“I’m in a Gundam-themed band as well,” shares Turian guitarist Ryan Metztli-Moon, rather sheepishly. A laugh erupts in the packed Zoom call; not out of mockery, but a shared self-awareness. All six participants in the conversation have offered nothing but genuine and excitable enthusiasm for our weaving topics: anime OVAs, sound design software, Space Ghost Coast to Coast (R.I.P. George Lowe) and, of course, video games. The co-nerds typically squad up with one to two people for our features, with just three instances to date of a trio dropping in to talk to us. When the Seattle-based metallic hardcore unit was invited into the Kill Screen arcade, however, almost everyone wanted to get in on the action—including Metztli-Moon, drummer Andrew Nyte, bassist Cris Sanchez and electronics expert Carlye Nyte—making this our largest group yet.

Turian’s music doesn’t immediately register as a band with a background in gaming. Though their latest LP and Wise Blood Records debut Blood Quantum Blues is their first to incorporate electronic elements—something with which some members have a longer history than metal—they only serve to enhance the aggression of their driving and relentless brand of metal and hardcore, supporting the all-too-real subject matter of their lyrics focused on American violence against Native populations. Does their name, derived from an alien race from the massively popular Mass Effect series, belie their undeniably heavy nature? “I mean, nobody expects Mastodon to only be about prehistoric creatures,” replies Metztli-Moon, with a shrug. But even as the band continues to evolve and fine-tune their craft, their controller credentials have 100 percent contributed to where they are today—and we’re excited to welcome them all in.

What was everybody’s first gaming experience?
Carlye Nyte: Zoombinis.

Zoombinis?
Andrew Nyte: It was Zoombinis for you?
Carlye Nyte: One of the first. [Laughs]

What is Zoombinis? Please enlighten us.
Carlye Nyte: It was an educational game. You controlled this horde of these creatures called Zoombinis and you had to solve puzzles. And every time you failed a puzzle a Zoombini would die. So, you’re trying to get to the end of the gauntlet with as many Zoombinis as possible. [Vocalist] Vern [Metztli-Moon] also played it. They’re not on the call, but we’ve talked about Zoombinis before.

What about everybody else?
Andrew Nyte: Mine was at age five in the Columbia City, Missouri Toys “R” Us. They had a dual station of Star Fox 64 and Crash Bandicoot. I was five years old, so I didn’t even know what video games were. I’ll never forget: It was a splash screen for both Star Fox and for [Crash Bandicoot]. They’re pretty epic screens for the start of both those games and I remember just not knowing what to do. Star Fox was the first one I picked and my poor dad was sitting there with his head his hands, just waiting for me to be done. And it was, like, two hours. It was great. I never had N64 actually, until I was old enough to buy one when I was, like, 18 or 19. But I still love that game to death.
Metztli-Moon: Mine was, I think, probably around the same age in my cousin’s attic. I have this very distinct memory of it being obscenely hot and we were playing Duck Hunt. He was a little older than me and he had figured out the trick [where] you just hold [the Zapper] close to the screen, and he was just obliterating ducks. He was the one that had the Nintendo, so I would always go over there and play until we got our own.
Cris Sanchez: For me, playing Atari 2600 at my great grandmother’s house. My great aunt had an Atari 2600, so me and my older brother would play Kaboom! or Pitfall and not really know exactly what’s happening on the screen. [Laughs] And then she gave it to us, so [we] played that for a bunch of years afterward.

It seems like a lot of these are experiences outside of the home for everybody. What was everybody’s first in-home game, where you were like, This is my game?
Andrew Nyte: That would be Mega Man X2 for Super Nintendo. Absolutely. Between X2 and also Donkey Kong Country 2, it was the two sequels that I thought were better than the first one. Dude, just unbeatable. I don’t think anything ever actually got better than that for me since then. [Laughs]
Metztli-Moon: My dad had a Genesis—for whatever reason—growing up, which is really weird because he doesn’t know how to turn on a computer. I don’t know why he had a Sega Genesis. He was obsessed with the first Sonic [the Hedgehog]. So, I kind of inherited that. Road Rash, I think, was the first game that I remember playing by myself. And I think a lot of that, too, is the ripping guitars and shit. I was always like, This is fucking cool!
Carlye Nyte: My dad worked in IT, so actually from a really young age we had multiple computers in my home. So, I was a big PC gamer from a really young age—like, Zoombinis was a PC game. I was super into all the RTS classics, like Age of Empires and Red Alert. I was also a pirate from a risky young age, [laughs] so I’d get stuff like Elder Scrolls [III:] Morrowind and have no idea how to play it and probably certain things were super broken because it was a really poorly cracked game.
But aside from PC, my first console was a N64. It was weird because my dad bought it without asking my mom for permission and we didn’t really have the money for it, so she was super pissed. She didn’t let us buy any games for it, so we had this N64 and we would rent games and borrow them from friends. Finally, my brother and I for several months saved up our allowance and then we bought [007:] GoldenEye. So, GoldenEye was my major game.

