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The Living Tombstone (Music)
Yoav Landau at work.

The Living Tombstone is an Israeli-American YouTube-based electronic music project formed in 2011 by Yoav Landau (born April 4, 1992), a musician from Tel Aviv, Israel, who eventually moved to Los Angeles and relocated the project there in 2016 during its rise in popularity. Landau was the only member of the project for the first few years, but he was later joined in 2017 by American singer Sam Haft (born 1990), who was initially a collaborator of Landau whom he started working with in 2016 before officially becoming part of The Living Tombstone. For that reason, the project is most accurately described as a band.

The project's unique musical style combines bouncy, circus-like instrumentation with dirty, growling basslines. Through the project, Landau is mostly known for producing remixes and fan music for various media, including Five Nights at Freddy's, Undertale, and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. He has also done a few original songs, such as "Cut the Cord", "My Ordinary Life", and the zero_one and Rust series of songs that were later compiled under the band's first and second full-length albums of the same names, in addition to composing the OST for In Sound Mind (which Sam also worked on as a minor writer). From 2024 onwards, the band also goes on a short live concert tour each year.

During Landau's time producing content for the Friendship is Magic fandom, The Living Tombstone was arguably considered the face of the fan-music scene, but Landau later branched out and started making songs about other subjects, starting with a song about Five Nights at Freddy's 1, simply titled "Five Nights at Freddy's", that went viral and effectively turned him into a YouTube celebrity. While The Living Tombstone was already popular before releasing this song, "Five Nights at Freddy's" was a major tipping point for the project's YouTube channel in terms of popularity, and its lyrics video nowadays stands as the channel's most watched video (as well as the most watched video related to FNaF on YouTube) with over 317 million views.

Landau is also notable for providing music for the fifth installment of TomSka's asdfmovie series, as well as the TomSka-directed Eddsworld episode "Fun Dead". Meanwhile, Haft is also known for being one of the principal soundtrack composers of the Hellaverse, with Landau later giving his own contributions for various tracks in the Helluva Boss episode "Sinsmas". Notably, The Living Tombstone themselves have made their own fan song for the Hellaverse, "Alastor's Game", and an official remix of the song "Poison" from Hazbin Hotel.

The Living Tombstone's remix of EurobeatBrony's "Discord" was also available as a downloadable track on the Rock Band Network, but has since been delisted.


Album Discography:

  • Studio albums
    • zero_one (2020)
    • Rust (2025)
  • Live albums
    • Live in '25 (2026)
  • Compilation albums
    • Tombstone Remixes (2013)
    • zero_one:reloaded (2021)

The Living Tombstone's songs contain examples of:

  • AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: "Alastor's Game" pronounces "cursed" as "curse-ed" to rhyme with "thirsted".
  • Adaptational Badass: In the end-of-night minigames of Five Nights at Freddy's 3, William Afton takes advantage of the safe room preventing the animatronics from entering to ambush them. In "Die in a Fire", a song retelling the minigames, William doesn't use the safe room; instead, he just runs at Freddy from behind from a hallway. For the animatronics, he doesn't even try to ambush them, just waiting outside the safe room for them to find him. Also unlike the game, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy gang up on William. The end result is the same as the game.
  • Adaptation Distillation: "Sister Hate" (more or less) sums up the entirety of "Sistershooves Social" in just over 3 minutes.
  • Adorkable: invokedIn universe; Louise the Lab Rat discusses the trope right in the lyrics.
    Louise the lab rat, Louise the lab rat, There's nothing as adorkable as Louise the lab rat.
  • After the End: "September" is set in a post-apocalyptic version of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic world.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The robots in "Five Nights at Freddy's" simply want you to come play with them...
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: In universe, he gives one for Pikachu in "Pikachu's Lament" (Blue and Red): loving companion to Ash, or Pokémon serial killer with daddy issues?
  • Ambiguously Brown: Haru from "Sunburn" seams to be this, she could possibly be mixed raced Japanese.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Plenty of the endings in the zero_one era of music videos have this in some form or another.
    • "Sunburn": Haru in her school uniform sees what looks to be herself with her biker outfit drinking out of a drink box looking up. It isn't clear if it's her wishing to be there with Hina and her gang or if it's after she joins the gang looking back on how far she's come.
    • "Love I Need": The music video book ends the same Crypt of the NecroDancer style of Skull Guy sleeping with his sword on the ground his his health meter low from the very beginning. It’s not clear if the games he cycled through really happened or were merely just a dream from being idle for who knows how long.
    • The titular "Yumbo Bear" doesn't really seem to have much reason to come to life one day after a rougher-than-average play session to attack/kill its child owner. It just sort of becomes a ghoulish monster with no real damage or indication it was alive beforehand. Was it always this way? Did it become possessed?
  • And I Must Scream: "Chosen" implies this for the tombsonas in general and zero_one(or rather the human it merged with) in particular. In one shot zero_one is clutching his head in panic accompanied by the line "Let me out" repeatedly sounding louder and more desperate.
    • "Animal" seems to be a more blatant example this with descriptions of mind control and body snatching in the lyrics of the song itself.
  • Arc Words: For the album zero_one, "Let me out." Applied to both the symbiotes themselves, being ageless personifications of progress and potential, and to the less willing hosts among the group.
  • Art-Style Dissonance: The music video of the remix for Savlonic's ''Enoch'' is done by Kévin "kéké" Gemin, known for making animations using Funny Animals animated in Flipnote Studio. The story in said music video is about a regretful killer trying to come in terms with what he's done.
  • The Atoner: "Enoch" by Savlonic (remixed by Landau) is a song about realizing that even though you've made mistakes in the past, it's never too late to change for the better and make things right. This is also reflected in the song's video, in which the bear with the hat, realizing that his actions have resulted in both the death of an innocent bunny and the loss of his own innocent simple life, resolutely walks back into town and turns himself over to the police.
  • Ax-Crazy: Run, Shoot, Kill... and Cry features one. Because it's based off the incredibly dark Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons fanfic, this is unsurprising.
  • Bait-and-Switch: "My Ordinary Life" starts as the singer equivalent of a Boastful Rap, but later verses seem to suggest that the song is being narrated by a drug-addicted washed-out celebrity who uses this boastful attitude to compensate for personal problems.
  • Bait-and-Switch Comment: "Sister Hate" has one. Sweetie Belle says that Rarity's comment that "being sisters is like apple pie" doesn't make sense. Sweetie then says that this is because she thought Rarity hated her.
    Sweetie Belle: Why were you racing with me tell me, why?
    Rarity: Because someone told me that being sisters is like apple pie.
    Sweetie Belle: That doesn't make any sense, because I thought that you hated me!
