Ruthlessness Lyrics – Epic: The Musical
Ruthlessness Lyrics
Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon
[ODYSSEUS, spoken]
Poseidon
[POSEIDON]
In all my years of living
It isn't very often that I get pissed off
I try to chill with the waves
But damn, you crossed the line
I've been so gracious
And yet, you hurt the son of mine
That's right, the cyclops you made blind, is mine
[ODYSSEUS, spoken]
No
[POSEIDON, LAESTRYGONIANS]
I'm left without a choice
And without a doubt
Guess the pack of wolves is swimming with the shark now
I've gotta make you bleed
I need to see you drown
But before you go, I need to make you learn how
Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves
Ruthl?ssness is mercy upon ourselv?s
Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves
Ourselves
You are the worst kind of good
'Cause you're not even great
A Greek who reeks of false righteousness
That's what I hate
'Cause you fight to save lives
But won't kill and don't get the job done
I mean you totally could have avoided all this
Had you just killed my son
But no
You are far too nice
Mercy has a price
It's the final crack, we're about to break the ice now
You reveal your name
Then you let him live
Unlike you I've got no mercy left to give 'cause
Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves
Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves
Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves
Ourselves
And now it is finally time
To say goodbye
Today, you die
Unless, of course, you apologize
For my son's pain
And all his cries
[ODYSSEUS]
Poseidon, we meant no harm
We only hurt him to disarm him
We took no pleasure in his pain
We only wanted to escape
[POSEIDON]
The line between naïveté and
Hopefulness is almost invisible
So close your heart
The world is dark and
[LAESTRYGONIANS]
Ruthlessness is mercy-
[POSEIDON]
Die
[LAESTRYGONIANS, SOLDIERS]
Ruthlessness is (Captain) mercy upon our- Captain
Ruthlessness is (Captain) mercy upon our- Captain
Ruthlessness is (Captain) mercy upon our- Captain
Ruthlessness is (Captain)
[ODYSSEUS]
What have you done?
[ENSEMBLE]
When does a ripple become a tidal wave?
[POSEIDON]
Forty three left under your command
[ENSEMBLE]
When does a man become a monster?
[POSEIDON]
I am your darkest moment
The monster that always draws near
Any last words?
[ODYSSEUS]
All I gotta do is open this bag
[POSEIDON]
What?
Remember me
Song Overview

The “Ruthlessness” lyrics slam open like a storm door, yanking us into Poseidon’s salt-corroded courtroom. Dropped on December 25 2023 as the climax of The Ocean Saga, the track crowns Jorge Rivera-Herrans’s four-song gauntlet with a god-sized tirade. Within thirty-six hours of release, the saga broke one million Spotify streams; by mid-2025, “Ruthlessness” alone had become one of the cast’s most-looped anthems, its animatic circling 2 million YouTube views and counting.
How to sing
- Key & meter: D-minor at 150 BPM. Verses ride a 6/8 swing; choruses snap to militant 4/4—waves versus war drums.
- Range: Poseidon rumbles G2–E4 (bass-baritone thunder); Odysseus answers B2–F?4; the Laestrygonian chant hovers around C3 for impact.
- Breath game: Notice the relentless triplet on “Ru-thless-ness”: grab micro-breaths after “is” or risk drowning like the crew.
- Tone colors: Use gritty fry on Poseidon’s “Ruthlessness is mercy” to mimic crashing surf; keep Odysseus brighter—hope fighting erosion.
- Staging tip: On “Any last words?” drop to utter stillness—audiences inhale, waiting for the bag of winds to hiss.

Song Meaning and Annotations
“Ruthlessness” is less a duet than a moral autopsy. Poseidon, voiced with road-gravel resonance, indicts Odysseus for the mercy that spared Polyphemus—mercy that, paradoxically, now dooms dozens. Rivera-Herrans scores this indictment with brass detonations and choir stabs that feel like judicial gavels.
The mantra—“Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves”—flips Homeric virtue on its head. In River-Herrans’s cosmology, mercy isn’t kindness, it’s risk mitigation; spare a foe and you invite divine collateral damage. The Laestrygonian chorus chanting “Poseidon” in a three-note rising motif mirrors sirens on a naval destroyer: warning, chaos, impact.

“You are the worst kind of good, ’cause you’re not even great.”
Punch-line of the century? Maybe. Poseidon lobs it with rap-battler swagger, shredding Odysseus’s heroic branding while a distorted sub-bass growl traces the god’s anger line.
Verse Highlights
Opening Invocation
Laestrygonian monks chant Poseidon’s name—six repetitions that mimic pounding breakers. The sea god enters to a choked trumpet, hinting at the brass leitmotif Rivera-Herrans always tucks beneath Poseidon’s scenes.
First Chorus
Percussion doubles in tempo; the phrase “ourselves” stretches over a four-measure melisma, as though echoing inside a sea trench.
Bridge – The Price of Mercy
Guitars drop out, leaving only low strings and a heartbeat kick drum while Poseidon lists Odysseus’s moral failures. The emptiness is terrifying—like stars disappearing mid-voyage.
