Nintendocore

Hiya all, Art here.

Peep this: I've been getting into Nintendocore. Originally a term coined by the dude from the band HORSE the Band, its basically any band which draws heavily upon video game music, mashing it with any number of modern trends like screamo, new wave, etc. And we all know how fucking amazing game music can be, I mean, the shit those dudes did with the limited technology they had --- a lot of old game music is kinda on the same scale as if you hypothetically took a single sheet of white paper, and folded it to build a fully functional version of the WW2 warship HMS Amethyst, complete with working turrets, and "Simon", the ship's cat.

So let's review some nintendocore bands:
the aforementioned HORSE the Band. Fantastic screamo, though with the wonderful difference in that they use (so I'm told) a Korg MS2000 with a SID chip built in, which emulates Commodore64-ish kinda bleeps and bloops. This makes them sound like the game "Contra", if the two dudes in it screamed as they mowed down wave after wave of alien scum. One of the coolest things about any band ever is about this band: they wrote a song about the Mega Man villain, Cutman.

Totally Radd!! is also pretty... rad. These dudes have more in common with new wave, sometimes sounding like a nerdified Cure/Flock of Seagulls cover band, although busting out better synth/keytar grooves. The lead singer is an awesome fat dude with a beard, and *apparently* he once got into a fight with Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav. I would have given anything to have been there. But anyways, these guys aren't afraid to scream along to the theme from Mike Tyson's Punch Out, and I love them.

Wizardzz is an awesome side project of the bass-player from Lightning Bolt, in which he plays drums and another dude plays synth. Its incredibly epic and proggy and awesome, but what is most awesome about it is the apparent concept behind their album, "Hidden City of Taurmond". It plays and sounds like a soundtrack to one of those old awesome PC adventure games, where you're in a strange hilarious world and have an inventory and stuff and use commands like TAKE, PULL, OPEN, etc. The song names are all like, "Jelliper Lilly Field", and "Do Come In", which sounds like a kindly old innkeeper inviting the player into his inn. Anyways check it out.

Gravy Train!!!! is another band on Totally Radd!!'s label, Retard Disco, which is the place to be if youre a nintendocore band. GT!!!! is however a bit detached from games per se, focusing more on being a slutty, sexy girl/boy electro band, more on par with bands like Numbers or Robots in Disguise.

Thats all for now.