Music / GaMetal

GaMetal is a musical project on YouTube made by a fellow named Jonny Atma (stage name, he described his real last name in an interview as 'Long, German, and very unsexy') started in 2009. It centres around Progressive Metal and Power Metal remixes of songs from Video Games such as Kirby, Super Mario Bros., Sonic, Final Fantasy and occasionally slightly more odd ones like McDonald's tie-in games. His YouTube account (where most of his material is uploaded) can be found here, his Patreon account can be found here, his Facebook account is here, and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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GaMetal contains examples of:

• American Kirby Is Hardcore: Besides doing metal remixes of Kirby songs, he also has dolls and shirts of him in angry face mode. Bumper art for songs of Kirby remixes have him as a blue Kirby complete with his beard.
• April Fools' Day: Every April 1st, he does a song normally that comes out of left field. 2015 is the Final Boss to McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. 2016 is Spongebot Steelpants to Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom. 2017 is the theme to the Cheetahmen. For 2019, he goes into the stage theme for 1942.
  • To make up for missing out in 2018, he did a second April Fools special for 2019, being the Pepsi Man theme.
  • 2020 had him cover The Offspring's "All I Want" for Crazy Taxi.
  • 2021 had him cover "Firestone Lake" from Link: The Faces of Evil.
  • 2022 had him cover "Big Shot"...from Fatal Fury 3, that is, not Deltarune. He even wore a Jevil shirt to rub it in. That said, the Deltarune song was covered two weeks later.
• Ascended Fan: When making his remix of Daughter of the Dark God, which was chosen through Patron, a long-time supporter suggested to add vocals from his girlfriend, who really loves the song. He agreed and, in his words, "she absolutely killed it."
• Author Avatar: His happens to be a black red mage.
• Call-Back:
  • Blast From The Past, the fiftieth GaMetal song and last song of 2011, is entirely made up of remakes of previous songs.
  • In his second video for "Revenge of Meta Knight" (which included Meta Knight's boss theme as well as the credits theme "Friends and Sun"), the crew of the Halberd made a cameo during the song, making comments in the style of their appearance in Kirby Super Star. When Jonny did a Star Dream medley from Kirby: Planet Robobot, the crew made a second appearance, continuing several of the previous jokes.
• Came Back Strong: In a way; In 2012, when Jonny Atma used to use the stage name Jonny Death, somebody trademarked the name and soon after deleted his account for trademark infringement. A year afterwards, GaMetal was brought back, and soon its popularity returned redoubled.
• Cosplay:
  • His Halloween 2017 video covering The Binding of Isaac's "Matricide" has him dressed up as Batman.
  • His Halloween 2019 video covering Hollow Knight's "Grimm/Nightmare King" has him dressed up as the Knight.
  • Halloween 2018's cover was the Shadow Queen theme from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. His costume was "Mr. J".
• Credits Gag: His video for "Waluigi Pinball" inserts "Wah" into the names of his Patreon supporters.
• Crossover: He's had a few guest musicians on his videos. He has Nirre on guest guitar for Twinrova's theme, Andrew Wrangell on guest keyboard for Baby Bowser's theme, The 8-Bit Drummer for Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine's 2-player theme, and ShaoDow for "Unknown From M.E.".
  • He crosses over with Insane in the Rain Music to do a jazz/rock mix for Hydrocity Zone. On Rain's video, it's more jazzy, while on Jonny's video, it's heavier on the rock.
  • Taken to the next level with the Pepsi Man Pepsi Jam, which not only brings back The 8-Bit Drummer and Insane in the Rain Music, but also features ToxicxEternity, Eric L., RichaadEB, Sax Dragon and none other than Tee Lopes, the main composer of Sonic Mania.
  • Insane in the Rain Music and Sax Dragon reappeared in Jonny's remix of A Hat in Time's "The Battle of Award 42".
  • April 9, 2020 has him involve Sapphire and Sax Dragon for Persona 5's "Life Will Change".
• The Cameo: The video for Star Dream has the Meta Knights popping in.
• Embarrassing Last Name: Jonny Atma apparently has one of these as his real name, which he claims is 'very unsexy' and doesn't state exactly.
• Epic Rocking: While the average GaMetal song is only about 3-4 minutes long, most of the medleys fall into this territory, especially Legend Of The Seven Stars, which is well over half an hour long, and covers almost the entire soundtrack of Super Mario RPG.
  • He does it again with his 2019 remix of Dancing Mad, clocking in at 13:05. He even manages to have his guitar do Kefka's Evil Laugh.
  • He caps off 2020 with an 8 minute mix of "God-Shattering Star from Fire Emblem: Three Houses along with Nicolas Daoust providing the operatic vocals.
  • Most of his Kirby tracks are this, but special mention goes to his medley of the final boss theme of Kirby Star Allies, Suite: The Star Conquering Traveler, which includes all of the movements for a whopping total of 12:36!
• Evil Costume Switch: He starts off his 2020 version of Pokey Means Business in a white shirt, though once the song gets heavier, his shirt is now a black EarthBound shirt with Giygas's form on it.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Confronting Myself" from Celeste, very briefly at the 4:09 mark, Jonny's in his old suit and hat from when he originally started doing GaMetal.
• Funny Background Event: Sometimes the gameplay footage will contain a funny occurrence or joke.
  • "Dirty and Beauty" shows Kirby repeatedly headbanging using the Beetle ability.
  • 2019's April Fools' Day entry, the stage theme from 1942, shows the plane not shooting the enemy planes at all, only destroying an enemy plane by colliding with it.
