Now that I have your attention with a clickbaity title I’d like to take a detour from not reading Past Sins and procrastinate on things I’m supposed to be doing today to write a short essay on the premise that the rock operas Moonrise and Fall of an Empire are in fact, the same story. Now, before people come at me with pitchforks, let me just say that I really like these albums. They’re pretty good power metal and really scratch the itch for melodic metal concept albums with a story, not unlike Gloryhammer or Twilight Force, if a bit less tongue-in-cheek. But this just means I’ve listened to them through enough times to notice that they kinda cover the same story beats. The stories from the show they’re based on are pretty similar (bad crazy magic person gets banished for 1000 years), so they were bound to have similarities, but I feel like the similarities extend beyond that into the execution. Anyway, I’d highly recommend listening to them before/while I babble about them.

Also, L, if you’re reading this can you please not list the artist name as “The L-Train presents the Royal Canterlot Symphonic Metal Orchestra (Ro.C.S.M.Or)“? Because Bandcamp includes the artist name and album title in the file name, it means that the file path for any given song is “…/The L-Train presents the Royal Canterlot Symphonic Metal Orchestra (Ro.C.S.M.Or) - Fall of an Empire\The L-Train presents the Royal Canterlot Symphonic Metal Orchestra (Ro.C.S.M.Or) - Fall Of An Empire - 14 Prologue- The Tale Of The Crystal King (instrumental).mp3” which is longer than the file path length limit for Windows by itself. Just a minor bugbear. I had to rename the folder just so Winamp would even attempt to play the files. Love the music. Please make it more straightforward to open and play on a computer.

Below the break is a very long ramble about these two albums of horse music.



Okay so, let’s go through them beat by beat.

Part 0: The Introduction

Not much to say here. Moonrise’s “Scene 1: Prelude” is an instrumental which foreshadows some of the motifs in the album to come, Fall of an Empire’s “Prologue: Tale of the Crystal King” gives us some backstory on King Sombra. Different in content, but they both have an introduction as a conscious decision as opposed to just jumping right into the action. We can also see the naming conventions for both of them springing up, where Moonrise uses theatrical naming and FoaE uses literary naming, but they’re both titling their songs using the partition names of another medium, which is another conscious decision. It’s worth mentioning that both albums use a narrator who pops up from time to time to cover transitions, Moonrise’s narrator in the songs themselves, and Fall’s narrator in separate interludes. I’m not particularly fond of Fall’s narrator (the singing is a bit flat), but eh. What can you do.



Part 1: WE ARE AGGRESSIVELY HAPPY



This is what really convinced me to write this. Moonrise’s “Scene 2: Harmony” and FoaE’s “Chapter 1: Welcome to the Empire” both strike this slightly odd tonal dissonance where the lyrics have the characters exuberantly singing about how happy they are, while the music some of the most energetic on the whole album. But it’s not… the happiest instrumentation. The choruses are certainly grandiose and upbeat, but large parts of both songs are in a minor key and have this kind of aggressive growl. It’s quite effective at setting up the feeling that underneath this happy exterior something isn’t quite right.

This is much more pronounced when you listen to the instrumentals. The verses on Welcome to the Empire have instrumentals that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Metallica track, it’s really quite the contrast with lyrics that are basically pleasantries. In Harmony, some of the builds and swells have this organ behind them before it breaks into the chorus that make you feel like Dracula is about to burst in. It’s a really effective contrast, they clearly establish the baseline of the story, and both tracks are really fun to listen to, but both of them do basically the same thing.



Part 2a: Luna Is Happy And That’s Terrible

Okay, so we’ve established the baseline for the story. We have our major characters, and their relationship is pretty good. So now we settle down into a quiet and tender ballad, where Luna is really happy about something. In Moonrise, this is “Scene 3: Nightfall”. I’ve numbered this part 2a because Moonrise only has half as many tracks as Fall of an Empire, but they still cover the same story beats anyway (in fact Moonrise might even cover more), so where Moonrise covers multiple points in the same track I’ve numbered them with a number and a letter. Anyway.