Instrumental Interlude
Eight bars of rising wind samples foreshadow the bag’s reopening—white noise morphs into Aeolian flute, tying back to the saga’s first song.
Annotations
The Laestrygonians appear
The Laestrygonians are a tribe of man-eating giants, said to descend from Laestrygon, son of Poseidon and Gaia.
Chanting the sea god’s name
Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon, Poseidon.
(1) The rhythm mirrors Po-ly-phe-mus in “Survive,” fitting because the Cyclops is Poseidon’s son. (2) Each “-seidon” rides the familiar Danger-Is-Nearby motif, as composer Jorge Rivera-Herrans confirmed.
Odysseus whispers the inevitable
When he repeats Poseidon, sheer fear cracks through his voice: he now grasps that the raging storm came from an enraged god.
Waves woven into the score
Jay layered real ocean sounds beneath high staccato strings to build Poseidon’s theme — the sea itself becomes the orchestra.
“It isn’t very often that I get pissed off”
Myth says otherwise: floods, quakes, sea-monsters — Poseidon’s grudges drown cities. Troy, Crete, even Athens tasted that wrath.
“I try to chill with the waves”
A wry pun: the sea god “chilling” in his own element while hurling storms at mortals.
Crossing the line
A subtle echo of Athena’s warning in “My Goodbye”: “This way, you can’t cross the line.” Odysseus just did.
Punishing the one who blinded his son
Poseidon reminds Odysseus that the Cyclops he maimed was his child and that the seas stayed strangely calm until now.
“No” — the wave of realization
A swell crashes in perfect sync with the word, underscoring the moment the truth hits.
“Without a choice, without a doubt”
Odysseus’s panicked reaction proves Poseidon’s point: he has cornered his prey.
Wolves meet the shark
Odysseus descends from Autolykos (“the wolf himself”); now the “pack of wolves” swims with a predator of the deep — the sea god.
“Bleed … drown”
Sharks smell blood; Poseidon threatens both blood and water, a double doom.
“Before you go, learn how”
Parallels Polyphemus’s taunt in “Survive”: both father and son force Odysseus to learn through pain.
The creed
Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves.
Rivera-Herrans explained: to Poseidon, ruthless action removes future threats — a twisted mercy.
“Ourselves”
He claims slaughter protects him, his giants, and the sea from further Odyssean damage.
“Worst kind of good”
Poseidon calls out Odysseus’s hypocrisy: pretending to spare lives yet leaving Polyphemus blind, suffering, alive — false righteousness.
“Fight to save lives but won’t kill”
The orchestra slips in notes from “Just a Man,” linking Odysseus’s earlier hesitation about killing a child to this crisis.
“You could have avoided all this”
If Polyphemus had died, no complaint would have reached dad. Athena’s unseen piano motif sneaks in, as if saying, “I warned you.”
“But no”— when gods agree
Even Athena once urged, “Finish it.” For once, the goddess and the sea god stand on the same side.
Mercy’s price
A reference to the cut song Mercy Has a Price; Poseidon thinks the bill now comes due in blood.
“Final crack … break the ice”
A literal ice-breaker: their first real conversation shatters any hope of peace.
Name first, mercy later
Poseidon recalls that Odysseus boasted his identity and spared the Cyclops — the two wrong moves that doomed him.
“No mercy left”
Flips Odysseus’s own line to Athena — “mercy is a skill” — on its head.
Mercy dilemmas tally up
Infant in “Just a Man” (ruthless), Polyphemus in “Remember Them” (merciful), rumor-mongers in “Keep Your Friends Close” (merciful). Every soft choice backfires.
“Time to say goodbye”
A quiet nod to “My Goodbye,” hinting that Poseidon and Athena share certain cold ideals.
“Today, you die”
Pledge noted — he’ll repeat it for a decade.
“Unless you apologize”
A hollow offer; the sea god is past forgiving.
“For my son’s pain”
Polyphemus prayed precisely for this vengeance.
Odysseus’s excuse, not apology
We meant no harm … We only wanted to escape.
He defends motives instead of saying “sorry,” sealing his fate.
Naivety vs. hope
The gods prove Eurylochus right: divine danger arrives from a direction no mortal predicted.
“Die” — the death count
From 600 men off Troy, 14 died in the cave; now, all but 43 drown — roughly 543 lost in one divine strike.
“Captain!” and the motif
The pleas ride the same Danger-Is-Nearby notes, echoing their terror in “Polyphemus.”
Mercy for the captain
The staggered line “Ruthlessness (Captain) …” foretells that only Odysseus, the captain, will see Ithaca again.
“What have you done?”
Tsunamis obliterate every ship but one; shock freezes Odysseus.
Ripple to tidal wave
The Ensemble recycles Odysseus’s own words from “Just a Man,” now dripping with irony as Poseidon weaponizes literal waves.
“Forty-three left”
A detail lifted from Homer: giants crushed every vessel except the king’s own, leaving one crew to sail on.