  • Partway through his version of Heavy Lobster's theme, Kirby uses the Paint ability on the lobster, which blinds it, completely changing up its pattern to something more random.
  • "Ultimate Koopa" ends with the Bowser puppet mugging the camera in the bottom-left frame.
• Fun with Acronyms: Before changing to GaMetal, the project was called Nintendo Experienced Shred.
• Gratuitous Latin: "Daughter of the Dark God", the final boss theme for Octopath Traveler, has this with guest vocalist Marie-Ève Ermel providing vocals.
• Holiday Episode:
  • Mrs. Atma gets to pick a song for Valentine's Day.
  • An oddball song is covered for April Fools' Day.
  • Jonny handpicks a song for his birthday in July.
  • Something spooky is covered to celebrate Halloween.
  • A wintry song is covered around Christmas.
  • Jonny usually releases a Grand Finale for the year around New Year's Eve.
• Instrumentals: All but a few GaMetal songs are this. Justified as they're all remixes of songs from Video Games, which are for the most part instrumental. There's only been one case where a previously vocal song was covered instrumentally, namely the Reach For The Stars remix in the Sonic Fan Medley.
• In the Hood: He has one on for the first half of "Hyness (Hooded/Unhooded)".
• Large Ham: In body language, specifically. Him playing the guitar often ends up looking rather overenthusiastic.
• Mundane Made Awesome: With other musicians handling the lead instruments for most of the song, Jonny's main contribution to the Pepsi Man Pepsi Jam video is to Skyward Scream "Pepsi Man" over and over while gesturing dramatically at a held can of Pepsi.
• No Name Given: Jonny Atma's real last name is unknown, as Atma is a stage name.
• Pacifist Run: During his Stage Theme mix of 1942, the clips of the game have the plane not shooting back at all outside of crashing into one plane.
• Portmanteau: GaMetal, of Game and "Metal", for Heavy Metal.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: In both the official bio and the music video for Revenge Of Meta Knight, it's heavily implied that Gay Metal is the only way you can't pronounce it.
  Jonny: "'Well, it's not Gay Metal', I told him. Not that there is anything wrong with gay metal, ya know."
• Retraux: The occasional 8-bit interludes.
• Running Gag:
  • Super Sonic frequently shows up playing keyboard during solos and is occasionally even credited in the ending.
  • "When is Void Termina?"^note A widely-requested song. This is Jonny's way of acknowledging the popularity of this request, and he finally released The Star-Conquering Traveler medley for the 2019 finale.
  • A Waddle Dee occasionally shows up in the background of various videos. Such as appearing in the game-play footage like Apollo Justice or as a plush in different shots.
  • If a song has anything to do with Bowser, a Bowser puppet will usually be part of the performance. The puppet also makes an appearance whenever harsh vocals or growling is involved.
• Season Finale: The last GaMetal song of each year is typically something significant, usually an Epic Rocking medley like SNES Medley and Blast From The Past.
• Self-Backing Vocalist: On songs where he does vocals. One example is Lifelight.
• Song Style Shift: A majority of GaMetal songs make use of this, most frequently to an acoustic segment, but also occasionally to a synthetic orchestra, techno break, or, in the case of Masked Dedede and Pursuit ~ Cornered, an 8-bit solo.
• Stylistic Suck: The acoustic short for Wood Man's stage is a rendition of "mm2wood".
• Suddenly Voiced: Though the songs are usually instrumental, vocals slip in here and there, most notably in his version of "One Winged Angel", and earlier, the Sonic Fan Medley, where Jonny sang the vocals for "City Escape", "Supporting Me" (Biolizard), and "Never Turn Back". The same medley featured vocals by Edobean for "Super Sonic Racing"; she also provided vocals for his version of 02's theme.. He also sings the Lifelight theme from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: His remix of Dire Dire Docks is this, with it only picking up in intensity in the middle. The gameplay clips reflects it with Mario, Yoshi and even Luigi swimming through the level.
• Title Scream: His video for Heavy Lobster has him just shouting the title character's name for lyrics.
• Updated Re Release: Each year since 2015, in the month of May, Jonny will redo a handful of his past remixes and throw a few new ones, sometimes dropping several songs a week, in what he appropriately calls "May Madness." With that said, not all cases of this trope are done in the month of May.
  • March 30, 2018 had him redo the Revenge of Meta Knight Medley.
  • June 15, 2018 had him redo the Dark Star Core theme.
  • June 15, 2019 had him redo Dancing Mad in all its glory, with more lyrics.
  • November of 2019 has him take it up to eleven; he's releasing a full album's worth of updated songs from his Jonny Death days, starting with his very first song (first recorded circa 2005): Jungle / Base / Boss from Contra. He calls the project GaMetal Project One.
  • January 24, 2020 had him redo his vocal version of 02, with Edobean once again providing the vocals. (The instrumental version had been remade in the previous year's May Madness.)
• Withholding Their Name: GaMetal's creator has the stage name Jonny Atma, but his real last name is unknown. He described it in an interview as 'long, German, and very unsexy'.
• With Lyrics: 02 was initially produced as an instrumental track like most of the other songs, but was given lyrics by Cecily Lopez (Edobean). The lyrical version was later remade and posted to the GaMetal YouTube channel. A newer version of this song with slightly changed lyrics (and improved sound quality) was submitted in January 2020, again sung by Lopez.

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