YMMV / Ludo

• Awesome Music: With their eclectic and often theatrical musical style and some creatively bombastic subject matter, a lot of Ludo qualifies.
  • Broken Bride is a tingle-worthy listening experience in general, with some highlights being the positively rousing last chorus of "Save Our City" and the reprise of Part 1 at the climax of "The Lamb and the Dragon".
  • "Lake Pontchartrain" is essentially a Lovecraftian horror tale told through a tense and ever-buildingly spooky ska song. It is one hell of an experience to listen to.
  • "Cyborgs vs Robots" and "Skeletons on Parade" both contain some truly hard-hitting rocking and vocals which, in the case of the latter, escalate from a vibe and overall sound worthy of a piece of Creepy Jazz Music in a Danny Elfman musical.
• Complete Monster: King Simius from Broken Bride is the King of what remains of civilization After the End. Not satisfied with his power, he makes a Deal with the Devil to destroy the rest of the world in exchange for magic. He uses this dark magic to burn and boil the dead into zombies with the sole purpose of wiping out the rest of the world. When a little boy suggests fighting back against the horde, he uses this magic to Mind Rape the mayor into a Despair Event Horizon and kill himself in front of said boy. Simius is amused by this and all his other crimes, never showing remorse, and he uses his dying breaths to still try to destroy the world.
• Epileptic Trees: "The Horror of Our Love" was subject to a lot of this, mostly relating to certain supernatural romances filling up the bookshelves, until it got out of hand and Andrew told everyone that it was just a song about obsessive love, and to please stop arguing about Twilight in the comment section.
• Fridge Horror: "Lake Pontchartrain". There are two ways to interpret the song, both of which make its already creepy narrative even scarier when you think about them. One, the song may not really be describing a supernatural experience, but may be a crazy story spun by a young man being interviewed about the disappearance and possible murder of his friends to get off the hook for having done something to them himself, making it a Murder Ballad. Two, it may be a story so crazy it must be true - but that the song's final lines strongly imply the narrator isn't having much luck getting people to believe. And Missouri and Louisiana (where he and his group hail from and where the song takes place, respectively) still have the death penalty. Should the narrator be convicted for the murder of his friends, he'll likely be executed. He and his friends all dying would leave no one to tell the tale of what happened at the lake, leaving it free to kill even more.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • "Anything for You" is adorable, a whimsical yet peaceful and heartfelt song about how whatever adventure and fortune the narrator's life could bring them, the person they love would still far and away be the best part of it all.
  • The protagonist's motivations throughout the entire Broken Bride album. He spends 15 years defying physics to build a time machine, not for fame, not for profit, but to bring back his deceased wife.
  • A real life example with the birth of Andrew's kid.
  • "All the Stars in Texas," in an Even Evil Has Loved Ones kinda way. Yeah, they're thieves, but they seem to genuinely love each other.
• Ho Yay: A video in their tour blog features them all crossdressing. At one point, Matt Palermo strokes Andrew's behind. Andrew's only reaction is to tell him to not stop, and Andrew in general has a tendency to get up to a lot of this; seems like he can't go a single tour diary without making out with a bandmate's elbow onstage, or just standing around holding onto their pelvic bones..."really hard".
