Industrial Band Accuses Final Fantasy XIV Composer of Plagiarism; Square Enix Denies Claims

With the release of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn‘s patch 2.0 “The Gears of Change,” Square Enix added the Containment Bay S1T7 instanced fight, prompting players to fight the evil Sephirot (not that Sephirot), and apparently Industrial Metal/Rock band Powerman 5000 has taken issue quite vehemently with one of the songs, accusing Square Enix’ prolific composer Masayoshi Soken of plagiarism.

[DarkOcelet]

PM5K are so dumb if they think this is a Rip-Off LOL!

They are so different from each other and its very noticeable. If they cant hear the difference then they have a hearing problem.

[Hoffmann]

They sound exactly the same

[DarkOcelet]

How on Earth do they sound the same? There is a small similarity in the beginning, that is it.

[Abriael]

I suggest checking those ears mate. hearing problems are better taken early.

[Harkins1721]

There's only so many voices.

[Vengeance1138]

Powerman should easily win this one, this is a total rip off.

[rdgneoz3]

Read the article, they have a comment by a musician on there that is a good read:

"The songs are as “Similar” to eachother as both are similar to all “Nu Metal” and “Grunge” released since 2001.
The drum track? Different tempo, different instruments, different pattern, different beat. PM5K sticks to the 4×4 pattern of Kick | HiHat | Kick+Snare | Hihat | Variating every so often but very little. and the XIV track seems to ignore anything not producing bass for most of it, using more loose and open hats. sometimes at 4×4 sometimes 2×2 sometimes otherwise.
The guitar? The only similarity if you can even call it that is the 2 chord progression (lol)
The intros? XIV is more bass, PM5K is more treble.
The vocals? XIV is more lower range hz and spread out, PM5K is more higher range and closer together with screaming, the only words the two songs share in common are “World’s” “Taking over” nothing else.
The song overall is a different tempo, the XIV track is deeper and has more of an industrial feel to it."

If you don't listen to the actual lyrics and beat, they might sound similar because they're from the same genre, "industrial metal/rock". It's like saying all rap sounds the same or all country sounds the same.

[Abriael]

Not even close.

[ZerobyZero]

They don't sound the same at all

[mr.selfdestruct]

its sounds similar sure. I would be grateful if I were the band it's getting people talking about them again. Maybe they should use that to make more music cause they have been absent from anyone's thoughts for forever now.

[FBNS]

The ff song sounds like it's trying to be pm5k so hard. To the point the vocal similarities are a bit too close. Listen to the ff song... It sounds as if they were trying to be them. If you weren't told it wasn't powerman you probably would have assumed so.

It also sounds like the ff singer just didn't have the power to do what spider does. The damn melody for the lyrics sounds almost completely identical through opening and chorus to boot.