Oftentimes when seeking out people to join us in the Kill Screen arcade, some digging around is required. A recommendation from prior guests, a promo photo wearing a Metal Gear Solid t-shirt, a random social media post about a game, all clues that signal we might be on to something. But after receiving a newsletter promoting a pre-order for the new single “High Tariff Behaviour” from party slammers Party Cannon on a Sega Mega Drive cart, an impending interview felt like—apologies for the expression—a no-brainer. The Scots are now 15 years into their career playing gross and unrelenting brutal death metal while under the banner of a notoriously bubbly logo, advocating for “lowering IQs” and showering their crowds in vibrant confetti. Even with that mischievous history, the move seemed equally ambitious and specific. Would their metal fanbase go for such a peculiar release? With the entire run sold out in just one day, the results speak for themselves.

Truthfully, this is not the first instance of the band signaling an interest in video games. Merch designs are available with a swath of similar-to-but-legally-distinct-from Nintendo characters. Their video for 2022’s “I Believe in Dani Filth” is an homage to the legendary Street Fighter II. Before that was their track “Electric Soldier Porygon” in 2019, part of the Cannons of Gore Soaked, Blood Drenched, Parasitic Sickness four-way split. So what makes this nerdy, distinctly colorful, tongue-in-cheek approach successful in a particularly heavy subculture? “It’s normally not the idea, it’s the delivery method that makes it work or not,” surmises Bailey Junior, the band’s masked on-stage entertainer. “There’s a lot of very high-brow, very serious bands that are out there—and that has been covered, if you get what I mean… I think folk are gravitating towards it a bit more instead of everything being super turbo serious all the time.” Their message delivered right to our doorstep, we’re excited to party down with the thoughtful Junior and bassist/primary songwriter Chris Ryan, who rightfully explains: “Just because it’s dumb, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. And just because it’s complicated, it doesn’t mean it’s good.”

What were your first gaming experiences?
Chris Ryan: It was definitely… you guys call it a Genesis, but it’s the Mega Drive in the U.K. My cousin had one. I was born in 1991, so around that time, whenever it came out a few years later. When I was maybe four, he had one. Sonic: [the Hedgehog], Ecco the Dolphin, things like that. That’s just always been itching my mind. Attempting to work out what to do in Ecco the Dolphin is probably my first real memory of playing a video game. [Laughs]

I went on a Wikipedia rabbit hole the other day out of curiosity, and it turns out Ecco the Dolphin is about aliens. Like, you go on a UFO and things like that. I thought you’re just a fucking dolphin, man! It was blowing my mind! I thought it just was a fun game about swimming around and meeting fish and stuff like that. But no, it is, like, a full-on lore adventure where you board a spaceship and fight aliens and shit like that. And it’s in depth! There must be a minor percentage of the population that has seen those levels, man, because nobody else I know has organically played Ecco the Dolphin and completed it and know there’s aliens in it. I’m 33 years old and I’ve only just found out there’s aliens in Ecco the Dolphin.

Junior: I’m a little bit older than Chris. My dad was an IT consultant, so we had the 3.5” floppies and really, really simple games back in the day. But my first “Oh my god, that’s a full game” was Dragon’s Lair. The guys animated Disney animation, and then pretty much did a DVD menu of a game. You’re just a little guy trying to save the lassie from the dragon, but it was animated so beautifully even back then. It was an absolutely class game.

That was the first time that it was like, Oh my god, this is an interactive cartoon! What I touch on the screen, then something actually happens and I’ve managed to change the direction of this thing. It was way more impactful in comparison to the sprite art 3.5” floppies. These were far more fleshed out in comparison. And then a little bit later down the line it was your Wolfenstein and Doom, just to be like, Wow, I can walk about and do actual something. But that Dragon’s Lair was literally an interactive cartoon, it was like, holy Jesus!

The Party Cannon logo famously co-ops the font from the Toys “R” Us logo. Do either of you have any fond memories of getting video games from Toys “R” Us back in the day?
Ryan: Does our logo look like the Toys “R” Us one? I’ve not noticed that. [Laughs] I think it might be a legally distinct design.

