The Living Tombstone (TLT) is an electronic rock band and YouTube channel formed in 2011 by Israeli music producer Yoav Landau and later joined by American singer Sam Haft as a musical duo. The group is notable for their songs and music videos based on video games and pop culture media, such as the Five Nights at Freddy's series, Overwatch, and My Little Pony, as well as original music. They have released one studio album, Zero One (2020), with a second studio album expected to be released in early 2025 titled Rust.
Several of their songs have garnered online popularity, and they have been credited with spawning various internet memes. In addition to their music videos, they have created music for the video games In Sound Mind, Beat Saber, and have created the video game AudioClash: Battle of the Bands. Music publication NME has referred to them as "the internet's biggest gaming band".[note 1]
Career
Background
The Living Tombstone was founded by Landau in 2011 as both a YouTube channel and a musical project.[2][3] Landau, a native of Israel,[3] was involved in the online fan community of the media franchise My Little Pony, where he created a remix of one of the songs featured on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.[2][3] After the remix garnered several thousand views, Landau created more songs of the franchise before eventually shifting his focus to various video game communities, creating songs based on video games.[2][4]
Five years after forming The Living Tombstone, Landau moved to the United States where he met vocalist Sam Haft.[2][3] Haft had previously been involved with other musical projects in the past, such as the comedic music group Sam & Bill.[3] Landau and Haft sent each other their songs before eventually collaborating on music, with Haft becoming an official member of The Living Tombstone.[3] The pair wrote songs such as a remix of Super Mario Odyssey's "Jump Up Superstar" in which Haft contributed backing vocals, and the original track "My Ordinary Life" which was cited by LA Weekly as their most popular song.[3] Both Landau and Haft worked on the worldbuilding for The Living Tombstone, including the characters, story, and lore surrounding the group's music and videos.[2][3] The attention their music received online caused Warner Music to notice the band, and the record label signed The Living Tombstone.[2]
Content and musical style
Logo used from 2014 to 2020
The Living Tombstone's content consists of both original music and homages to various video games and pop culture media, several of which became popular online.[2] One of the group's first video game-related videos was a trilogy of songs for the first three games in the Five Nights at Freddy's series.[2][5] The trilogy went viral on YouTube with each song accumulating hundreds of millions of views;[5] the first video in the series reached over 68 million views by 2016.[6]Houston Press listed the trilogy as one of the best songs based on the horror game.[5] The trilogy's success led the band to develop a cult following amongst the game's fandom. Rolling Stone credited the band with launching a subgenre of Five Nights at Freddy's themed music inspired by hyper-pop.[7] The first song was later used for the 2023 film adaptation in the credits.[8] Shortly before the film's release, the band released a gothic remix of the first song.[9] After the film's release, the song reached the top 5 of Billboard's Dance/Electronic Songs chart, peaking at #4, previously only charting on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart.[10]
In 2018, The Living Tombstone's song based on the hero shooter game Overwatch, No Mercy, went viral on social media.[11][12][13] Originally released as an animated video from YouTube channel Mashed in January 2017,[12] the song describes two players on the same team arguing about their choice of characters and its contributions to the team's repeated losses, mainly due to the lack of a support character in the team.[note 2] The song features the refrain "I'm Already Tracer," which became the subject of numerous videos made on social media platform TikTok in which users recorded themselves lip-synching to the song.[11][12][13] The meme attracted negative attention as it was the subject of various compilations on social media. Outlets such as Kotaku, Polygon and The Daily Dot noted that such compilations soon became rooted in misogyny, with comments disparaging those who created such videos miming to the song alongside mocking women who play video games in general.[11][12][13]
Other songs of theirs that have become viral include their remix of various My Little Pony songs[15][16] and a remix of "Spooky Scary Skeletons".[17][18] In 2012, The Living Tombstone remixed the song "Discord" from the Eurobeat producer Odyssey/Eurobeat Brony, which accumulated over 40 million views on YouTube and was used in over 500,000 videos on TikTok in 2021.[15] In 2013, Landau made a remix of Andrew Gold's 1996 song "Spooky, Scary Skeletons," which garnered over 90 million views on YouTube.[17] The remix was also listed by The Daily Dot as one of the most popular songs of 2019 on TikTok,[18] and as one of the best Halloween songs by USA Today.[19]
The group has one studio album, Zero One, released on September 4, 2020. In anticipation for the album, a CG-based music video for their song "Chosen" was released, created by the studio The-Artery during the COVID-19 pandemic.[20][21] Their second studio album, Rust, initially being announced for a 2024 release, is expected to release in early 2025.[22][23]
Game development
The Living Tombstone has also contributed music for video games. In 2021, the band created the soundtrack for the indie horror game In Sound Mind from Israeli game studio We Create Stuff.[24][25][26] Their contributions to the soundtrack were praised alongside the game, with several outlets noting that the poignant and reserved compositions added to the dark atmosphere of the game.[25][26][27] The same year, The Living Tombstone collaborated with game studio Big Boat Interactive to create the music-based strategy game AudioClash: Battle of the Bands.[28][29][30] Described as an amalgam of various rhythm games, the role-playing gamesPokémon and Dota and the Scott Pilgrim comics, the gameplay consists of assembling a group of musician characters to compete against rival bands.[2][30] The game was released on Steam in early access in late 2021.[30][31] The group also contributed a DLC track to the 2019 rhythm game Beat Saber,[32] as well as some music for the 2010 Half-Life 2 Mod Nightmare House 2 and the soundtrack for its upcoming remake Nightmare House: Reimagined releasing in 2025.[33][34]
"Croc Main Theme (Living Tombstone Remasterful Remix)
Justin Scharvona, Karin Griffin, Martin Gwynn Jones
Non-album singles
Songwriting and production credits
Title
Artist
Year
Album
Credits
"Rooftop"
Sam Haft
2022
Bad Times EP
Songwriter, Producer
"Grow Up"
Sam Haft, CG5
2023
"Kitty"
Band of Silver
Archduke
Songwriter
"Archduke"
"2D"
2024
Non-album singles
"If This Is A Game"
Notes
^"When someone mentions 'passionate' online communities in 2021, you may find yourself recoiling in horror. Yet, as the calming smiles of Yoav Landau and Sam Haft populate my Zoom window, I'm reminded of the early 2000s – and friendlier fandoms. Listening to the excitable duo reminisce about their formative years, it's hard not to think that these very online pals could be any message-board-lurking '90s kids. Except they're not – they're the internet's biggest gaming band".[2]
^ In Overwatch, a player may only choose one hero character in the team at a time.[13] Support characters generally serve the role of healing other characters in the game,[13][14] and have been described as "a role male players usually assign to women (or assume that women prefer)" according to Polygon.[12]
^ abEdwards, Lewis Noke (July 15, 2023). "Gear Talks: Sam Haft". Mixdown Magazine. Archived from the original on December 23, 2023. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