I [James] could imagine a lot of late nights on multiplayer on that.
Carlye Nyte: Yeah, I have two siblings and we played a lot of GoldenEye, especially my brother and I. There was a lot of controller throwing and a lot of fighting. I have a distinct memory of the feeling of a controller getting thrown at my back [laughs] because of how much we would fight with GoldenEye. And we had these off-brand controllers, too.
Andrew Nyte: Oh, dude, I hate those controllers.
Carlye Nyte: I still have them…
Andrew Nyte: You still have them?! [Laughs]
Carlye Nyte: They’re my favorite and Drew hates them. I don’t understand. They’re more similar to modern controllers because they’re kind of like a boomerang shape. N64 otherwise had the weird trident that I could never figure out which one to put my hand on. I liked my boomerang one, OK?

“I have two siblings and we played a lot of GoldenEye, especially my brother and I. There was a lot of controller throwing and a lot of fighting. I have a distinct memory of the feeling of a controller getting thrown at my back because of how much we would fight with GoldenEye.” -Carlye Nyte

What about you, Cris?
Sanchez: I sold our Atari 2600 that we got from my aunt and then we bought a Sega Genesis with the Beavis and Butt-head game. We played that for hours and hours. [Laughs]
Carlye Nyte: That’s so on brand for you. [Laughs]
Metztli-Moon: You got to the GWAR ending, didn’t you?
Sanchez: We eventually beat it, but it took us so fucking long. [Laughs] It probably took us, like, a couple of years. We stopped playing it and then eventually came back like, “We’re gonna do it! We’re gonna do it this time!” [Laughs] So stupidly hard for no reason.

What have you all been playing lately and what are the games that you typically prefer to play?
Andrew Nyte: The second part of the question, I really like CRPGs. I just like fun games, but I’m not much [into] an open world. I like very linear, very tightly woven experiences. I’m not much of an open world guy. That being said, the three games I’m kind of cycling between right now are Escape from Tarkov—I will always play that, forever—I’m doing a replay again of Divinity: [Original Sin] 2, and then yet another Morrowind character. Traditionally, Carlye and I are both huge FromSoft fans, so I’ve run through all of them except for Elden Ring quite a few times. I’m probably going to do another Bloodborne run here pretty soon.
Sanchez: For me, it’s been Fallout 4. I just finished the story mode of that one. Fallout had me hooked for the past fucking year. I play a lot of online chess, but starting back up [The Legend of Zelda:] Tears of the Kingdom. I never finished it. I bought it when it came out, but just kind of picked it up and put it down. I’m adamant about finishing this one because I fucking love Zelda. [Laughs] I love Breath of the Wild, Ocarina of Time, all the Zeldas. I love them, so I want to finish that one.
Metztli-Moon: I’ve been playing the shit out of the [Elder Scrolls IV:] Oblivion remake just because I have very fond memories of originally playing Oblivion and Morrowind. I’m super into that whole Fallout/Oblivion camp, the big silly open world RPGs. I love playing it with prefabricated rules that I make for myself. Like, my dude’s not allowed to use weapons, not allowed to wear armor, he’s an orc and if you say something bad about an orc, I kill you. I really like games that are just so stupid and open-ended and broken like that. That remake is so goddamn fun, man. It’s got all of the horse shit from the original one. I love when games were stupid and broken like that.

Personally, I’m [Michael] not super big into Elder Scrolls, but the one thing I know about Oblivion was the one NPC that had the line where [the voice actor] took the line again and they left both takes in the game.
Metztli-Moon: And they just left it rolling! It’s so sick.

