The Guitar Hero generation.

A couple of weeks ago one of my favourite websites brought the following video to my attention:
Attack Attack! - Stick Stickly


I'll leave it to Buddyhead to make fun of the awfulness of the song (and video). They do a great job, and I'd just be repeating them.

"Do you realize how many friends and family members could have pulled these clowns aside and been like 'Dudes, your band already sucks, let’s maybe not compound the problem by playing like you’re shitting a guitar out of your mangina'? Apparently no one felt like doing that."

But the other thing that struck me about this video/song is how much it made me think of the Guitar Hero episode of South Park. Look at these kids, they look exactly like the kids you'd see at arcades playing Dance Dance Revolution. Like the kids in South Park, their first musical influence came not from bands, but from video games. When asked if they like this music, Kyle replies "Yeah dude, it's Guitar Hero!"

The song itself combines elements of the fairly pedestrian emo-core, metal and rock music that is a staple of Guitar Hero. Like game music it also changes often, and dramatically. And some of the elements seem like they don't belong together - Auto-tuned vocals in the style of T-Pain combined with screaming? Many record labels see video games as a lucrative source of song publishing these days and many songs are released in this media first. In this context such a combination not only makes sense, it's inevitable.

The biggest evidence of the video game influence on Attack Attack!'s musical development comes with the song's biggest change at 2:46. All of a sudden we go from a hardcore breakdown to DDR style dance pop. Right on cue the whole band starts to run on the spot too. Take away their instruments and put a mat with coloured lights on the floor, and it kinda looks like this:
DDR Tournament


I'd say most of their dance moves have their origin in DDR.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Guitar Hero. I was attracted to the concept, but I've tried to play it, and I suck. I find it's nothing like playing a real guitar, and being able to do so seems to make it harder. I do especially bad on songs that I actually know how to play. In fact, I'm pretty much like Randy Marsh:
Randy tries to play Guitar Hero


But then I've never been a big gamer anyway. You could follow Sharon Marsh's argument that "if they spent half the time learning a real instrument as they do playing that game, who knows what they could accomplish". But the fact is the majority of people who play Guitar Hero are gamers, not musicians. They love playing the games, but have no interest in playing music. Sure there's going to be some crossover. Two other members of my band love the games (in the last 2 weeks they've made me play Guitar Hero Metallica at least 3 times, despite sucking at it and not being a Metallica fan). But then music is so universal that there's bound to be a percentage of any culture who will become musicians - even gamers. And that's where we get Attack Attack!

The problem with this song for me is not that it attempts to mash so many styles together. I'm a big fan of bands who take risks and allow themselves to be influenced by styles of music outside their own. It's just that in this case the whole thing seems so forced. The changes sound like they've taken snippets of many different songs and pasted them one after the other. Games may have influenced their musical tastes, but they haven't taught much in the way of songwriting. Other bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan jump around as much, if not more, than Attack Attack!, but their transitions are smoother. And no matter how weird or unexpected the change, there's always a sense of purpose to the song. Bands like Attack Attack! and brokeNCYDE seem to just be trying to shove all their favourite things into the one box, whether they fit or not. For now, this seems to be the influence of games on the music scene. For better or worse, the Guitar Hero generation have arrived.