The Soundtrack, Part 10

A vast circular stone labyrinth seen from directly above, rings of winding walls leading to a round chamber at its center.

Part 10 is OX’s story. Two songs, one at each end, and they couldn’t sound more different.

Master of Puppets – Scorched Earth Orchestra

I’m a firm believer that Master of Puppets is Metallica’s best song. If you had to explain the band to someone with one track, that’s the one. But Metallica guards its catalog closely, so I went looking for a cover.

Part 10 opens in the legendary labyrinth, the maze where the fabled Minotaur lives, so the cover needed to sound ancient. I wanted an orchestra. Apocalyptica’s version is good, but it didn’t have the epic scale I was hearing in my head. The Scorched Earth Orchestra version has it all: true to the original, huge in tone, and it moves with the action.

Breakers Roar – Sturgill Simpson

A Sailor’s Guide to Earth might be Sturgill Simpson’s masterpiece. I go back and forth between it and Sound & Fury. He wrote it as a handbook for his newborn son, and the tracks all run into one another like one long letter.

Breakers Roar may be the most melancholy song on it. It’s about the difference between the wounds that heal and the ones that don’t, about how tempting the deep dark water can be, and about finding your way back to shore anyway. It says yes, life is pain. Keep breathing. Keep moving.

That’s what the characters in the last scene of Part 10 have been doing for a very long time. They can survive almost anything. This scene shows you how they stay afloat.