Oh, yeah. [Laughs] Uh, for some reason, your logo reminds me of this very popular chain of toy stores…
Ryan: Coincidentally, Toys “R” Us, not so much. In the U.K., Toys “R” Us was a thing; it wasn’t that big a thing. Some major cities had them, but when I was buying video games as a kid, there was a small shop in Dunfermline where I lived called Electronics Boutique. I believe it became a franchise and got bought up eventually, but that’s where I’d go. I remember during school holidays, they’d have all the new console stuff set up and you could go play demo games and stuff like that. Every day, I’d just run down there and play. I remember playing Luigi’s Mansion on the GameCube, like, constantly until the staff were like, “Alright, you need to stop doing this.” That, and I’d also drag my mom in and be like, “Please buy me Perfect Dark on N64, even though I’m clearly not 18.” [Laughs]

But when I got a bit older and started getting to the more niche games, when GameCube was out, you could buy a Freeloader disc, which let you play import games. There’s a shop in Glasgow I’d get a bus to. For context, Glasgow is maybe an hour and a half away from Dunfermline on a bus. I’m from a small place, so getting import games like that was very difficult. So, I’d go to this one place and get the most obscure import game possible, like Doshin the Giant or Custom Robo or something like that on Gamecube and bring it back. That became my core place to go buy video games.

Junior: Toys “R” Us, for me, was just somewhere that my parents could pretty much drop me off and leave me, and then just come back an hour or two later. So, actual purchasing was very similar to Chris. Electronics Boutique was the spot, and if not that it was, like, garage sales or car boot sales. Me and my two older brothers, we would normally be the generation behind. When it was SNES, we were still on the Master System. Everyone kind of jumped ahead one, the car boot sales, everybody wanted to get rid of them—heaps and heaps and heaps of games. You’d go there with your pocket money and then every weekend you would come home with a video game.

The other thing which was good and bad that my parents did for us, since there was three of us kids, they were like, “We will not buy you another game until the last one is 100 percent completed.” You’ve got to literally turn ’round to [them] and go, “Hey mom, dad, come here,” and show them the credits rolling to go, “We’ve completed the game. We want another one.” Which is good at the beginning when we were crap at video games, but there’s three teenage boys growing up, so that 14-inch CRT screen never went off. We’d literally pass it round and around and around and around and around until the credits run, and then it’s like, “Hey mom.” So it’s like, literally every week, we’ve just completely ruined another game—on to the next one, on to the next one, on to the next one.

Ryan: I guess it depends how savvy your mom is about video games. Like, if you complete [The Legend of Zelda:] Ocarina of Time, she’s not gonna turn around and be like, “Do you have the Biggoron’s Sword? Do you have the ice arrow, though?” [Laughs]

Junior: The two that stand out to me—one of which still evades me and it kind of ruined the streak—but the first one was ToeJam & Earl, because it was just free roam, what’s-in-the-boxes, god-only-knows. That really put a wrinkle in the streak. But the one that absolutely fucked it dead on arrival was Body Harvest for the 64.

Why was that the ruiner of the streak?
Junior: This was the period of time where games were becoming 3D. [DMA Designs] was Rockstar before it was Rockstar. They developed this game. This was the tester before [Grand Theft Auto III]. Instead of having cityscapes, each level was, like, a marshland or a bayou or this weird Alpine city-ish—but there was no map that you could actually refer back to. You would have to go to an in-game map, look at it and it goes, “you are here,” and that’s as much as you’re gonna get for information on where you are.

The thing that stands out to me, as well, is if you accidentally stumbled across the end-of-level boss somehow and you’re under-leveled or not got the right gun or weapon, if you’re underprepared, that boss will travel to the ends of the earth trying to kill you. One wrong turn and then it’s like, Right, I’ve got to start this whole three-and-a-half hour escapade just for one level. And the thing that stands out to me as well is you have to put in a username at the beginning, and the only way that you could cheat was putting “I am a cheater” as your username and then all the codes would actually work.

