Zoned In: The gems found in game soundtracks

March 15,
2010

The gems
found in game soundtracks
By Michael
Lafferty

Discovery
of Indie Bands can bring unexpected pleasure when playing games

Crank out the
jams … suck it up and go for it, or just suck – there’s a fine line that games
tread in regards to songs on the soundtracks. It’s hit or miss. Sometimes the
song scores (pardon the pun), and sometimes the silence of a muted television or
monitor speaks volumes. In general, the
soundtracks of sports video-games have been getting a lot tastier of late. Sure,
there have been times when you plopped in, say, a FIFA World Cup game with EA
Trax and the music was totally forgettable. On the other hand, you play a game
that has some solid tunes, but the looping is so bad that the songs wear thin
quickly.

Nothing
quite as annoying as hearing the same song over and over and over and over,
again. There is a reason it is called ‘ad nauseam’ – you scramble for the remote
and the mute button, go into options and drop the musical score to 0 on the slider, or
just want to hurl. But every once in a while, you come across a song that hits
the right chords for the individual, that’s catchy and inviting. Next thing you
know, you are looking on the Internet for other tracks by the band, maybe checking to
see if they have a Web site, maybe even jumping into your ‘buy’ mode and
shelling out coin for an album.

There can be
gems in those games – aural gems that delight. Found one a year or so back that
led to a satisfying album purchase. Flash forward to 2010 and the MLB 10 release that features a few Indie
bands. There’s some good tunes there – repeated way too often, but solid stuff
nonetheless. But the band that captured my ears was the British Indie trio
called Band of Skulls and the song “I Know What I Am.” Ok, yep, checked out the

Web site and found out about that the trio of Russell Marsden (guitar &
vocals), Emma Richardson (bass & vocals) and Matt Hayward (drums) have an album
out.

The sound is
rock solid and the energy is impressive. Sure, there might be a certain formula
to some of their songs, but the trio has a pretty good sound, it’s tight and the track in MLB is certainly catchy.

So let’s
just go ahead, forget any formalities (there were none to begin with so skipping
them is easy) and call Band of Skulls one of GameZone’s Discovered Gems
for the month of March.

It’s nice to see
dev teams give solid Indie bands a big chance to shine in games. It’s even
better when the band delivers.