Kotaku Australia » rock

Who Needs Nintendo Chiptunes When You’ve Got Sega Rock?

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Music inspired directly by video games tends to be fairly limited in scope. Chiptunes, hip-hop, some electronica, and the odd piece of folk. Sludgefeast are none of those things.

They are instead a good, old-fashioned rock band. I picked up their album “Virtua Rock” a few weeks back in a second-hand record store purely because the cover was in the style of a Mega Drive game, only it featured a big hairy man with a guitar. And I normally enjoy the kind of music that comes from big hairy men with guitars.

It also helped that the album had songs called “Outrun, Motherfucker” and “Thunderforce, Motherfucker”.

Equal parts awesome and hilarious, I got in touch with the band, and found out that beyond Virtua Rock they weren’t just a Sega rock band. They brought a dirty, heavy, fuzzy rock sound to all kinds of gaming topics.

Headed by James on vocals and guitar, with Coirin on vocals and bass and James II on drums, the band have released 7 albums, culminating in their latest, “Transamplification”, a 2-disc album featuring tracks like “Romero vs Carmack”, “Where Is Chavez?” and “Geometry Wars, Motherfucker”.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in (see: gamers, and/or fans of Nebula, Mondo Generator), you can grab some of their albums off Undertow Records or iTunes.

Music Games Driving The Whole Damn Industry

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:30:00 +0000

The gaming industry just keeps. On. Growing. And shows no sign of slacking off! And while many pundits will point to the runaway success of the Wii as a key catalyst for this growth, some sales analysis by UBS’ Ben Schachter shows that the driving force behind the industry’s success is in fact music games. Particularly, Guitar Hero & Rock Band. According to Schachter’s research, music games accounted for 19% of all gaming sales last month, and accounted for a crazy 44% of gaming’s dollar growth over July 2007. Yeah, it’s only one month, and yeah, they’ll account for growth because they’re expensive, but still. Don’t rain on their parade! That’s big money whichever way you look at it.
Music Video Games Account for 32% of Industry Growth [GameDaily]

Def Leppard In Guitar Hero 4

Mike Fahey — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:20:00 +0000

There is no better pick me up in the world than the opening chords of Def Leppard’s “Photograph”. See for yourself once Guitar Hero 4. During an interview wit the band on the radio show Rockline, a caller asked why none of their songs were featured in Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Guitarist Phil Collen replied, revealing that at least three of their hits would be featured in GH4, including “Rock of Ages”, “Animal”, and of course, “Photograph”. Personally I was hoping they would show up as downloadable content for Rock Band, but that’s only because I lost one of my drumsticks. Oh come on, I had to go there. It was a moral imperative.

Def Leppard Songs to Appear in Guitar Hero 4 [Guitar Hero News]