In Nightfall, Luna is just overjoyed to make the night sky. However, because Luna is by herself here and her anguish is more interesting than her passion, Nightfall has to crush this point and the next into the same song, this lasts for all of a verse, which is punctuated by these growling, sinister guitar stabs. More of the song is in part 2b, but it still covers this tonal beat of the quiet expression of Luna really liking something.

This mood gets more fully expressed in Fall of an Empire’s “Chapter 2: Crossroads of Life”, which is a full-on soppy duet between Princess Luna and King Sombra. It almost manages to go the whole way from the two of them sneaking off to getting engaged in this tone, but then there’s a big sinister metal stab near the back half of it to remind you “hey don’t get too comfortable now”.

Both of these seem to come with the implication that Luna isn’t allowed to be happy. In fact that’s basically the byline of these two operas. Whenever Luna does what she wants, bad things happen. Which brings us to…

Part 2b: Someone Goes Crazy and It’s All Luna’s Fault

Oh boy. In Moonrise, we don’t even get the whole way through Nightfall before Luna starts losing the rag. So incensed is she that people are going to bed instead of looking at this pretty sky she’s made that she goes mad and decides to bring about eternal night. It’s a little childish, but A. this is a rock opera, people don’t need good reasons for doing things as long as the emotions flow right, and 2. this is a mythic-style story where larger-than-life characters do extraordinary things for petty reasons.

These points also apply to Fall of an Empire, where in “Chapter 3: Heavy Is The Crown” Celestia convinces Luna that marrying a mortal is a bad idea, and Luna dumps Sombra fairly abruptly. Sombra, a rational person, decides that he should become immortal (”Chapter 4: At Any Cost”) and take over the world (”Chapter 5: Regents Of The Darkness”).

It’s kind of understandable that Fall of an Empire takes three songs to cover what Moonrise does in less than one, because this story beat involves three times as many characters. In Moonrise, Luna goes nuts basically apropos of nothing. It almost feels a bit rushed, and Fall’s more drawn-out and careful coverage of this decline is far more interesting, by giving competing intentions different voices. It makes the story feel more emotionally complete.

It’s more musically distinct too - where Chapter 3 provides what I’ll call the Heavy Is The Crown motif, which reappears later on during expressions of regret, when Luna is forced to take actions for the greater good that are against her personal wishes. There’s more room across the three songs with three characters to convey more nuance in the emotions, like Luna’s quiet promise to cure Sombra of his madness at the end of Regents of the Dark (this actually matches up with something else later). By contrast Moonrise just devolves towards the end of the song into atonal clanging, which isn’t really to my taste and feels a little out of place in a metal symphony. Regardless, these are quite clearly analogous beats of the story.



Oh boy this is gonna run long.

Part 3: Luna is Intransigent, Bad Things Happen



The part where Luna is intransigent is kind of coincidental, because they’re for different reasons, but it is an interesting commonality, that it seems like Luna is just this world’s butt monkey. Really makes you feel bad for her, particularly in Fall of an Empire.

In Moonrise, this is “Scene 4: Lunar March”, where Luna, now Nightmare Moon, is staging her coup and bullying her subjects by asking them “if the moon is not to [their] liking”, in that kind of way where it’s hard to tell if she’s mocking them or being hysterical, and then Celestia turns up and confronts her. This brings up two components that happen in this story beat; the ideological conflict between the major actors is articulated in preparation for the final confrontation, and the impact of this conflict on the mortals beneath them is mentioned. This is in stark contrast to the harmony and happiness of the first song, and I feel like it could do with twisting and subverting some of the motifs from that song. Particularly in Moonrise, Harmony brings up a very strong main theme motif that comes back in Harmony Restored, but it could have really added something to Lunar March to show off a contrast.