But without a doubt, it pushed the 64 to its absolute limit. But it was like one of them games, like Turok: [Dinosaur Hunter] and Turok 2: [Seeds of Evil], that you had to know every single little bit in that game to just complete the level. And then when you get to level two, it’s like, Right, I’ve gotta start afresh and figure out every little nuance before I can get to the end of it. It absolutely ruined the streak—dead on arrival, that game, man. It was brutal. Still to this date not completed it.

What have you guys been playing lately and what are the games that you typically prefer to play these days?
Ryan: I’m a big Nintendo guy. I know I get a bit obsessed with things and I always collect stuff, so I try and stick to one console at a time. I’m still trying to finish off stuff on Nintendo Switch. I still haven’t beat [The Legend of Zelda:] Tears of the Kingdom yet, I’m still trying to 100 percent that one. It just goes on forever. That is a recent one.

I’ve really been getting back into turn-based RPGs recently, or overworld type stuff. A couple of years ago, they remade Super Mario RPG on Switch, so I absolutely rinsed that. And then this wave of remakes of Mario RPG games came out, so I’ve just been getting through them. I’m still on the remake of The Thousand Year Door, the Paper Mario game, and I’m still going through the new Mario & Luigi RPG game Brothership. As much as I love platformers and shooting games and stuff like that, Chrono Trigger is definitely like my favorite game ever. Even though our band is full of references to Sonic and Mario and things like that, and Zelda, stuff like Chrono Trigger really kind of gets me. Chrono Trigger was the first game I played that had a proper lore and story that I was invested in. You felt the characters grow with you and you could name them. Characters leave and come back, or you could find secret characters that came in and made party way stronger. And then there’s, like, a hundred endings. Something about that grips me. I can’t fully grasp why.

Other than that, I’ve also been playing the remake of Age of Mythology on Steam. I think it’s maybe an old man thing. When you get to a certain age, you’re like, I really want to play a war game, and I really want to just command this thing to build a bunch of bases and shit. I tried playing Age of Empires again, but I came to realize that in Age of Empires, bowmen are really strong and you have to look at the stats, whereas in Age of Mythology I can go, “That man’s a big Cyclops. I know he’s strong.” It’s just easier. [Laughs]

I feel like I’m gonna get a Switch 2 at some point, and I’ve been eyeing up some more indie games as well. There’s a game—once I get some more time—I’m gonna check out called Look Outside. It’s like a top-down RPG, but it’s all horror-based and it’s kind of like Earthbound, in a way. It’s kind of like a mix between that, Twin Peaks and Silent Hill, so that looks pretty good.

Junior: Earlier on in my gaming history, I was well into my point-and-click adventures and things which were narratively dense, and I wanted to chuck hours and hours and hours into it. But now, it’s the opposite. I play really quick games, like Limbo, Inside, Rocket League—games that literally I can drop the controller in five minutes and nothing really bad is actually gonna happen, or I’ve got to grind for another hour to get to a save state or anything like that. Anything that gives me extra stress or I need to remember what is actually happening in the storyline, or the grand resolution means nothing to me, I’m like, Well, that was a waste of 80 hours.

I’ve started to now regress and get back into the retro gaming of my childhood, being more Mega Drive, NES. The 8- through 16-bit cartridge era is my nostalgia, so a lot of that. And again, that also kind of has that five-minute playability, put it down. But if you really want to get into it, you can drop hours and hours into it. But at any five-minute increment, you can just walk away and there’s no real agency to it. I wouldn’t say there’s any modern games that I’m really into now. I recently got a GameCube and Mario Golf is the perfect pace for me right now.

Your video for “I Believe in Dani Filth” is a parody of Street Fighter II, your merch store has shirts including Piranha Plants and Pokémon, you’ve incorporated stage props of Mario characters. You wear the video game influence on your sleeve. Have fans been receptive to the presence of video games in what you do? Do fans ever talk to you about video games?
Ryan: Oh yeah, all the time, man. People will come up tell me to join their Discord server to play this and that. People always really want to play things like Call of Duty or Fortnite with us. The guitarist in my band, he plays Fortnite with his kid and stuff like that. Usually people try and hit us up to play battle royale shooting games, but people actually play a lot of video game stuff. That Pokémon shirt we did, that was one of our most popular ones; same with the Piranha Plant one. I think people are definitely into different things. They always hit us up at gigs and want to talk about it. I remember during COVID, I put my Nintendo Switch friend code up on our Instagram, so I had a bunch of Party Cannon fans join my Animal Crossing island. [Laughs] They get all the references. I always get a DM saying things like “Mario mentioned” or fucking “Wii Sports referenced,” and stuff like that. Turns out, unbeknownst to me, I make a lot of Wii Sports references. It just kind of happens [laughs] because I fucking love that game.

