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Inside The Score – Super Mario All-Stars – Bowser Battle (SMB)

Latin fire

Here is composer Soyo Oka bringing us yet another heavy metal subgenre from the millions that sprout each week—since even adding a cello to a song is apparently a new subgenre—in the form of Cuban metal. So try and enjoy this dance instead of killing king Koopa right away just having listened to the first few seconds of the track, will ya? This is a new addition to the SNES version since, as many have now, the original didn’t have boss themes. Those started on Super Mario Bros. 3 from which this one takes its main inspiration. So the metal influences of Bowser go very far back in the past, all culminating in the Super Mario movie where he has his personal metal band and parties, and the character is played by an actual metal musician. This relationship between character and music beyond its malevolent character and associations might have arisen from his clothing style which includes spiky bracelets also used in heavy metal fashion and red colored extravagant hairstyle (punk would not work for someone who is actually a king instead of rebelling against him).

Musical Analysis

Here in this deconstruction we can see how Soyo adapted the template established by Koji Kondo on both Mario 3 and Super Mario World; pounding heavy metal drums with heavy compression, a pseudo Phrygian profile that uses a parallel chord movement to do just a vamp between the root and the one a half step above and the bongo like drumming also present on that NES title to which a melody based on diminished profiles that focuses on chromatic notes and tritones is added. This are the same bongo drums of Yoshi.

Like the other battles it has a quick intro, this one with electric guitar, and then goes into the Am to Bbm movement. Unlike other intros that end on the dominant chord to launch into the proper theme, the one for Bowser has to end on the tritone chord Eb just like any metalhead would do.

The drums here also play a very recognizable motif that people often refer as the “Amen” break, one that has been widely sampled in popular music, specially by hip-hop artists. It comes from the 1969 track “Amen, Brother” by the American soul group the Winstons. You can also hear it on the Powerpuff Girlz theme song or the track Faint by the band Linkin Park.

Still, being a Mario game, it retains the Latin flavour apt for dancing so you can headbang while your legs and waist do the cha cha.

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