“I am your darkest moment”
Poseidon mocks Odysseus by quoting his boast to Polyphemus.
The lurking monster
Though they won’t meet again until “Get in the Water,” Poseidon’s shadow will dog Odysseus across every sea.
“Any last words?”
Poseidon’s delay mirrors Odysseus taunting the Cyclops — hubris that lets the victim slip away.
“All I gotta do is open this bag”
The phrase flips Aeolus’s warning from “Keep Your Friends Close” and unleashes the trapped winds as an escape hatch.
“What?” — the shocked god
The fourth “What” of the Ocean Saga: even a deity can be blindsided by mortals with a plan.
The wind-bag interlude
The music reprises the moment the bag burst before — this time propelling Odysseus away from doom.
“Remember me”
Poseidon throws Odysseus’s own threat from “Remember Them” back at him — a promise that the sea’s vendetta is far from over.
Song Credits

- Featured voices: Steven Rodriguez (Poseidon) · Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Odysseus) · EPIC ensemble
- Producer / Composer / Lyricist: Jorge Rivera-Herrans
- Release Date: December 25 2023
- Genre: Symphonic-metal musical; mythic rap-rock
- Length: 3 min 57 sec
- Instrumentation: Brass, distorted guitars, eight-voice male choir, tempest SFX
- Label: Winion Entertainment LLC
- Mood: Vengeful; titan-level dread
- Track order: #13 on the full concept album, #4 in The Ocean Saga
- Language: English
- Poetic meter: Trochaic heave over 6/8 swing
- Copyright: © 2023 Winion Entertainment LLC
Similar Songs Exploring Vengeance & Moral Ambiguity
- “Hellfire” – Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame
Like Poseidon, Frollo sings his own indictment, couching righteous rage in cathedral acoustics. Both tracks fuse Latin-tinged choir with villain POV to chilling effect.
- “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” – Stephen Sondheim
Another anti-hero anthem where a chorus narrates impending slaughter. Sondheim’s razor meets River-Herrans’s trident: mercy is luxury neither can afford.
- “March of the Witch Hunters” – Wicked
Mob mentality, syncopated stomps, and a catchy mantra—sound familiar? “Ruthlessness” upgrades the pitchforks to spears but the psychology is the same.
Questions and Answers
- Why does Poseidon call Odysseus “the worst kind of good”?
- Because selective mercy feels like vanity; the god argues half-measures breed collateral loss, a thesis summarized by the mantra.
- How many men survive the encounter?
- Forty-three, a grim count Poseidon spits like a body-check statistic—straight from the lyric sheet.
- Is the bag of winds really empty?
- Not yet; Odysseus reopens it to yank the ship from Poseidon’s grasp, sacrificing navigation for survival.
- Any notable covers?
- Annapantsu’s female rock cover, featuring Chloe Breez, passed 1.6 million YouTube views within a year.
- Will Ruthlessness appear in future EPIC stagings?
- Rivera-Herrans confirmed in a 2024 TikTok Q&A that Poseidon’s live entrance will involve LED floor panels simulating rising surf.
Awards and Chart Positions
- The Ocean Saga EP debuted at No. 1 on the US iTunes soundtrack chart Christmas Day 2023.
- The saga crossed 1 million Spotify streams in 36 hours; “Ruthlessness” is now a top-five EPIC track by on-platform plays, per fan-curated playlists.
Fan and Media Reactions
“Ruthlessness goes so hard. Steven’s Poseidon is my most-played EPIC song.” u/No-Antelope-17, Reddit
“That ‘Ruthlessness is mercy’ hook? Tattoo-worthy.” Comment on Annapantsu cover
“Animatic’s color palette alone deserves an Annie.” @_windchild_art, TikTok
“Forty-three left under your command” still chills me every listen.” @PoseidonsTrident, Twitter
“Ocean Saga hit a million streams in under two days—indie musical who?” Jorge Rivera-Herrans, Facebook post
Music video
Epic: The Musical Lyrics: Song List
- The Troy Saga
- The Horse and the Infant
- Just A Man
- Full Speed Ahead
- Open Arms
- Warrior of the Mind
- The Cyclops Saga
- Polyphemus
- Survive
- Remember Them
- My Goodbye
- The Ocean Saga
- Storm
- Luck Runs Out
- Keep Your Friends Close
- Ruthlessness
- The Circe Saga
- Puppeteer
- Wouldn't You Like
- Done For
- There Are Other Ways
- The Underworld Saga
- The Underworld
- No Longer You
- Monster
- The Thunder Saga
- Suffering
- Different Beast
- Scylla
- Mutiny
- Thunder Bringer
- The Wisdom Saga
- Legendary
- Little Wolf
- We’d Be Fine
- Love in Paradise
- God Games
- The Vengeance Saga
- Not Sorry For Loving You
- Dangerous
- Charybdis
- Get in the Water
- 600 Strike
- The Ithaca Saga
- The Challenge
- Hold Them Down
- Odysseus
- I Can’t Help But Wonder
- Would You Fall In Love With Me Again