I think it makes the band a bit more relatable in a way as well, since everybody knows people into metal are fucking nerds. Some bands try and hide it, but everyone knows deep down inside there’s someone in there who has read a few volumes of Berserk kicking about. I think since we’re kind of open about it, it makes people a bit more attached to the band, like, “Oh yeah, we can actually talk these guys.” So yeah, we’re always having chats with people and stuff at the merchandise and we’ll talk about fucking anything. Video games is definitely one that comes a lot—and the movie Superbad.

“Everybody knows people into metal are fucking nerds. Some bands try and hide it, but everyone knows deep down inside there’s someone in there who has read a few volumes of Berserk kicking about.” –Chris Ryan

Part of the band’s ethos is all about lowering IQs. Do you think that games contribute to this?
Ryan: [Laughs] Depends on the game you’re playing. If you’re playing Mario Party, maybe. If you’re playing Postal, definitely. If you’re playing Age of Empires or Age of Mythology, that’s probably raising your IQ a bit. I think it depends on the quality of gaming you’re taking in. There’s definitely games out there that are designed to make you dumber and I’m totally here for it. But there’s definitely complicated games out there, really invested lore-based games that take away a bunch of your time, but definitely make you smarter in some other capacity that I’m also here for because I think I cannot function on one end of the spectrum there, like that needs to be all or nothing.

What’s the game you’re always telling me about, Bailey? That has, like, a big open-world MMORPG, and the politics of it was so intense that you couldn’t even join the game without just getting booted immediately, or getting put in a slave camp or something.

Junior: EVE Online.

Ryan: That’s the one. The community was so intense, and the game engine was so complicated that you had to have some degree in politics to fucking play that. But yeah, just depends on what you’re playing. You do get games with brain rot, and that’s probably, as time goes on, where I’m at with video games.

Junior: Yeah, I’m kind of with Chris on that. It’s not the game, it’s the player base sort of thing. People ruin everything at the end of the day. I might not say it works against lowering IQ; games just make you think differently. I’m from the [game designer] Tim Schafer camp of video games, Monkey Island and Full Throttle and stuff like that. Let’s just say that that’s stupid thinking, or at least different thinking…

Ryan: Lateral thinking.

Junior: That’s even a bit high brow for some of these games. [Laughs] It is sometimes really dumb thinking, that you’ve got to think about, like, “put the rubber chicken with the hook” and stuff like that, you know? [Laughs] If you use that video game logic in real life, you wouldn’t get anywhere. You really wouldn’t get anywhere at all. So, I wouldn’t say games lower your IQ, but as I say, they do it in a nice, fun way of lateral thinking, as Chris was pointing it out. But in modern day gaming, I think it’s more of the player base. Your Fortnite, your Call of Duty and stuff like that. If you sit there and you listen to the other players, your IQ just lowers anyway. So it’s not the game, it’s the people, you know?

The new Party Cannon single “High Tariff Behaviour” was released on a Sega Mega Drive cart. How did this come about?
Ryan: The first console I had was a Mega Drive. So, when Bailey came up with the idea, he was like, “Oh, look at what I found, look at what I can do, look what I managed to do,” I was like, “Holy shit, this is incredible.” It actually works and sounds pretty decent as well. And you could actually put a proper song onto it, not just an instrumental version using the Mega Drive instruments. The track is on it and it’s listenable quality.