And it’s in the remake.
Carlye Nyte: It is?! I was hoping. I haven’t gotten to that character yet. There’s several characters that do that and it’s so funny because having myself worked in games and handled VO files like that, I know how easy it is to do shit like that. I just feel so bad for them because back then they can’t push a patch like we can now, so they probably found that problem pretty quickly and it was just like, “Well… that’s it. It’s on the disk.” But now, we choose to remaster and we choose to leave it in. [Laughs]
Metztli-Moon: If you watch some of the old videos of them making that, I think them noticing it was kind of like, “Yeah, no, this is funny. Leave it in there for gamers to find.” That game specifically kind of feels like one of the only actualized times I felt like, This totally feels like I’m playing a tabletop game. I’m in charge of the rules and the rules are fucking stupid, so of course somebody’s gonna flub a dialogue line or somebody’s gonna say something weird about, “Is necrophilia legal in this city?”

So, this is technically not the entire band, but this is definitely the most people that we’ve interviewed from a band at the same time. Is there much gaming amongst everybody in the band or do you all typically prefer to go to your own corners and play your own games?
Metztli-Moon: Drew and I just sat through and played Halo 1, 2, 3 and ODST couch co-op with each other over the past, like, 8 months.
Sanchez: You guys have done a lot of co-op stuff together. I remember you guys and the infamous Metal Slug on New Years.
Metztli-Moon: Oh, yeah! [Laughs]
Andrew Nyte: Yeah, Ryan got hella wine drunk and we were playing Metal Slug. This is New Years way back in, like, 2017 or something. We’re playing Metal Slug X and we beat the whole thing perfectly fine, we were locked in. And then he put down the wine and he looked at me. He was like, “…I’m going to throw up now.” And he calmly got up and very slowly walked to the bathroom and threw up, and then came back down, sat, put his hands in his lap and just picked up the controller. [Laughs] It was great.
Metztli-Moon: We were on literally the last boss of the game, too, as it happened.
Andrew Nyte: I will say though, other than that, I’m very much a hermit in my room in Tarkov mode most of the time.
Carlye Nyte: My gaming habits are super weird at this point in my life. I’m on the computer all day anyway, so when I come home, it’s not the first thing that I want to do. Oblivion right now is nice because it’s super nostalgic, but I’m not really into games that are open-ended and big RPG worlds anymore. I’ve lately been liking solo puzzle stuff. Balatro took the world by storm. I loved the shit out of that game. I’ve been playing other smaller puzzle games. There’s this one called The Case of the Golden Idol—that was really fun—Return of the Obra Dinn… So for me, it’s these smaller, bite-sized solo experiences. And then, of course, FromSoft games. Sekiro: [Shadows Die Twice] is one of my favorite games of all time.

You know, that small, bite-sized experience.
Carlye Nyte: Well, compared to a game like Elden Ring or even Oblivion, it is a bit more bite-sized. I think I could finish that game in maybe, like, 20 hours—maybe a little bit longer on my first playthrough. But yeah, I’m not really playing games with people. Well, I used to play a lot of Destiny 2, and then I got really sick of it because I was also working on it and I couldn’t handle it anymore. [Laughs]

You said that you work in the games industry. What’s your job? Do other people here work in the games industry?
Carlye Nyte: Drew has dabbled and he’s working on a game jam right now, actually. But I work at Valve, and before Valve I worked at Bungie [Studios], and before that several indie studios. I do sound design, like sound effects. I don’t do music and I don’t do much dialogue stuff anymore.

That’s really cool. Some of the non-music effects sometimes are what really make a game stick in your head sometimes, whether it’s a sword swinging or an impact or an explosion or even menu stuff.
Carlye Nyte: Yeah. You have this opportunity to bring this world to life and make the things that you do feel impactful and cool. I feel like it’s the mark of a good sound when you want to keep making it because it is really satisfying. And then there’s also the informative side of it—you want people to be able to learn the game and understand what’s happening from the sounds.

Think of the alert sound from Metal Gear Solid. Not only is it secondhand for gamers, but it’s kind of entered the popular zeitgeist. You hear it in TikToks. It’s just become the default alert sound for people.
Carlye Nyte: Yeah, that is a very successful sound. [Laughs] Or Balatro, when the score goes up and you hear the, bonk bonk bonk bonk bonk! It’s tickling my brain in the most satisfying way. It tells me that my score is doing really well and I had a successful card combination. I’m playing the game right, but it also just sounded good. I want that sound again, you know?
Metztli-Moon: Most super fun games like that are gonna have something that rewards you in that way. I was thinking of the Mega Man buster sound the whole time, how good it is to fully charge it and then let it go.