  • Black Comedy: The "Everything Is Fine" remix is full of this as the dog gets sent from universe to universe, getting beaten up and maimed in brutal ways in most of the universes he ends up in, all the while the singer continues to sing about "everything is fine". Special mention goes to the scene animated by SpindleHorse Toons, in which the dog is sent to I.M.P.'s office, and Millie keeps attacking him for no given reason while everyone else in the office just looks on.
  • Bland-Name Product: The music video for "Jumping Devil" features a "MERF" gun.
  • Blown Upward by a Blowhole: In the music video for "My Ordinary Life", after being eaten by a whale, the lion escapes by biting its uvula, causing it to shoot him out of its blowhole.
  • Body Horror: “Drunk” is chock full of it. As the song progresses, the main character’s body becomes more distorted the drunker he gets to the point it’s Nightmare Fuel. And given that JamimeR animated and directed this isn't much of a shock. Some examples include...
  • Bookends: "I Got No Time" ends with the Toreador march, the very same tune that the original Five Nights At Freddy's song began with.
  • Call-Back: "This Comes From Inside" has a few verses sung by Yoav with a near-identical distortion effect to the one used for "Five Nights at Freddy's", and the last full line of said verses evokes the first line of the latter song. Fittingly, the video depicts the animatronics from the first two games singing this part of the song.
    Five Nights at Freddy's: We're waiting every night...
    This Comes From Inside: (...) we are waiting for you every night...
  • Concept Album: TLT's official studio albums are themed after the band's Tombsonas and, surprisingly enough, they focus on particular themes outside their non-original music.
    • zero_one leans into the mental health angle from their past work with a fair amount of Sanity Slippage Songs and Break Up Songs, heavily dealing with isolation, procrastination, toxic relationships, identity crisis, depression and intrusive thoughts.
    • Rust is about the problems of social injustice, authoritarianism and dystopia, while having Protest Songs that carry optimistic resilience. It also reflects the darker side of the previous albums, such as backstabbing and revenge fantasies.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Or should we say playthings as seen in Chosen. So much so that the band members are even kept in glass tubes like collectable figurines.
  • Cycle of Revenge: What "Cut The Cord" displays between the protagonist and another designer who they were a huge fan of at first.
  • Deal with the Devil: In "Alastor's Game," the Radio Demon sings about all the wonderful things he has to offer you...the price being an eternity in hell with him after you've had your fun.
  • Descent into Addiction: "Drunk" is a vivid illustration of how addiction feels both in the lyrics and the visuals in the music video itself. As the song progresses the singer/Drunkguy sound more unhinged and sound less like rapping an more like rambling.
  • Darker and Edgier: Out of all of his music, Guncakes definitely takes the cake. It's explicit and it's about Pinkie secretly owning and selling guns. And she is apparently a master assassin who's really good at handling them as well.
  • Deranged Animation: The music video for "Jumping Devil" is full of this.
    • So is "Drunk", which shows a lot of rather appropriate metaphorical imagery of what can happen to someone going on a drunken bender.
  • Deranged Dance: In the video for "I Can't Fix You," the Minireenas are performing a ballet dance in perfect, mechanical synchrony. Near the end of the video, they appear again performing the same dance, only their heads have been ripped off, and their movements are frantic and out of sync before they fall over.
  • Despair Event Horizon:
    • The mother in "It's Been So Long" seems to have crossed this a long time ago. Hard to blame her, considering her son had died due to her not watching him.
    • Near the end of "Drunk": Drunkguy literally falls right into it and lands in a river of wine or his own blood. Despite the lyrics; he looks distraught and helpless knowing that his alcoholic tendencies are going to destroy him but has reached a point of no return. Unfortunately, this is a all too common case for those who suffer from chronic alcoholism.
    • "Lazy" has the singer intensely describing how much he's failing at his career due to feeling depressed and overworked, to the point that he's "done" and wants to give it all to somebody else. He outright states he "gives up" at the end of the song.
  • Electronic Music: Many of his later songs feature this as an influence, such as "It's Been So Long."
  • Elongating Arm Gag: In the music video for "My Ordinary Life", the giraffe stretches her neck to pull down a tall tree to stop the police car chasing them, with a scene dedicated to showing her neck zig-zagging all over the place. Her neck then retracts back to her body, before her head pops back onscreen to give a wink to the camera.