Anytime we’ve done merch that’s been a little bit more out there, it’s always gone pretty well. We’ve done shot glasses and we’ve done hot sauces and things like that. People seem to gravitate to that. But I just think the people listening to the band are definitely into games and old stuff and just kind of quirky things. I’m sure there’s a lot of Sonic fans that listen to Party Cannon, so if we put something out on Mega Drive, that should resonate.

Bailey, you’re credited with the “I Believe in Dani Filth” video and coding for the cart. Where did your interest in coding and all of this come from?
Junior: The “Dani Filth” music video came out first and before that, the boys commissioned us to make a documentary initially. With all good documentaries, there’s a through line to tie it all together narratively. I just fucked about and made a very, very rudimentary Street Fighter character select. So if it was Chris, it would be like, “Here comes Chris!” Bing bing bing, select. And then it would talk about him and his bass playing and here’s some sexy shots in the studio, blah, blah, blah. So I sent the guys literally the three seconds of “Here’s the character select and here’s the through line,” and they were like, “Well… we like the animation more. Do you want to do that?” I was like, “I’ve never animated anything, so I better start learning then.” Chris, it was about six months, wasn’t it?

Ryan: Yeah, it was an arduous process. It took a long time. We had a few revisions along the way, which probably probably weren’t easy to make because you had a full ending and stuff made, and I went, “Oh, no, it shouldn’t end like that. We should do it differently.” [Laughs]

Junior: Myself and a good friend called Colin MacGregor Maker, he helped us out. Pretty much we did it 50-50. Once we did finally have the narrative parts together, then it was a case of, “Right, we need to make literally every asset, including the backgrounds,” which were showcasing places of Party Cannon’s past and potential future. They’re all Scottish, well-known spots, so if you look at it and you’re from Scotland, you know exactly where all of them locations are. I then had to make all of the guys and then all of their punches, kicks, jumps, all of the different animations for all of that. And there was something like over 1,000 individual assets in total for seven and a half minutes.

That was the first time that I thought, I didn’t know this thing, but now I do enough to make this artifact, if you will. That kind of started a fuse on, Wait a minute, if we can do sprite art, can we do a physical asset of that? This was a couple of years back. My research in making physical media was fucking terrible. I was looking at old developer kits and things like that, which cost the earth. Even back then, they cost a lot of money, so now they’re even more expensive for what they are. I reconnected with my brother, who is an amazing programmer and he’s worked for every video game studio that you can conceivably think of, from Warner Bros. Games to Sony. He’s worked for Rockstar, Rocksteady. He’s done a whole bunch of different gaming developers as a rigger. So, me and him shot the shit one day and he was actually really helpful in finding the assets to actually put this stuff together. I think we were on tour, weren’t we, when I was like, “Hey man, we might have a chance to get something on the cartridge.”

Ryan: It was the September tour. I think that’s when the most conversation came up. I think you sent me a video of that before, of the actual circuit board wired into a Mega Drive and the logo was on TV and stuff like that, and it was playing the song. The conversation snowballed when we were on tour and it kind of came to life.

Junior: There was, behind the scenes, me fumbling around trying to get bits and pieces together, a.k.a. a prototype. Once me and Chris and the guys in the van sat and had a bit more of a thorough conversation, it’s like, “Let’s do ‘High Tariff Behaviour.’ What can we put on it?” Then me and my brother then went away and feverishly put it together. What came out was the two different Mega Drive cartridges, the standard one and the special edition, and we sold out in 24 hours when it came out.

Was it hard to find the physical pieces?
Junior: Yes. That was the thing that I was most worried about because once we’d figured out the pipeline, if you will, then it is a stock issue. And we’re not the only people trying to buy these things. We were getting the pin boards and the microchip that works in the Mega Drive. We were getting both of them components and then getting a company to solder all together because that’s above my pay grade, I don’t know how to do that. That was all happening in China. We were getting the cartridge cases themselves 3D printed in Germany, and so we had to make sure that the tolerance was absolutely perfect and all that lot just in case we painted it or put a sticker on it and then it doesn’t fit in the Mega Drive anymore, so we had to go through all of that.