How has working in the games industry affected the way that you approach or enjoy games these days?
Carlye Nyte: Like I said, I think it has changed me quite a lot because, especially when it comes to PC games, sitting down to play a game just makes me feel like I’m going to work. I want to touch grass a little bit more than I used to, [laughs] be outside and not be in front of a screen. But I also have a lot of friends who work in games and it’s really exciting to see their work and see what other people are doing. So I really like to play games to get inspiration and see what’s going on. Of course, yeah, certain stuff still hooks me. I still play a lot, but not 60 hours or 200 hours—more like 20 hours.
Andrew Nyte: I’ve done some game composition. Actually, Ryan and I have also worked together on doing some contract mobile kind of stuff, and I know Cris actually does a lot of chiptune since the prehistoric times. I think video game music, for me at least—and Ryan and Cris and I have all talked about that—that’s the basis of us being musicians in general. The more you learn about games you like and the soundtracks, the more I want to make music and also want to play other games that do the same thing for me. The more you get inspired by a soundtrack that changes your whole life, the more you’re like, I want to keep playing because I want to find that special thing again.

You’d say that there’s a through line between your enjoyment of video game music and making music as a band?
Andrew Nyte: It’s a one-to-one ratio. The reason I wanted to play instruments was because I wanted to play the Chrono Trigger soundtrack on piano. Seriously! Or I wanted to play the soundtrack to Mega Man 8 on drums. I think all of us have had that in our minds. I know both you guys have, for sure.
Metztli-Moon: Working on game music and stuff like that, recently I’ve kind of been chasing the high of a kid realizing like, Holy shit, game soundtracks were my big, big thing. I was always so moved by the music, whether it was a playlist or it was the original stuff. That’s kind of informed my brain, plugging more into game music as I’m playing newer games and really trying to find stuff that’s more entertaining or pulls me into the game a little bit more.
That’s the whole artistry, especially with JRPGs. I had to do some music for for my brother’s college dissertation. He was making a game with some of his classmates. It’s kind of like a Castle Crashers type of game, but there’s a long, extended period where there’s a battle scene and I was trying really hard to make a song that didn’t feel tedious to listen to over and over and over again. Especially with JRPGs, man, there is an absolute black magic to how they create these songs that you could just listen to for 45 minutes straight. A minute and a half loop? That’s just madness!

“Especially with JRPGs, man, there is an absolute black magic to how they create these songs that you could just listen to for 45 minutes straight. A minute and a half loop? That’s just madness!” –Ryan Metztli-Moon

Especially with some of the RPGs. Final Fantasy VI, I [James] could hum that melody right now.
Metztli-Moon: That’s the exact one! The battle theme from Final Fantasy VI is the best one ever! That is my shit!
Andrew Nyte: That’s literally his reference. [Laughs]
Sanchez: [Sonic the Hedgehog composer] Masato Nakamura would use leading tones at the end of a loop so you would want the melody line to finish so it’s not so tedious to hear a looping melody over and over again.

Your new album Blood Quantum Blues incorporates an electronic element for the first time. You’ve said that gaming and gaming music has led you to essentially become musicians in the first place. What lessons from gaming music have you applied to the compositions that you made for Blood Quantum Blues?
Metztli-Moon: There is a new thing we’re working on where—full disclosure—I was like, “Oh, I think this is actually from Chrono Trigger, one-to-one.” [Laughs] That movement, I think, is a big part of it, too. You feel like you could just listen to this part or this idea a thousand times because it feels really good and it’s got a lot of energy that kind of moves the song along and makes you want to hear it again. That was a big thing with me for game music. I would pause at levels—or stop, even—just because I really wanted to hear a part over and over and over again. I think that kind of got into the psyche. A lot of the electronic elements are just cool things like that that catch your ear and make you want to hear them again.
Andrew Nyte: I know we had a lot of talks about moments and how we want to make a whole song [where] it doesn’t feel shoehorned. But also we want to create moments that stick out and I think that’s directly also from games. I’ll keep referencing Mega Man X2. At the very end when Zero comes in after you think he’s been dead and he bursts in the room, and then the song abruptly stops and that guitar line comes in, somehow because of the composition, it feels very natural. It feels very huge. It’s a very fine line.
Part of that, too, is a lot of the electronics were old. It was either old programs that were modeling these sampled synthesizers that were being used mostly on Super Nintendo or it was the actual synths themselves. Definitely went on a huge session one night dialing in sounds. The invincibility song from Donkey Kong Country 2 when you get the exclamation mark barrel, there’s a tune on the album that is legitimately that synth doing that sound. It’s not as down sampled as it is on the cartridge, but I had to look a long time to find that sound. [Laughs] It’s really fun.
Metztli-Moon: And we will reference songs from games for ideas, like, “I want that really jarring synth from Ape Escape,” or something. I think even early on, we would talk about stuff like that, way back in the day, being like, “I wish we could get some really compressed drums that feel really drum and bass-y or really skiddy from Jet Set Radio Future,” or something like that.