In Fall of an Empire, we have the same two components set up, almost neatly demarcated into two songs. In “Chapter 6: Kingdoms Divided”, we get the side-by-side argument between Celestia and Luna, and Sombra preparing the Crystal Empire for war. I say “almost neatly” because this song doesn’t fully prepare us for the final confrontation.



Can I just say before I continue that Kingdoms Divided has one of the best moments on the whole album? The chorus is really cleverly worded:

We cannot stand apart

By kingdoms divided by

Your arrogant heart So you’ll stand there and fight

Believing you really know

What is and what isn’t is right



This is most effective on the second chorus, just after a pair of lines each from Celestia, Luna and Sombra. All three of them sing the chorus, and you could reasonably imagine any one of them saying those exact words, even at the exact same time. This isn’t the only time that they have more than one character singing the same words and where it makes sense to them, even for different reasons (Heavy Is The Crown and Regents of the Dark spring to mind), but because it’s three characters here it feels really well executed.

Anyway where was I? Oh yes, the rest of our preparation for the final confrontation happens in “Chapter 7: The Calling”, alongside a fairly explicit intrusion of the commoners into the Princesses’ affairs when the crystal ponies make their appeal for aid with a really haunting chorus of “save us”. It’s only here that Luna is finally convinced to turn against Sombra. It’s also this moment that really sells Celestia as having Luna’s best interests at heart despite being cold and antagonistic so far, where she gives Luna the final say on what they decide to do (helped along by the return of the Heavy Is The Crown motif). Celestia could have easily badgered Luna into going along with her plan or ignored her, but they really are equal partners in this kingdom-running business. It’s a very sweet and also heart-breaking moment.

This is another place where Fall taking more songs to cover the same ground really helps with fleshing out more characters and greater emotional granularity. But it is the same ground.

Part 4: The Final Battle

This is probably where the disparity between the two base stories is the most pronounced. Moonrise’s “Scene 5: Battle of the Sun And Moon” is an instrumental, which is cool and all, but it kind of betrays how simplistic the story of Nightmare Moon is at its core. All of the complexity in it is in Luna’s descent into madness, and Celestia’s anguish at what she has to do for the greater good (”anguish for the greater good”. Hmm. Where did we see that before?), which means that the big confrontation between the two of them is… basically empty. They have nothing to say to each other at this point. The time for words is past, and it’s a magical punching contest now. This is thematically interesting, but only from a distance. In the heat of the moment, it’s… 2 minutes and 33 seconds of fast-paced instrumental metal. Not really anything more.

Meanwhile, Fall’s “Chapter 8: Heaven’s Fury” is an 8 minute saga. We open with this choral introduction of the “grand regent, unequalled, transcendent, eternal”, which for those who’ve been paying attention, we heard before in the Prologue, telling us how far Sombra has fallen. And just to ice the cake, the start of the song proper, after this little introduction, is the same instrumentation as the start of Welcome to the Empire. I love bookends. They’re great.

What follows is Sombra and Celestia having a metal duel and it’s awesome. Celestia’s singer hasn’t really had much chance to get the lead out until her chorus on this album, and you can really tell she’s giving it socks. She has some trouble hitting the high notes, but I can’t begrudge that too much.

And then, did you think they were done with the bookends? Think again! Sombra’s duet with Luna takes on the melody of Crossroads of Life, reflecting on their relationship, before Luna’s verse slides into her Heaven’s Fury chorus - implying that she is ultimately siding with Celestia here. Even the instrumentation and lyrics of the chorus retrace this transition - it starts off light, she talks about making it work somehow, heavy crowns, the choir jump in on the second line and then we’re back to the full metal instrumentation. It’s impressively layered songwriting and meaningful production.

Wow, I really nerded out about this. The rest of the song is more like Battle of the Sun and Moon, a few minutes of fast-paced battle music, with a little descent-into-atonal-madness bit at the end, which is less interesting, but it wasn’t really going to end any other way.

