A Rock Band 4 Death Metal Lullaby For My Children

This magnificent Rock Band 4 vocals performance is brought to you by my children, Seamus and Archer, who made me sing every song on the tracklist alphabetically in order until falling asleep to “Dead Black (Heart of Ice).”

Since an early age Archer and Seamus have loved the alphabet. Twenty-six letters in set order. A definite ending point, unlike those pesky numbers.

So after Seamus rejected FIFA 16 as our bedtime game last night (shouting “No FIFA! No FIFA!”) they caught the Rock Band 4 icon on the Xbox Dashboard and started begging for it.

I tried to explain to them that it was a singing game, and that all I had hooked up at the moment was the microphone, and that was their mother’s instrument. They insisted.

I logged in, went to the track list and made the mistake of sorting songs alphabetically. When I tried to skip down to my old DLC copy of “Drive” by Incubus, Seamus started protesting again.

“Go up! Back! Ain’t messin round!” He wanted me to sing the first song on the list. OK. I wasn’t familiar with the Gary Clark Jr. tune, but I did my best.

“Albert!” Oh no.

Archer, who had been silent since the game started, finally chimed in. “ABC rock!” I chuckled. Yeah, it would be cute if they had ABC songs in…oh no.

Eleven songs in alphabetical order later, my throat really hurt and neither of them were showing any signs of tiring. So I moved on to the next track, “Dead Black (Heart of Ice) from a band called Soul Remnants. I had never heard of this band.

Growling, shouting, no notes to follow, just spaces to be making sounds. Death metal. Perfect. They were never going to sleep.

Only they did. Seamus made it halfway through the song and Archer succumbed to my mock-dulcet tones during one of the songs’ extended vocal lulls.

So thank you, Rock Band 4 and Soul Remnants, for helping me with dragging my children to sleep.

Look for our full Rock Band 4 review tomorrow. Sleep tight, everyone.

BRB, Kids Are Screaming is a series about the joys, hurdles, pitfalls and compromises of being a dad and a gamer. Mostly the joys. Sure. We’ll go with that.