And then we were getting the actual boxes for the cartridges coming from America. They gave us a run around because the first time that we bought them, they sent us the Asian cases, so we made the prototypes for that. And then when we bought the wholesale, like, all of them to then do for the Party Cannon drop, they then sent us the right ones, the PAL ones. So then we had to rescale everything and do it all last minute to make sure it all fit to then go out the door. It’s like, “Oh, piss. Now we need to do everything that we’d done in a month or so’s time frame in literally under a week.” It was not fun. And then we did the manual as well that comes with it. We did a bundle package, didn’t we, Chris, where you got a patch and it was a t-shirt as well?

Junior shows off the noticeable size difference between the Asian Mega Drive cases (r) and the European PAL cases.

Ryan: Yeah. Every standard version comes with a patch inside it, and you can get a t-shirt bundle as well with the artwork. Me and Bailey sat there for the whole night with a scalpel—like, an actual scalpel blade—putting stickers on the cartridges and making sure they all fit perfectly, went into little creases just right. We all hand assembled them. The boxes, you had to put the clip on the box, then assemble it. So many parts of just the box that I didn’t expect there to be.

Junior: There’s a photograph in our WhatsApp chat. I’ve got this pool table here, and when I was doing all of them in batches and I had to port every single one of the boards, they were all laid out on my table because once I started porting them, I did all of them back to back. My brain was totally fucked after doing that one part of the process to make sure that they were not just ported, but then I’d gone through the rigmarole of testing them to go into the Mega Drive to make sure the music worked and all the compression was up to the right degree. But then we programmed in things like a button press so you could play and stop the music—but we had to then make sure that, say, I could stop it at any point throughout these cartridges, and the song’s five minutes. I had to test it thoroughly for every single one of them as well.

Given all of the headache involved with all of this, but after the obvious success of it, do you think that it’s worth doing for a different single, porting it to either a Mega Drive cart or something else?
Ryan: Spoilers: For the release we have next year, we might be able to do the whole thing on an N64 cartridge. So rather than just a single, we can do the whole thing. Still working on architecture on that one. I say “we,” but I mean Bailey is working on it. But that might be an option. People reach out every day and be like, “Do another run of the ‘High Tariff’ ones!” We did discuss it. I feel if we were to do another run, the people who bought the initial one within the 24 hours might feel a bit ripped off about that, to be honest—which I get, because we did advertise it as a limited edition, one-off type thing. So, it’s hard. They’re also very expensive to make, so it’s a bit of a gamble. There’s always a risk that, “Oh, we do have a run,” and all these people that said they want to buy it, just don’t.

Sourcing PCBs from China, getting them 3D printed in Germany and getting boxes from America—shipping alone feels like this is very not economically sound.
Junior: As well as also you’re hoping that it gets to you in time. If you’ve got the pipeline to say, “We are porting on this week, so then we can then do all the accessorizing and putting it in the boxes next week,” and so on and so forth, if one step of the plan fucks up, then it’s the knock on. But like with any passion project, it starts off not with money involved—it was just wanting to make the artifact. The artifact is now made.

I personally would love to do more and, as Chris was saying, on different consoles as well. But there is that give and take to, as they say, make it financially viable if there is a band or another individual that wants to buy these things. We’re trying to figure that out as well in the meantime. But I will definitely be making more things for me. If they actually become a commercial entity is a totally different story past that. But I absolutely adore the fact that I can turn around and pick up that cartridge from Party Cannon that I made and put it in a Mega Drive and it works. It still gives me that funny feeling on the inside, probably the same way as a musician drops the needle on a vinyl or a programmer makes a video game and runs it for the first time. It’s that something special of like, Holy shit, that is actually an artifact that now exists that didn’t before.