Part 5: Remorse, Return to a Lesser Life



Turning the tables, this story beat I think is actually done much better in Moonrise, probably because the final conflict had so little dimension to it, and all the interesting bits are in the aftermath. In “Scene 6: Daybreak”, the narrator tells us about the ruin left in the battle’s wake, before seguing into Celestia talking, one-sided, to her banished sister about her regrets over a piano. But what really sells this part is what I’ll call the Harmony Restored motif, which she launches into over a building choir and it just… I cried. I won’t lie. Even with Moonrise’s narrative simplicity, there is still a lot of emotional weight packed in here. It was this moment - these two lines of hope and determination in the face of just, bottomless anguish - that created the character of Celestia as she is in my head, and how she appears in Agents of HEART. All of the weight of her experience just hits you in this one moment.

Not content with that, Moonrise builds further on this denouement of its story in “Scene 7: Harmony Restored”, which revisits much of the structure and melody of Harmony - same introduction, many of the same riffs, but something’s different now - all while Celestia pleads to her citizens to forgive Luna. She’s basically trying to convince everyone that the person who just tried to destroy the world isn’t really crazy please believe me, and it’s tragic. This culminates in the fully instrumented chorus version of the Harmony Restored motif, which is basically the ending of the story. Then we dip into a motif from Nightfall, the narrator gives a little aesop lesson to see us out, and we launch into the Harmony motif and another Harmony Restored chorus and wrap up with the Harmony motif again. Fin. The end. It’s very complete, and maybe has too much in the way of an ending. The narrator giving us a moral is a touch on the nose, and the second Harmony Restored chorus might be overkill, but it’s awesome so I’m not really going to argue. Power metal knows not what this “overkill” concept is.

Meanwhile, in Fall of an Empire, we get… “Epilogue: The Fall of the Shadow’s Veil”. The narrator takes over and tells us what happens after Heaven’s Fury, gives us some of Luna’s anguish, a little note of vain hope, and delivers a moral at the end. It’s not completely without art, the Heavy is the Crown motif finds its way in there, but it’s very heavy on tell and very light on show. The reason Moonrise ended so strongly despite rushing through the middle was that we were shown all the complexity and depth of Celestia’s experience as it happened. Maybe doing that for Luna at the end of Fall would have it run on too long, or be redundant - or maybe L-Train caught on that a full denouement song would make the similarity of the story beats too obvious - but what we’re left with makes the ending kind of sudden, like the budget ran out. It’s kind of a shame with how strong the rest of the album is.

There is one highlight though - remember Luna’s quiet little aside at the end of Regents of the Darkness? Where she talks about how she’s going to sweep aside his darkness and get him back? That’s Luna’s Daybreak. That’s her Harmony Restored. It’s in a different part of the story sure, and only two lines, but it fulfils that same function, where it’s this expression of hope in the face of loss. Unfortunately for her, we know how that turns out, which only makes it go on to reinforce the “Luna isn’t allowed to be happy” running theme of this universe.

Conclusion

Wow I rambled a lot I have lots of other things I need to do lemme hurry up

In conclusion, we see here that both of these albums, even in the ways that both of them show mastery of songwriting, instrumentation and storytelling through music, are basically following the same story anatomy. We are happy but things are not completely okay, Luna is happy and that’s terrible, Luna breaks everything, Luna gets upset and bad things happen, there’s a confrontation, and then wounded by the loss everyone goes back to their business.

It’s worth noting at this point, at the very end where nobody’s going to read it, that this isn’t too far from the structure of most rock operas. Many of them are tragedies of some sort or another. The structure being so similar isn’t even necessarily a bad thing - it’s a very compelling structure, and the second time around fleshed it out in ways that made it much better (even if it did slack on the ending a bit).

So ultimately, both of L-Train’s Rock Operas are Identical, and That’s Okay.

