This was an interesting one for sure. A tournament bracket made up of parody band names? What a fun thing for me to dissect! The irony of it being based on sports? Also fun!

The message being delivered by a kpop band with a song entitled “Test Me” is a confrontational one. Not only that, but the music video features easter eggs alluding to other rock bands, inviting what I’m sure some tradrockers would consider an unflattering comparison. It’s as if they’re saying, “Yes, we do follow in line with these bands and traditions, fight us!” and you know what? I respect that. It’s a ballsy move for them to put themselves on the same playing field as any of these artists, almost as if asking for a beat-down from sweaty metalheads. It’s okay, XDZ, they’re all just jealous you guys are pretty boys.

All these easter eggs are, of course, perfect fodder for this blog. Here we go!

First off we have Betallica. I do not underestimate the intelligence of my readers and am aware you probably have pieced together that this is Metallica. It beat out Radiohead’s in-universe counterpart, Radiofoot, in an epic take-down that has left Thom Yorke in shambles. Although these are two of the most successful and famous bands of all time, the competition isn’t that close considering in real life Metallica has a net worth estimated to be $1 billion (a little more than five times the estimate for Radiohead). Now, we can’t be sure if this reigns true in the Xdinary Heroes Cinematic Universe so take that with a grain of salt. Perhaps Betallica beat out Radiofoot with raw instrumentation (aka epic guitar solos) alone.

Next we have The Ordinary vs. Funs n’ Cozy. The Ordinary is kind of a hard one because every band under the sun starts with ‘the’. The other big clue here is the choice of the word ‘ordinary’. My first hypothesis was that this is The Who, just because they’re such a big name, but if we are going for the opposite of ordinary this band could easily be Misfits or The Kinks. Because of my background knowledge on merch for bands that I’ve seen the heroes wear, they seem partial to Misfits. My verdict is Misfits stand-in until proven otherwise. It goes without saying that Funs n’ Cozy are a stand-in for Guns n’ Roses. Coincidentally, XDZ’s most recent release “X-room” contains the lyric “days of guns and roses.” Funs n’ Cozy has got to be my favorite of these parody bands, and I will be streaming their breakout hit “Welcome to the Snuggle” every day until I die. Now that I think of it, “Sweet Child of Mine” already sounds like it could be fun and cozy, fuck. Anyway, Funs n’ Cozy taking the win is no real surprise as hard rock is much more popular than horrorpunk. Do I agree with it, though? No. Only one of these bands has “Angelfuck.”

BC/DE and Coolplay… Say it with me, readers! AC/DC and Coldplay. While the members have recommended songs by both of these bands on their respective Bubbles and in interviews, I’ve seen them sport a lot more AC/DC shirts than Coldplay. Actually, as of me writing this, I don’t think I’ve seen them wear a Coldplay shirt even once. What does Coldplay merch even look like? Whatever, alternate universe slightly warmer Coolplay lost the tournament anyway.

This last one was a bit of a doozy for me. Sisao… Oh, to have a brain fart like me. It’s literally just Oasis backwards, but I missed the forest for the trees. In totally unrelated news, I learned that “sisao” is the Cyrillic spelling сисао, which is the past participle of “sisati”, which hilariously means “to suck” in Croatian. This seemingly accidental insult on the Gallagher brothers sucking is incredibly funny. No notes. As for who beat them- Roboctopus2. Roboctopus2’s name is very reminiscent of Deadmau5, but their names seem to be where the similarities end. Instead, Roboctopus2 is the villain the boys face off against in their battle of the bands MV plot and appears to be a pretty cool original character. He plays instruments with his 8 arms, which is cool because it goes against an established speciesist trope in media. A harmful trope that has been called out in one of my favorite tweets.

So Xdinary Heroes go on to win the battle of the bands, obviously. It is their own music video, afterall. They’re not going to be the losers. But were there any other references in the music video for me to pick apart and note here?

And to finally close out the post, we have digging through the damn trash. Gaon stands in front of some rubbish bins for a split second shot that I have helpfully broken down above for all interested. I do think the weed Nirvana smiley face is legendary, while the funk you and “too old” stickers are pretty corny. Yet again, the staff just searched “rock band stickers” on Alibaba and went with it. Can I blame them? Not really, but I could outdo them for sure. Yay for Patti Smith, though!