Were there any other OSTs that you went to for a direct influence?
Andrew Nyte: I would say [Castlevania:] Symphony of the Night for me.
Metztli-Moon: Yeah. And Cris constantly lifts bass lines from Sonic songs.
Sanchez: Yeah. [Laughs] Masato Nakamura, I’m telling you guys, man. He’s awesome!

“[Sonic the Hedgehog composer] Masato Nakamura, I’m telling you guys, man. He’s awesome!” –Cris Sanchez

Cris, as somebody who does make chiptune music, is it something that easily transitions over from making that kind of music to making the music in the band? Or is that two different sides of the brain?
Sanchez: For me, probably two different sides of the brain because I feel like if I make chiptune music, it’s kind of more electronic focused. Whereas with playing bass, I’m trying to get more of a soul, more of a metal vibe. I don’t know. It’s kind of a weird thing.

Do you feel like there’s much of a barrier between chiptune and metal in terms of vibe?
Sanchez: Sometimes. There definitely can be. I’ve tried to make metal songs on Gameboy before and it never really quite hit as hard. It’s pretty different, personally. I like to go more just straight up techno with it more than anything, honestly. [Laughs] I love that type of shit. I think it’s probably also easier to program, easier to make for me. [Laughs]

I’ve [Michael] tried to find examples of specifically creepy 8-bit music and I found I think one project that hit the vibe right. And then everything else is just really ham-fisted.
Sanchez: Yes! I think a lot goes into the making of the instruments themselves. That’s a huge part of getting the feel down, actually creating the timbre themselves, more so than what’s actually being played, I feel like.

Carlye, for somebody who works on making sounds in games that are not the music part, do you find that that’s kind of changed how you approach things in the band as well? Do you have a different mindset?
Carlye Nyte: Yeah, I feel like when I started doing sound design, it really changed the music that I liked and wanted to make. I kind of had to train myself to remove tonality from my sound design because It can clash with the music. So, you learn to express sounds in a much more textural way. I really like making more rhythmic and textural music. I have in the past had an electronic project and that’s kind of the focus I took with it.
And when it comes to Turian, I 100 percent want to contribute stuff like that. I didn’t get a chance to contribute on Blood Quantum Blues. Drew and I talked a little bit about it, but the timing just never lined up. But future stuff that we’re working on, I definitely want to contribute more textural stuff, more rhythmic stuff and seeing what can we layer with musical instruments to give it a really weird and unexpected sound. It’s nice now that I’m playing in the band live. We can perform this kind of thing because I have a sampler and I have auxiliary percussion and the keyboard and stuff. It’s not just something that we want to live in the box, in a track. We want me to be able to perform it.