“I absolutely adore the fact that I can turn around and pick up that cartridge from Party Cannon that I made and put it in a Mega Drive and it works. It still gives me that funny feeling on the inside, probably the same way as a musician drops the needle on a vinyl or a programmer makes a video game and runs it for the first time.” –Bailey Junior

Does it validate that sentiment that gamers are not only interested in what you do, but also a force within the underground metal community?
Ryan: I’d say it definitely validates that. Video games and metal, lots of underground collectors are all kind of cut from the same cloth, aren’t we? But yeah, it was definitely insane that people were that interested in the band that makes that kind of specialty item that you jump in, like, “Oh, cool, I need to have this just because I like the band so much,” or “I think the idea is so cool.” It was definitely a concern of mine that if we put it out and didn’t sell, that we’d definitely look like idiots, or I’d feel like, Maybe I overestimated the band’s worth a little bit here. [Laughs] But I guess every band has that, even with single CDs and things like that, records or whatever: You put out something that you made, that you spent time on, and you expect that the fan base engages it, and they don’t. It’s like, Fuck, what have I been doing for the last 15 years of my life? You’re only as good as your last gig, as they say.

Have you encountered many, if any, other gamers in other bands when you’re on the road?
Ryan: Oh, yeah. Every tour I’ve been on, someone’s had a Nintendo Switch. When we were on tour with Unidad Trauma, we played Smash Bros a little bit… quite a lot. We were sitting back in Corpus Christi at the merch area just getting ass kicked by fucking [bassist] Dan [Morales] from Unidad Trauma. [Laughs] I was like, “I’m really good at this game… Oh, maybe I’m not, actually.” I was on tour with my other band [Iniquitous Savagery], we were on tour with Defeated Sanity and To Violently Vomit. [Vocalist] Angel [Ochoa] and [drummer] Josef [Hossain-Kay] from To Violently Vomit, all of us got on our Switches and we just sat in the back of the van and played Mario Party for fucking ages. [Laughs] That was good.

And I remember, I think it was [bassist] Basil [Chiasson] from Wormhole, he was the most intense gamer I’ve probably met on tour. All the guys in Wormhole and all the guys in Flub were really into it—Basil is particularly interesting. In fact, he even bought one of the Mega Drive cartridges. I didn’t know he did! He just sent out a message in a group chat. And then I checked and I was like, “Holy fuck, he bought one!” But yeah, loads of gamers in metal, especially in the tech scene. Maybe it’s one of those things where the more complicated the music, more people are into games.

Junior: Most of the folk which are already in a niche thing are multi-dimensional people. So if you’re into Hyper Light Drifter as a game, that means that you’ve got quite a bizarre taste in things, so you’ll probably like bizarre horror movies or bizarre music and things like that as well. There is definitely overlap between all of these things. Lewis [Candlin] was playing drums in Crepitation. Me and him had probably one of the most in-depth Disco Elysium chats and speedrunning conversations, where we were talking about tool-assisted speedruns and just weird videos that you’ve seen.

It’s not even game specific, but it’s like, “Did you hear about the Billy Mitchell scandal and stuff like that as well?” There’s always a touchstone thing that’s out there that will be part of conversation. Because again, as I say, we are multifaceted people, so we’ll have these weird takes, or you’ve unearthed this odd as fuck thing and go, “Here, you like odd stuff! Do you like this thing, too? Here! Like me!”

Party Cannon, to me [Michael], lives in kind of a liminal space. You parody the visuals and subject matter of death metal, but musically you are staunch proponents of the genre. Do you see gaming as becoming a normal part of the underground, similar to horror literature and movies? Conversely, do you see metal, and more specifically extreme metal, having a place within video games?
Ryan: Yeah, definitely. I mentioned the band Wormhole before, we were on tour with them. Their whole album is about Metroid. Kind of subtly, but the whole concept of the band is a concept around the game series Metroid, because the guys in the band fucking love that game.

I [James] did not know that! I like that band, too.
Ryan: Exactly, right? Which is really cool! It’s cool that they’re not so on source about it. It’s just kind of, if you read into it, you’d learn about Metroid. But if you don’t give a shit about Metroid, it’s not really Metroid-themed. There’s two levels of it. But I think it’s cool. There’s a bunch of old Party Cannon songs about Neon Genesis Evangelion, and you wouldn’t really know that unless you read through the lyrics and stuff, which I like.

