Music / Negative Øhio

Gigakoops and Nightmare Lyre

Influences:

• Lightning Bolt, Shining (Norway), Akira Yamaoka, Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Cattle Decapitation, Devin Townsend, Aphex Twin, Captain Beefheart, Daft Punk, Death Grips, Buckethead, Ministry, iwrestledabearonce, Giraffes? Giraffes!, Lasse Marhaug, NXP, Strangerous

Negative Øhio (pronounced "Negative Uhhio") is a Norwegian-American Avant-Garde Metal project formed by musicians Gigakoops and Nightmare Lyre. Their first single released in 2018, and since then have put out several full albums.

It began as a purely Noise and Dark Ambient project, before quickly evolving into highly aggressive and chaotic compositions, often with a strong emphasis on distorted bass drums, improvised solos and tons of sampling.

They also have extensive, just for fun, lore attached to their music, which is documented on their Fandom wiki.

Discography

Albums

• Metal is Girly and Gay (And That​'​s Okay) (2019)
• Never Mind The Gap (2020)
• Welcome to Cuddle Country, Pardner! (2022)
• There Is a Time and Place for Everything, So It​'​s Time for an Amputation (2023)

EPs

• THE TRILOGY (2018)
• There Are No Oceans In Ohio (2018)
• Real Rockers Wear G​-​Strings (2019)
• Divine Infinite Love Flourishes (2020)
• You Can't Spell "Art" Without "Mozart" (2021)
• The Death ov Cletus the Parrot (2022)

Remix Albums

• Unplugged Vol. 1: The Most Grating Hits (2019)
• Downtuned Vol. 1: The Drone reMixes (2020)
• UwU TRVE KVLT NORWEGIAN NIGHTCORE UwU (2021)
• Watered​-​Down Grind for The Streaming Machine (2023)

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There are no tropes in Ohio, but there are some here:

The Band

• Anonymous Band: Both Gigakoops and Nightmare Lyre prefer to keep their private lives off the internet, only using their Stage Names on their releases and their fursonas for all band pictures.
• Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut: Parodied with the band name; the "Ø" is actually pronounced like the Norwegian letter instead of like an O.
• Lead Bassist: Gigakoops uses her bass not only for the bass parts, but also for a majority of "guitar" parts in their Metal material, and even for harsh noise at times by combining multiple effects and a pitch pedal.
• Lead Drummer: Nightmare Lyre is a percussionist and does a majority of live drums on their recordings; mostly drum solos.
• Metal Band Mascot: Their own fursonas Lizzy and Lyra is essentially a form of this.
• Vocal Tag Team: Both members of the band usually perform vocals on any tracks containing them, and they have no consistent lead vocalist between songs.