Has that performative live element affected the way that you approach either music making or sound making?
Carlye Nyte: This is kind of a combo me and Drew question because he’s kind of the mastermind behind all the more production elements on Blood Quantum Blues. As far as going forward, I think there’s definitely no going back knowing that I’m going to be a part of the live performance now. Whatever material we write, we’re going to be thinking in that format of, How can I play it live? We don’t want to write music that we can’t play live or feels incredibly different live. You lose so much energy playing stuff on tracks. It sounds so much better, it’s easier to mix for the live sound person and it’s just so much cooler of a spectacle when you can actually perform it.
Andrew Nyte: For me, I feel like between Carlye and me—and I know Ryan and I have talked about this, too—we have kind of two opposite ends of the spectrum, where Ryan and I are just now starting to try and shoot for the moon a little bit more, like, Let’s see how much we can get in. And I think from Carlye’s perspective, you’re kind of used to having to shoot for the moon every day and then you’re like, “Well, let me simplify it down to play it live.” And so we’re trying to meet in the middle of ideas that are inspiring, that really actually move us versus what’s actually going to be a realistic thing that we can pull off? And I think I want to lean into that “shoot for the moon,” but still, sometimes you have to simplify ideas like hella so you can actually do them.
Metztli-Moon: We’ve also taken to simplifying those ideas that were too grandiose on the record, like, “This won’t work with an electronic instrument. We’ll just use the shaker instead.”
Carlye Nyte: It’s been fun because there’s a period of time of me learning the set and we kind of had to do a bit of trial and error. There’s a software synth that I use every day for work that I just adore for sound design. It’s called Serum. When I first joined, I was like, “I want to program all these synths in Serum and play live with Serum because I know it super well and it’s really powerful. You can make really, really crazy sounds with it.” So we tried to do that and set up a laptop and all this stuff and it was just like, “Bro, this sucks. [laughs] This is not going to be good to play.” That was something [where we] shot for the moon a little bit, ended up walking it back where we’re just going to use probably a microKORG for those synths. There’s having all these cool ideas and then there’s, Can we actually set it up on stage in a quick amount of time and is it gonna unplug while I play it? Hopefully not. [Laughs]
Sanchez: There’s some update in the middle of the song.
Carlye Nyte: Oh my god. That happened at [Northwest] Terror Fest on Friday! We have this really old Alesis sample pad that I play some of the samples on. We have one kit per song, and sometimes—not all the time, sometimes—it takes a really long time to change kits. And sure enough, we were playing this one song. The moment the song ended, I changed the kit and then by the time we’re supposed to start the next song, it was still loading. And so I just stood there on stage, staring at the loading bar like, “I’m sorry! [Laughs] I’m just waiting for this stupid thing to load!” So, yeah, there’s still some tweaking to be done. But I think the proof is there that it works because the live shows, they just feel really, really good right now.

Your band is named after a species from the Mass Effect series. What is it about the Turians that spoke to you so much to name the entire band after them?
Metztli-Moon: The name looks good in all capital letters.

For real?
Metztli-Moon: We were spitballing ideas. I hadn’t even played the game at the time!
Andrew Nyte: It was just because Garrus [Vakarian] is my boy.
Metztli-Moon: Yeah, dude.
Andrew Nyte: Garrus is the ultimate boy, you know him and Thane [Krios].
Carlye Nyte: Mass Effect is such a vibe. The soundtrack is so amazing. The sound design is so amazing. I feel like it evokes a very cool sound. Maybe there’s a little bit of that influencing the decision.

Were there any other game-related names that were tossed out?
Metztli-Moon: We don’t want to say them because we don’t want them to get taken! I think we were tossing around Jehuty from Zone of the Enders for a minute.
Andrew Nyte: Oh wow, that’s right.

That is a deep cut.
Andrew Nyte: Yeah. I was combing through the archives, like, “Metal Gear references? No. Mega Man references? Dark Souls references? What has not been taken yet?” At one point, I remember somebody thought our name was Tourian, like the area from Metroid. I was like, Damn, that would be a sick name, too.
Sanchez: My mom thought we were named after the Shroud of Turin.
Andrew Nyte: [Laughs] Surprise! We’re Christians!
Carlye Nyte: I’ve had people think it was Durian, like the fruit.
Metztli-Moon: We were supposed to play with them before COVID! They’re a grind band from New Jersey. I had that lined up. Right before COVID hit, we had to cancel a two-week tour and our first appearance at Terror Fest, and one of those dates was with Durian which I thought was gonna be fucking awesome.

“I was combing through the archives, like, ‘Metal Gear references? No. Mega Man references? Dark Souls references? What has not been taken yet?’ At one point, I remember somebody thought our name was Tourian, like the area from Metroid. I was like, Damn, that would be a sick name, too.” –Andrew Nyte

Did you eventually play Mass Effect?
Metztli-Moon: Oh yeah. I love [Star Wars:] Knights of the Old Republic and I didn’t actually know that BioWare also made Mass Effect. Drew told me that and I was like, Well, now I feel stupid. So I’ve got to play the game.