    • Drunkguy does this too multiple times in "Drunk" so much so that it takes up most of the music video.
  • Evil Mask: A concept that's played with by the Tombsonas. The zero_one album itself portrays the titular zero_one as a mask that the singer physically puts on before bonding with it, a process that "Animal" then depicts as somewhat frightening and beyond the singer's control. By contrast, the "Chosen" comic book depicts zero_one as "infecting" its host in a manner similar to a virus, and the "Meet Rust" video confirms that Rust is the only Tombsona that bonds with its host through actual clothing. Nonetheless, the Tombsonas are implied to be, if not evil, then at least not adhering to human morality. Additionally, zero_one's human host is shown screaming in pain and begging for help in the comic while being "bonded" to.
  • Expressive Mask:
    • The main character from the "Drunk" music video (and the visualizers he makes appearances in by extension) has a very expressive skull mask complete with blacken sunken in eyes with no pupils.
    • Diddo for the main character of "Love I Need", if it's a mask at all.
    • The main character of the zero_one album itself: zero_one counts as this as well but only for the Meet zero_one video. Also the other four tombsonas count as this for their respective meet___ videos as well.
  • Fake-Out Opening: The opening slide of the music video for "I Can't Fix You" shows the Funtime animatronics drawn in a cute, pastel-colored Animesque style, which lasts about five seconds. The visuals for the rest of the video are much more violent with the background on fire and the Funtimes violently smashing themselves and each other to pieces.
  • Fear Song: "Basics in Behavior" is sung by a kid at Baldi's school. It mostly describes the child's fear of Baldi, an Evil Teacher who chases them and their classmates down for failing to follow his rules.
  • Foreshadowing: The music video for "Sunburn" has a TV which shows the Tombsonas performing, presumably, the song "Chosen". The opening melody for "Chosen" also plays at the end of the music video.
  • For Science!: Out of the Tombsonas, the Tesla symbiote's hosts are the only ones who willfully transform themselves into Tesla for the sake of scientific discovery, despite this being just as painful a process as it is for most of the other symbiotes.
  • Grand Theft Me: "Animal" seems to heavily imply this. The host for zero_one starts to lose his sanity and humanity as zero_one starts to take over his body and mind.
    Human Host: I move my body but it feels like someone taking over me; My thoughts are gone like they're locked up and someone threw away the key; It's like a creature from a nightmare
  • He Who Fights Monsters: The major theme of the video for "Cut the Cord," which features a scrappy young fashion designer who is persecuted by her former hero and her powerful robot army-fueled megacorporation. She retaliates, building an army of Mecha-Mooks to oppose hers, but becomes increasingly power-hungry, controlling, violent and otherwise similar to her rival.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: The music video for "Jumping Devil" shows horrifying demons attacking a town, and then getting brutally killed by the humans living there.
  • Imagine Spot: In the video for "Step On Up", Montgomery Gator (in his pre-band days) spends most of it imagining usurping Bonnie's position, then systematically destroying the other Glamrocks until he's the last one remaining. He's angry when he comes back to reality and remembers where he is.
  • Ironic Nursery Tune: His Halloween 2017 song is a creepy take on the Hebrew children's song Yumbo Bear.
  • Irony: "Long Time Friends" is a song about someone breaking away from a toxic relationship and feeling happy and free now that they are no longer tied down by their abuser. The music video features someone running away from a deranged ringleader/cult leader who sings a good chunk of the lyrics, mocking the one running away.
  • Kaleidoscope Hair: In "Cut the Cord," the protagonist's hair changes color from scene to scene.
  • Last Note Nightmare: "Five Nights At Freddy's", as should be expected for a song about the game of the same name, uses the robots' scream at the end as a sample.
  • Lyrical Dissonance:
    World is, below
    So high up, I'm near divine
    Lean in, let go
    I feel fear for the very last time
  • Madness Mantra: "Lazy" has a rather heart breaking one with...
    Narrator: So help me, I'm lazy, I'm lazy, I'm lazy, I'm lazy, I'm lazy, I'm lazy, I'm lazy, (7 more times)
  • Mind Screw: The video for "Cut the Cord" is about...something.