The Music

• A Cappella: "The Horrible Voice Witch" is almost entierly composed of vocal samples.
• Artistic License – Music: The music video for "I Must Count My Blessings" does this intentionally as part of its Stylistic Suck.
• Avant-Garde Metal: A lot of their output falls into this, often with a heavy dose of Genre Mashup and/or Genre-Busting.
• Big Rock Ending: "Marinecore" ends in one. "Waterboarding School" is entirely a big rock ending.
• Boléro Effect: "Kvifor er Korleis? Korleis er Kvifor?" is a full song example of this.
• Car Fu: "Recreational Roadkill" is all about this
• Careful with That Axe: Gigakoops is fond of doing this on occasion, such as in "Transgender Lucifer" right as the song descends into pure chaos.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The breakdown in "The Horrible Voice Witch".
• Concept Album: Welcome To Cuddle Country, Pardner! is one about having a series of very strange dreams. It is also a Distinct Double Album, with part 2 having its own listing and unique album cover on streaming services.
• Cover Version: They have done several, including "Killing in the Name", "Crush Crush Crush", and the Norwegian old school Punk song "B​æ​rre på j​æ​vel" by Svartedauen.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The moral of the story in "The Horrible Voice Witch", where a friendly witch is the victim of a Witch Hunt due to her harsh voice.
• Depraved Dentist:
  • "Why Won​'​t Anyone Believe That My Teeth Need to Come Out?" is a instrumental meant to invoke the feeling of this, complete with an unsettling music video showing a uncanny drawn monster dentist walking closer and closer to the camera.
  • The lyrics of "Gorge Washington" are this in spirit.
• Dramatic Timpani: Used in the intro to "Transgender Lucifer". It also appears in "Mourning Wood", being used as a sound cue to indicate the firing of nuclear missiles.
• Epic Rocking:
  • "Your Dad's So Hot, We Fucked Him" is 34 minutes and 34 seconds long, taking up about half of the runtime of their Never Mind The Gap album by itself.
  • "The Swaggerific Bones of Cletus the Parrot" also clocks in at a respectable 9 minutes and 26 seconds.
• Everything Is an Instrument: Things they have used as an instrument include, but is not limited to; a popcorn bowl, gym equipment, a microwave oven, chains, a bedframe, measuring tape, a grill, video game controllers and empty soda cans.
• Fanservice: Their album Welcome to Cuddle Country, Pardner! has a anthropomorphic ox-man with a dad bod on the cover, wearing a skimpy vest and a belt that says "Stud Muffin" on the buckle.
• Gorn:
  • Some of their Grindcore songs have lyrics like this, unsurprisingly. "Gorge Washington" for example is a nice little tune about doing unspeakable things to the teeth of politicians.
  • "ENEMA NOSEBLEED"
• Green Aesop: "everybody who built the carpal tunnel went blind afterwards."... kinda.
• Grindcore: They have several songs that fits in this genre, particularly of the Cybergrind, Noisegrind and Deathgrind varieties.
• Hardcore Techno: A big influence on a lot of their output, particularly Digital Hardcore, Speedcore and at times Denpa.
• Harsh Vocals: Often used in their heavier songs.
• Hell Is That Noise: Their Dark Ambient and Noise songs tend to invoke this.
• Hidden Track: They tend to treat the last tracks on their albums like this. The physical edition of Never Mind The Gap even just lists the final songs as [redacted] instead of their actual titles.
• Idiosyncratic Album Theming:
  • Their full albums either have 13 or 26 tracks.
  • They also tend to have a track towards the very end that is a Harsh Noise collage of all the other songs on the album.
• Incredibly Long Note: The epic Metal scream in "Transgender Lucifer" could qualify as this.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: With their love for harsh vocals and overwhelming noise, this happens a lot.
• Industrial Metal: Songs like "Transgender Lucifer" and "The Horrible Voice Witch" are this.
• Kazoos Mean Silliness: "There Are No Oceans In Ohio" is sung entirely through a kazoo.
• Last Note Hilarity: The otherwise dark and foreboding "Nark Horse & Dope Turtle" suddenly ends with a happy fanfare, along with a sample of a man saying "dead as a dodo".
• Limited Lyrics Song: "Child Murderer! (I Always Knew It Would Come To This)" only has the phrase "The killer is out there" repeated over and over again.
• List Song: "There Are No Oceans In Ohio" is a song about all the states and countries that have better surfing conditions than Ohio does. All examples listed are actually landlocked and as such probably bad surfing spots.
• Loudness War: Their first few singles avoided this, though with their move into combining Metal and Noise more often they now deliberately comit loudness war crimes on the regular.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Lavender Is Known for Its Relaxing Qualities", as the title indicates, have lyrics about how to relax and achieve mindfulness. The music itself, however...
• Metal Scream: They've used all 4 types in various ways, though Type 2 and Type 3 ones are their bread and butter when it comes to this.
• Miniscule Rocking: Their Grindcore album "There Is a Time and Place for Everything, So It​'​s Time for an Amputation" has no songs over 30 seconds in lenght, with most of them being around or less than 10 seconds. The whole 26-song album clocks in at 5 minutes and 34 seconds.
• Nightcore: Their remix album UwU TRVE KVLT NORWEGIAN NIGHTCORE UwU is this, but primarily for Metal.
• Nose Nuggets: "Gray's Anatomically Incorrect" has this charming line:
  "Though beware, if they dig for gold
  Pickaxes and drills burrow into your flesh
  Before long, your nose starts to bleed"
• Pooping Food: "Septic Organ Failure (Eat Shit and Die)" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It is also a biting Satire about alternative medicine.
• Protest Song: Several. "Transgender Lucifer", "Search History Repeats Itself", "I Think, Therefore I Am Right" and "now we must continue the exciting adventure of politics." are the most overt ones, with many others using satire and sarcasm to make a point instead.
• Queercore: Both members are trans women, and as such they sometimes write about stuff relating to that. The best example is probably "Transgender Lucifer".
• Quirky Ukulele: Subverted with Nightmare Lyre, who uses an electric baritone uke for Metal leads and harsh noise. None of their songs are particularly twee.
• Refuge in Audacity: If their lyrics doesn't do it, you can bet the music itself will fit the bill most of the time.
• Sampling: Several of their song samples public domain media, such as classical works or old infomercials. Some good examples are "I'm Hungry and Covered In Blood (Just Another Tuesday Night)", "Nark Horse & Dope Turtle" and the "You Can't Spell "Art" Without "Mozart"" EP.
• Scatting: "Your Dad's So Hot, We Fucked Him" somehow combines this with Harsh Vocals.
• Self-Deprecation: The song title "Someone Was Wrong On the Internet, and I Need to Prove Them Right".
• Sensory Abuse: A lot of their songs are made to be this. "Lavender Is Known for Its Relaxing Qualities" and "Real Rockers Wear G-Strings" are good examples.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: Used in their nightmarish soundscape entitled "Why Won​'​t Anyone Believe That My Teeth Need to Come Out?", with a recording of a chain being scraped up against itself.
• Take That!:
  • "Real Rockers Wear G-Strings" is one to music elitists as a whole, particularly of the Jazz snob and Metal gatekeeper variety.
  • The music video for "I Must Count My Blessings" to Pop music video clichés of the 2010's, particularly shoehorned in 80's nostalgia.
  • "It's Time for Allen's Woody to Say Timber (Cut His Dick Off)"
• Unplugged Version: Done ironically with "Unplugged Vol. 1: The Most Grating Hits", which is just several of their songs with all the distortion and electronic elements removed for massive Stylistic Suck.

The Lore

• All Witches Have Cats: Belinda the Voice Witch has a tiny cat, named Ms. Whiskers.
• Cult: The Church of Endless Hunger, a death cult that bakes people into pancakes.
• Detective Animal: The fish detective, Båtbob Skreimann, who is a fish and a private detective.
• MacGuffin: The legendary fiskelefse, an artifact said to allow people to travel between timelines.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The Dentist, who have *teeth for eyes*.
• One-Joke Fake Show: The Transgender Lucifer TV-show in the Stickman timeline for the first 7 seasons, before Jumping the Shark and becoming even worse.
• Rule of Funny: All of their lore is made with this in mind, and is deliberately not meant to make a lick of sense.
• The Multiverse: The band's lore spans across 4 different timelines:
  • Our timeline: Basically real life, but with Funny Animal people.
  • The stickman timeline: A universe where humanity has evolved to become two-dimensional stick people.
  • The mirror timeline: A Bizarro Universe to the main timeline.
  • The abysses: A cursed space outside of the normal timelines, said to harbor dark beings beyond our comprehension.