You’re already talking about new material. Are there any other OSTs that you’re looking to for inspiration in the future? Or is it just as you work on it, these are the things that pop into your mind?
Metztli-Moon: I mean, it just depends on who gets obsessed with what.
Andrew Nyte: Yeah, that’s true.
Metztli-Moon: I was going back and I was just totally in the zone with Final Fantasy VI, but I have a really big obsession with the Sega Sound Team from the ’90s and I was listening to the Sega Rally [Championship] soundtrack again. That level of high octane rock guitar mixed with the at the time really popular skitty breakbeat drums that were happening. That’s kind of in here now. I was talking about like, “What if we had gogo bells during a song or something like that?”
Andrew Nyte: I mentioned Ape Escape earlier. That’s always a huge one that I feel like I always want to keep injecting bits of that soundtrack into our songs. Honestly, Jun Ishikawa, who’s the composer for HAL [Laboratory], also all the Kirby games—there’s other composers for Kirby, too, but they all work in his style—those soundtracks are so insane. And even the other games that he’s done, like Alcahest and these other really obscure Super Nintendo games, he’s such a master of really powerful, positive bass lines. I feel like, not from a bass point of view, but just his compositions are centered around these moving lines and that’s something we haven’t really tried to do in the band. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try and do, so that’s a big one for me.

Are there any games that are coming up that you’re excited to check out?
Metztli-Moon: If I can get my hands on a Switch 2, I want to play the new Donkey Kong game [Donkey Kong Bananza]. There’s not been a lot coming out lately that I’ve been super juiced on, if I’m being honest. It’s been kind of hard to stay excited for some modern stuff.
There’s this game that’s been in purgatory, it’s called Kingdoms of the Dump and it kind of has an old Chrono Trigger platforming-meets-JRPG feel, but it’s kind of that real-time combat that looks really fun and the art style is incredible. It’s all about garbage. You play as a garbage can with a sword. I’ve been watching the trailers ferociously and that’s been in production limbo forever, but all it says on Steam is “coming in 2025.” So, if it comes out, I’ll play the hell out of that.
Carlye Nyte: I feel like I just forget. I watch the Game Awards or whatever, where they advertise a lot of upcoming stuff, and I get really excited about one or two things and then I just 100 percent forget until it comes out.
Andrew Nyte: I think [Hollow Knight:] Silksong for me. I think Hollow Knight, as far as games that have come out in the last decade, that game belongs in a museum. I think it’s just brilliant, it’s so amazing. So, yeah, Silksong for sure.

Sanchez: Oh man, I don’t know. It’s very hard because I end up buying old video games and I get excited over those. I found Fallout 3 for Xbox 360 at Goodwill, so I gotta find an Xbox and then I’ll be excited to play Fallout 3. [Laughs]
Metztli-Moon: I thought you were on The Simpsons: Hit & Run.
Sanchez: Oh, yeah, I’ve been playing that Simpsons: Hit & Run. I was playing [Grand Theft Auto:] San Andreas recently, that’s also been fun times. I keep just going back and back and back, so that’s what I’m doing.

Rapid fire round here: If somebody is interested in checking out some game soundtracks, could each of you throw out a game soundtrack that you would recommend for somebody who would be a fan of Turian?
Metztli-Moon: I had, like, eight just pop into my head immediately.
Andrew Nyte: Mega Man 8, absolutely.
Metztli-Moon: Jet Set Radio Future.
Carlye Nyte: I don’t know, I’m struggling here. I’m a sound designer, I don’t pay attention to music. Seriously, Mass Effect 2 to me is one of the coolest sounding games. What they’re doing with the synths for the biotic abilities, they’ve inspired me since I started sound designing, like, 10 years ago. So, I think the sound of that game is just an eternal inspiration to me.
Sanchez: Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.
Andrew Nyte: Sonic Adventure 2! Hell yeah!
Metztli-Moon: Dude, so straight up, actually, there’s totally a Sonic CD moment on our record. We almost verbatim ripped off Sonic CD on one of our songs.
Andrew Nyte: Yep, that is true.
Sanchez: Which part was that?
Metztli-Moon: The end of “Divine Child.” That’s the whole idea, it’s the end of “Sonic Boom.”
Andrew Nyte: Yeah, the end of the American version of Sonic CD with the acoustic guitar was the inspiration for the end of “Divine Child.”
Metztli-Moon: We’re such assholes. [Laughs]

Blood Quantum Blues is available now via Wise Blood Records and can be purchased here.
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The post KILL SCREEN 064: TURIAN Have Gaming in Their Blood appeared first on Decibel Magazine.