In the last few years the previous exclusive worlds of videos games and metal have become ever more ubiquitous. With games themselves moving in the popular consciousness from fleeting pastimes to full blown obsession, it was only right and natural that Metal fans (the true Regents of obsession) should be surfing the front of wave of both progress and, as is compulsory with Metal, nostalgia.
From Misha Mansoor writing music for the as yet unreleased Halo sequel to the progenitors of the sub-genre of Video Game Metal – PowerGlove and Vomitron the parallel avenues of inspiration and creativity between the forms are always busy.
The area that seems to be the most fruitful and natural is that of the Metalized cover version of beloved Game theme music. I’ve an extensive hunt around the fetid swamp that is YouTube and have selected a smattering of the very best in Metal Video game covers. Feast your ears and excited your adrenal glands with this cornucopia of copying!!
Mario seems to be a driving force behind the computational replication, with as many Mario covers as there are Goombas in our heros way.
From the brazen and unadorned:
To the ones captured by those Thrash Metal Casualties among us:
Through the Djent inspired:
To ones that include a whole digital band; their name: NESOAD – Nintendo Entertainment System of a Down! Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger!
I nearly decided to occlude solo drum performances from this list, as everytime you type the phrase “Drum Covers” into Youtube, a server, somewhere, melts. But this one’s actually quite good:
Fed Up with the main theme from S.M.B? Try the Castle Theme!
But Mario does not have exclusive domain over this world. Zelda too has her slavish devotees. Power metal anyone?
Did you ever, as the B-side to the single release of this tune exhorted, Play GameBoy?
Or decide that you just had to….FINSH HIM!!
What’s better than a dragon? A Double Dragon!!
Perhaps these individual works of the coverists art have sated your TechnoShred impulses or just maybe you need someone to do a complete chronological history of Video Game music; but all in a grandstanding metal Stylee…..well faithful reader, having led you this far, I cannot disappoint!
So with that complete retrospective bringing us crashing, like a hand-hammered Zildjian into the present, let us discuss the future. The burning torch of Video Game Metal is being passed; its new sentinels are The Brotherhood of Ellipsis. Who have moved the paradigm on from merely covering their favourite game music, to creating their own gaming worlds with which to populate with their music.
Check Out their Album teaser below and stay tuned in the next couple of months for release details and exclusive interviews and reviews.
Thanks for reading fellow traveller, lets share a Joypad sometime.
– John Whitmore
