YMMV / Celldweller

• Awesome Music: Celldweller owes its status as the Ensemble Dark Horse of Nu Metal and Industrial Metal to the sheer awesomeness of a huge majority of the project's output. The project's contributions to the Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) soundtrack, with "One Good Reason" and "Shapeshifter", are perhaps the most well-known among metalheads, among many others. Dead Rising 2 had most of its soundtrack done by Celldweller ("Own Little World" in particular stands out), and even Forza had a song by them, "Solaris", a dark ambient instrumental, which is REALLY awesome.
  • "Afraid This Time" may be one of the best metal ballads ever recorded.
  • Along with Atlas Plug, Celldweller is now producing the music for the 3rd season of Killer Instinct, and the four tracks previewed thus far (Rash, Kim Wu, Arbiter, and Tusk's themes) have been received with much praise from the fandom.
• Broken Base: There is a healthy amount of fans that like both the old and the new Celldweller, but there is also a very vocal part of the fanbase still waiting for another album like the self-titled debut. Starting to incorporate electronic elements more heavily turned a portion of the fanbase off, and he was even accused of selling out when he started doing dubstep. It seems some naysayers have come around with End of an Empire, though.
  • His most recent album, Offworld, has also earned somewhat mixed reception. Not for the Lighter and Softer direction, but for the fact that only half the songs are originals, while the rest are either remixes of Circle Of Dust and Scandroid material, or covers of other artists.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: He's one of the very few Nu Metal artists that isn't either considered a Guilty Pleasure for or completely despised by Metal-Heads everywhere. Many of them call him, "Linkin Park if they had more talent."
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the many abandoned projects during the Wish Upon a Blackstar era was a music video... for "I Can't Wait".
• Ho Yay: Hilariously Subverted. In a Ustream session, one chat member asked him if he bummed^* being a British slang term for anal sex Bret. He avoided the question completely and just rambled on about how he used to watch Monty Python and how he wishes he was British.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Since the mid-2000s some very vocal fans have begun complaining about the proliferation of his music in numerous video game and motion picture productions.
• More Popular Spin Off: From Circle of Dust, to the point where most of their fans started off listening to Celldweller.
  • Klayton restarting Circle of Dust may change this, though.
• Narm Charm: "Heart On", basically one of those Silly Love Songs... albeit given the typical aggressive industrial rock edge Klayton's known for. On paper it sounds ridiculous, but the actual song is not only rather catchy, it still manages to achieve the intended effect.
  • "Good L_ck (Yo_'re F_cked)" also counts, being a massive "The Reason You Suck" Speech in music form, with Klayton unleashing an unrelenting barrage of lyrics that make it clear whoever wronged him is going to really suffer when that retribution arrives. The lyrics are somewhat silly, but don't detract from the sheer RAGE in them.
• Never Live It Down: Since Wish Upon a Blackstar, people don't exactly trust him when it comes to releasing new music... or videos... or anything, for that matter.
  • SVH Vol. 3 certainly isn't helping. Although he did finally release it in September 2016.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Tainted". Especially given how easily it could be interpreted a certain way...
  • "One Good Reason", a Sanity Slippage Song with ten times more Rage Breaking Point than usual. Fittingly, it's also one of the heaviest songs in his discography (as Celldweller, at least).
  • The promotional video for End of an Empire: Love; the heart logo is drawn on a console... with blood.
  • The "alt_Human" video for Circle of Dust is filled with shots of dead animals, surgical procedures, blood and circuitry. The song itself is a critique of genetic modification.
    • Hell, Machines of our Disgrace as a whole is pretty creepy, covering themes such as body augmentation, chemical warfare, surveillance, our dependence on technology, etc.
  • "The Angel of iO", one of the few vocal tracks from SVH Vol. 1. You get the impression that the first half was meant for a horror movie. Towards the beginning and end, parts of the track are slightly out of sync, and for the first half, the synths and vocals are kinda muffled, as if it's underwater or playing through a wall.
  • "The Last Firstborn".
• Signature Song: "Shapeshifter" stands out even for non-fans, due to being featured in Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Outside of that, fans deem either "Switchback", "Own Little World", "Eon", "Unshakeable", or "End of an Empire" as this.
• Tearjerker: "Against the Tide", "One Good Reason", "Fadeaway", "Precious One", "Just Like You"... just to name a few.
  • "Tainted"... just... oh, god...
  "This time she finally feels like she's coming home..."
  • The implied ending of End of an Empire; The Emperor is dead, the people's revolt leaves Atiria in ruins, and what's left has been marked for death by pretty much every deity in the universe.
  • "The Great Divide". Although, sonically, it's Sweet Dreams Fuel, lyrically?
  It's always the same / Mourn for a life we can never reclaim
  As time drifts away / We search for the reasons we can't make it stay
• Vindicated by History: His hatedom from the mid-2000s over his popularity has died down and he has become well-respected after the heavy music fandom turned its sights on other genres.

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