I truly appreciate Timaeus' phenomenal work (and patience with my asshattery), The directors (especially pu_freak) for continuously giving me a chance since waaaay back in the beginning, and I sincerely hope this gets some muthafuggin thumbs up from Vectorman fans out there.

peace ~J"

Artist: Another big project. This one was a bit harder as the three songs don't interlink naturally which I tried to work around as best I could. Turning them all into metal was relatively straightforward as the moods of the Lavos tracks are so dark and hectic. Again I went for heavy extreme metal which for me just lends itself naturally to these big epics. The result I think is a really intense and epic track.