    • The music video for "Drunk" counts too but that's kind of a given since the video itself represents what it's like to either go binge drinking or on a drunken bender that may have lasted for weeks. The Body Horror coupled with the Involuntary Shapeshifting make it really intense to watch if you’re not prepared.
  • Motor Mouth: The entire bridge of "Drunk" is this with a long list of cocktail mixes and brand drinks. It then devolves into alcohol addled ramble with the singer lamenting losing his friends but has reached a point of no return.
  • Mr. Fanservice: The zero_one music videos has at least six of them ranging from a spider-man like cyborg Bishonen and a once average looking albeit alcoholic joe who got a looks upgrade from his original appearance.
    • zero_one looks as if he's wearing a skin tight jumpsuit with orange-yellow circuit lines showing off his lean and athletic figure. He even has a flaming Mohawk as well.
    • Rust is a badass rebel biker guy with a cool trench coat to boot. He even has rather muscular arms in "Chosen".
    • The drummer of the band: Doc is a dapper looking witch doctor with a open shirt showing off his bear chest with visible glowing ribs. Walking Shirtless Scene anyone?
    • Tesla looks like a mad scientist out of The Phantom of the Opera. He even plays bass guitar too.
    • Armstrong is a badass bara astronaut with a burned arm. He plays electric guitar.
    • Drunkguy from "Drunk" in some of the visualizers has a more lean almost curvaceous figure. In "Longtime Friends" and "Lazy" the lighting almost makes him look like he's shirtless.
  • Multi-Animator Project: The music video for his "Everything Is Fine" remix, animated by several internet artists, including Gingerpale, Sr. Pelo, speedoru and SpindleHorse Toons.
  • Never My Fault: "I Can't Fix You" suggests that William Afton is abusing the Funtime animatronics because he blames Circus Baby for accidentally killing his daughter Elizabeth, even though he built Baby as a child-murdering robot in the first place and she had no control over the mechanism in her body that killed the girl.
    Is it because I can't be her? Made your mistakes and make me hurt?
  • Non-Standard Character Design: In the "Drunk" music video Drunkguy is the only character that's fully colored and has the very conspicuous skull mask attached to his face. The other people are just silhouettes with lighting on their faces and mostly monochrome.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Their are two instances of this in the music video for "Drunk". One is in the thumbnail for the video itself where Drunkguy is reminded by his inner demons that he had 12 drinks before he was apparently sent to a hospital. The second time is when he hallucinates blood shot eyes staring at him from the night sky and sports more of a My God, What Have I Done? look on his face.
    • In the video for "It's Been So Long," the children have exclamation points over their heads as Freddy reveals himself as the Purple Man and kills them.
    • The video for "My Ordinary Life" has this happen twice from the villainous gnomes causing trouble for the animals. The first time is when the lion cub hits the accelerator and blows right through their makeshift barricade, and the remaining gnomes panic when the boar grabs their tow cable and sends them flying sky-bound with a mighty punch.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Armstrong seems to be an interesting example of this trope since his body that the tombsona 'pilots' is a cosmonaut that got lost in space and was exposed to the vacuum of space.
  • Outliving One's Offspring: It's Been So Long is all over this. It's sung from the viewpoint of a mother, who, due to not paying attention to her son, lost him to the child murderer of Freddy Fazbear Pizzeria.
    It's been so long
    Since I last have seen my son, lost to this monster
    To the man behind the slaughter
    Since you've been gone
    I've been singing this stupid song, so I could ponder
    The sanity of your mother
  • Painful Transformation: It's implied or outright stated that becoming a host for the Tombsonas is very painful, though of particular note is Tesla, whose host needs to alter themselves willingly using the specifications it gives them through radio waves.
  • Putting on the Reich: Used to highlight the Full-Circle Revolution in the "Cut the Cord" video.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The bridge of "I Can't Fix You" sounds like one from Circus Baby to her creator, William Afton.
    This is what happens when you leave it to somebody else
    If you want it done right, you should just do it yourself
    You oversaturate your world with nothing but machines
    You might make everyone happy, but you're dead inside just like me
  • Record Needle Scratch: Used to usher in Jayneycakes's part in "No Mercy".
  • Related in the Adaptation: In "Five Nights at Freddy's", Golden Freddy and the Puppet have no relationship to each other. But in "It's Been So Long," Golden Freddy is one of the children murdered by William Afton, and the Puppet is his mother.
