Back in grade school, being good at Guitar Hero kinda meant something. Though one’s virtual six-string virtuosity didn’t always carry enough weight to garner widespread recognition, it was a way of acquiring lunch table respect. By proving that you could hold your own playing through Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and Flames”, for example, could raise the pre-adolescent eyebrows of your best pals, scoring you the clout you needed to copy a math worksheet or trade your mediocre handful of Yu-Gi-Oh cards for an extra serving of cafeteria Stromboli.
Today, Dragonforce, Guitar Hero, and the rhythm game’s labrynthine list of sequels and spinoffs have all but faded into some obscure junk drawer of the collective conscious. That’s what makes hearing “Through the Fire and Flames” NutriBulleted into Ariflare’s tyrannical blend of speed metal and breakcore so nostalgic: despite the Death Grips-y downpour of jagged rhythms and riffs that “Reliance for Violence” imposes on its listeners, you can detect a childlike sense of play hidden deep in the mix. The danger aurally described isn’t immediate — it’s imagined by a kid toppling their just-finished Lego skyscraper, or sending a fleet of UFO’s to wreak havoc on their SimCity metropolis.
Ariflare’s “Reliance for Violence” is the second song on The Worst’s new compilation EP, wow, what a disaster. Download it here.
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