Arrowsmash

Download “Arrowsmash”

Story

The first “new” song that I’m actually confident enough in the recording to release is…irreverent, to say the least. In short, it’s a death metal song about arrowsmashing, which is a slang term for playing games like Dance Dance Revolution and In the Groove. So what’s going on in the song is more or less my arcade experience (The rule-loving jerk of a worker is real), plus some of the attitudes of the general hardcore arrowsmashing community (The “I walk off the pad…” line).

Other notes:

• Note how I pull a “Working Class Hero” at about 0:59 (Note how drastically the tone of the guitar changes). I have no idea how that happened.
• Also note how the guitar does a gradual fade-in for the first 8 measures or so. This is something that has plagued me only on this laptop for about two years now, and I have no idea how to get rid of it in my very outdated copy of Cakewalk SONAR. Anyone? Help?
• The last eight lines of the vocals are nonsense, strictly speaking, but there’s a system to them. I’m essentially dropping the titles of songs from arrowsmashing games in there (DDR songs for the first 6 lines, ITG songs in the last two).
• Also note the interplay in time signatures at 2:41 (The 10/8 of the guitar and bass against the drawn out 4/4 of the drums). I carefully researched what I had to do to make sure the instruments matched up. My research on fitting the vocals in there was unfortunately less stringent. As you can tell, though, I did ultimately pull it off. This is my concession to my prog-rock instincts for the song; at least in this version, I managed to end it somewhat quickly (About 3:20, which to a prog musician is about 5 minutes too short).
• At 1:33 is a…let’s call it an homage to “Fascination MaxX” from DDR Supernova. The whistles are in there mainly because it was the most absurd, un-metal thing available in the General MIDI drumkit.

Lyrics

I
Crush panels with my feet
Play DDR
Get in the Groove

Hitting arrows at 200 beats a minute
Thirty-three Greats, all are pad
I play a super hard Oni course
Fail a song, it makes me sad

Hit the arcade in an attempt to be social
I find it just doesn’t work
Arcade is filled with non-arrowsmashing idiots
And there’s a worker who’s a rule-loving jerk

I walk off the pad when my combo breaks! (x2)

Rape the bar before it rapes you! (x2)

I run across the nightmare
To the end of the century
A survivor of my paranoia
Enter another era
Try to find the colors
But I’m lost in the dark black forest
Compute and square the vertex
And succumb to pandemonium