And extreme metal, the obvious example there is every Doom soundtrack has been some kind of metal. Even Ultimate Doom was like “Master of Puppets”… or [air quotes] “Master of Puppets”. F-Zero [X] had “Heartwork” in the game, but it was called [“Devil’s Call in Your Heart”]. It was just an N64 “Heartwork.” I actually think the song is a little bit better than “Heartwork” because it’s got low vocals in it. [Laughs] I played F-Zero when I was really young, before I really listened to metal. Then I played Smash Bros. as well, when you fight on Big Blue. It was playing all the old F-Zero songs. I was like, Wait a minute… There’s no way that is actually “Heartwork” playing right now. But it is!

So, there’s definitely a crossover. And even Discordance Axis, all their songs are about anime and video games as well. So there’s definitely a crossover. It’s definitely there. It’s probably coming more to the forefront now. I’m sure in the ’90s and things, video games were a bit more niche. That was even before the advent of everyone having broadband or fiber or anything like that. But yeah, it’s definitely, definitely there.

Junior: I personally think it depends on the subject matter as well. There will be a point that they will both be seen as an artistic principle. But I think as well, it depends on what artistic bit you’re picking at. I think folk just go, “Oh, Metroid, that’s lowbrow. Link and Zelda, that’s lowbrow.” But if you start talking about Myst and Disco Elysium and, as I say, Hyper Light Drifter, these sometimes impenetrable games like The Witness or something like that, if that’s a starting point, nobody can then argue if that’s going to be a highbrow piece of art or not. Because it does have a slightly lowbrow aesthetic to it—“Oh, that’s a 1980s game”—it gets seen down upon. But video games are getting more structured, more elaborate.

I think this is the same as Bolt Thrower and [Warhammer 40,000], the first one to actually look at it a proper way instead of just going, “Oh, we like 40K and we’ll just put a very tertiary glance at it and that’s just one song.” But they then looked at it as going, “This is a whole lore.” And I think that’s kind of something that video games is finally getting into, that there is a gigantic lore to some of these games. But it’s how they deliver that is kind of the major point, I think.

Are there any games that you’re looking forward to picking up or any older releases that you’re eager to finally play?
Ryan: I’ve got a list somewhere of all these throwback, pixelated, 2D games. There’s so many Chrono Trigger knockoffs that I’m looking forward to playing. I only recently downloaded the Chrono Cross remake [Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamer Edition], so I’m looking forward to finally playing that. Mario Kart World, new Pokémon games, always excited for them. And I’m holding out for a Chrono Trigger remake at some point in my lifetime. I know there was one on DS. It was kind of hard to get in the U.K., but I’m holding out for a proper Octopath Traveler treatment type game of that. That is on my wishlist as one I’m holding out for for a long time.

Junior: I just consulted the list and the collection. Have you heard of Pony Island? I played Inscryption, the card game. A good friend of mine called Ewan got us onto it. It’s just one of them games that, “Oh, you think you know what’s going on? No, you don’t.” It’s still got that Stanley Parable sort of feel to it. But I’ve heard that Pony Island is the predecessor to Inscryption, and it’s like a fever dream of a video game. There’s levels hidden inside the pause menu and things like that, and it kind of visually breaks down in front of you at certain parts where you think you’ve broken the game, but it’s actually not. But it’s all scripted very well.

And on the retro front is QuackShot. It’s a speedrunner’s delight. A lot of folk have got into it on speedrunning. I’ve got the means to get it and I saw it in the shop the other day, so I picked it up and I want to see what the hype’s about.

Given your name, what would you recommend to our readers as the best party game?
Junior: I would either say Stick Fight or F-Zero on the 64, because both of them are friendship enders. Anything which is couch co-op that you can lay an elbow drop in, them games just evoke rage out of people.

Ryan: Ah, man. Wii Sports, Switch Sports or Mario Party always, always do it for me. Absolutely. People will say things like Quiplash or something like that. Nothing is better than playing Switch Sports or Wii Sports at a party, trying to play a couple rounds of it. Dude, I always get fucking hyped about it. Always the best party game, man.

Listen to “High Tariff Behaviour” via Unique Leader Records here.
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The post KILL SCREEN 066: Chris Ryan and Bailey Junior of PARTY CANNON Help Us Dumb It Down a Little appeared first on Decibel Magazine.