  • Retraux: "Basics in Behavior" is composed using instruments from the windows default MIDI soundfont, matching the music in the game it's based on.
  • Sampling: "My Ordinary Life" features samples from Nichijou, which the title is a reference to.
  • Sanity Slippage:
  • Self-Deprecation: "It's Been So Long" outright calls itself a "stupid song" at one point.
  • Stock Scream: The famous "Wilhelm Scream" is used a few times during "My Ordinary Life" by a few characters, though in varying pitches.
  • The Symbiote: The titular entity zero_one along side the other four tombsonas are an example of this trope. It isn't clear if they have malicious intentions or they simply don't adhere to human's standards of morality. What ever the case may be, the process of being bonded with one is... existentially terrifying to say the least.
  • Take That!: Living Tombstone takes a shot at IGN at the beginning of his Stop the Bats remix: "10/10 it was ok" - IGN
  • Teacher/Student Romance: Love Me Cheerilee.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: "No Mercy" is about two Over Watch players arguing despite being on the same team; the trope particularly comes into play with the music video, which has them doing this mid-game.
  • Three Chords and the Truth: He has become known for this (for better or for worse) to his listeners. Many of his songs feature a chord pattern of I-vi-ii-V, with an emphasis on "bass, snare, bass-bass, snare" for the drums.
  • Title Drop: A few of his songs have been known to use this trope, with "Five Nights At Freddy's", "I Got No Time" and "I Can't Fix You" having some of the more frequent usages.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: The narrator of "September" describes walking through an abandoned, ruined town, where everyone has died for an unspecified reason, and he can't remember what happened, as if there's a hole in his memory. At the end of the song, he regains his memories and discovers the truth: the reason everyone is dead is because he killed them.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
  • Tragic Mistake: In "It's Been So Long," the mother is too distracted by a phone call to pay attention to her son, and he wanders away and into the clutches of the killer at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. She is Driven to Suicide over it, with her spirit possessing the Puppet.
  • Uncertain Doom: "Drunk" ends with Drunk Guy laying on the floor with spot light above him before it ends with the darkness closing in on him. It isn’t exactly clear if he simply dies from liver failure or simply blacks out again.
  • Uniformity Exception: In the video for "It's Been So Long," the simplistic sprites representing the dead children wear teal shirts. The woman's son looks identical to them, but wears a blue shirt.
  • Unusual Euphemism: In "Guncakes", cupcakes are used as an euphemism for guns.
  • Villain Song:
  • "The Villain Sucks" Song: In "Magic", he criticizes Trixie's magic show.
  • Was Once a Man: In "It's Been So Long," a mother dies of guilt and grief after her son is murdered by the Purple Man/William Afton. The mother becomes the Puppet, while her son becomes Golden Freddy.
  • Wham Line:
    • "I just remembered what happened in "September"; I'M THE ONE WHO KILLED THEM ALL! I SURVIVED AFTER THE FALL!"
    • "Drunk" has a gut punching one in "I'm gonna hate myself tomorrow (in a chilling whisper) then I'll do it again"
    • "Can't Wait" definitely pulls no punches either since the song is about depression and suicidal ideation with the later part of the chorus : "I know I should be fine and I cannot tell you why ; But I have lost my mind and I just can't wait to die"
  • Wham Shot: In "My Ordinary Life", the titular characters drive off to the horizon in their car, only for the screen to zoom out to show it was all actually on a TV. It then cuts to the three characters on the couch, showing it was just a video game and they were just stoned outta their minds.
  • Why Don't You Marry It?: Jayneycakes deploys this as her opening gambit in "No Mercy".
    Blackgryphon: You should've picked Mercy
    You should've picked any kind of support
    We ended up losing and it's all your fault
    You should learn how this game works
    You should've been helping
    [Record Needle Scratch]
    Jayneycakes: If you like Mercy so much why don't you just marry her?!

 
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Video Example(s):

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As part of a tie-in to the game In Sound Mind, The Living Tombstone (who composed the game's soundtrack) and Mick Lauer (better known as "Ricepirate", playing the game's antagonist Agent Rainbow) made a hardrock track of one of its songs "Here Comes a Savior", an animated music video available on the mashed YouTube Channel

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