• Misaimed Fandom: "The Horror of Our Love" is often taken painfully literally as a song about stalking, murder, mutilation, and even rape, cannibalism, and/or necrophilia, and is used and referenced accordingly - but the intended subject matter, according to Andrew Volpe himself, is something much more mundane and, he stresses, consensual than that: how overpoweringly intense it can feel to be in love with or desire an intimate relationship with someone. In Andrew's own words:
  "The Horror of Our Love" is not about violence or gore. Violence does not involve consent, but actually necessitates that the destruction be unwanted, while gore is a gratuitous and unceremonious exploitation of the body's component parts, particularly the insides. The only reason I consider the song to be "The HORROR of Our Love" is because death (or compromising the structural integrity of someone's body) is considered horrifying to most people. Here though, that "horror" is welcome. [. . .] This song is about profoundly loving (or lusting after) someone so overflowingly that it devastates you. Where your physical person cannot possibly contain your emotion, but that emotion still begs for physical expression. And even still, no affection or act or word can satisfy it. Climbing a mountain, crossing an ocean, building a palace - they don't do justice to the lengths to which you would go to be with that person. Kissing, touching, making love, jigsawing your parts together - none of it comes close to closing that horribly gaping divide that separates any one person from any other. [. . .] Salvador Dali once said of his true love: "I love Gala so much, if she dies, I will eat her." I understand feeling that intensely for someone. That inspired me to write this song. I - like you and everyone else - am alone. And it's all I can do to try and reach a little further through the veil." [1]
• Moment of Awesome:
  • One tour video shows them on a day off, building an igloo. Once they're finished, long after the sun's set, they get their instruments and play a song in it.
  Matt: Why did we do this today?
  Andrew: Why didn't we do this every day?
  • In the final lines of "Rotten Town" (which involves a chorus of voices singing the lyrics in a round, already Awesome Music material alone), Andrew Volpe holds one last note for a total of 24 seconds. He must breathe through his ears.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "The Horror of Our Love", for its twisted imagery wrapped up in an easily Yandere-esque vibe.
  • "Lake Pontchartrain". Vengeful, murderous, crawfish ghosts who commandeer radio signals and forces of nature to trick you into driving to your watery doom? Scary as shit. And when you realize the Fridge Horror aspect...
  • "Save Our City" includes a verse by the zombies, fallen soldiers of King Simius now cursed to crave the flesh of the countrymen they fell to protect, while "The Lamb and the Dragon" describes the dying Earth.
• Signature Song: Either "Love Me Dead" or "The Horror of Our Love." The former is their only song to ever chart, so more people have heard it, but the latter is probably their most popular among their fans, and it's picked up a niche following from being used in fanvids and the like.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel:
  • "Anything For You." A sweet, simple song about how no treasure in the world can compare to the one you love most.
  • Appropriately enough, "Skeleton's Lullaby," which closes out Prepare the Preparations. It's very short, but the gentleness makes it very soothing.
    I wish that we could stay here, I wish with all my heart.
    But to the earth we've been committed, and now we must depart.
    Goodnight...''
  • "Streetlights" is a love song about a summer evening rendezvous and subsequent night spent with a partner. There is no better word to describe the song than warm, the atmosphere is utterly romantic, and the lyrics and delivery do justice to the strong and lovely nature of the feelings behind such a slice-of-life experience.
    Now there are no words -
    Only the glow in our wires
    And so we will be
    You turn slow to me
    Our lips at the sun...
    (I'll never leave you)
    The hills are on fire...
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Morning in May". The time traveler finally gets to see his wife again, and treasure the experience of waking up next to her... and choose to join her when she goes out for the day, knowing about the upcoming accident that'll kill her while having accepted his inability to prevent it.
  • "I'll Never Be Lonely Again". A melancholy oldie-style song from the point of view of a young man looking to the stars he kissed a past flame under, thinking that while they ended up drifting apart and she must be with someone else now, he can't be too alone anymore thinking of those stars...
  • "Safe in the Dark". Tim Ferrell's sister commented on a video with this: "This song is about when our dad passed away. Its not about vampires or werewolfs or boyfriends or bandmemebers dying. Its about when our dad first got sick with MG and how we dealt with it."
  • "Overdone" is an absolutely miserable tune about depression, isolation, and self-loathing, with the narrator's bitterness over how inescapable their mental state seems to any degree without medication exacerbated by a perceived Hope Spot in a new love and in feeling all the more estranged from others by seeing them happy. It may come across as melodramatic if you're not in the mood for it or if the themes are hard for you to engage with, but if you're listening to it in a place where you can relate, it's enough to leave a person needing to lie down for a while.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: How some fans are reacting to Andrew's side project, Hot Problems, because he's writing pop songs rather than a second rock opera.