Video game

Starbomb’s ‘The Tryforce’ Is The Lonely Island For Video Games – Geek



For as entertaining as video games are, a lot of comedy surrounding video game culture… sucks. Maybe it’s because any kind of comedy is hard. Maybe it’s because awful aspects of nerd culture don’t lend themselves well to non-cringe inducing humor. Or maybe video games are just so inherently ridiculous that trying to make fun of them just results in something less good.

So when I say that Starbomb is not only one of the best video game bands but also one of the best video game comedy groups, I don’t mean that lightly. After a five-year gap (Overwatch wasn’t even a thing back then) the third and probably final Starbomb album The Tryforce lets the supergroup fulfill its “The Lonely Island but for video games” destiny.

The biggest reason why Starbomb works is because its members aren’t just gamers but legit talented artists across an admirable amount of disciplines. Danny Sexbang and Egoraptor from Game Grumps can do more than just play video games on YouTube. Arin Hanson is a killer animator, voice actor, and games critic. Meanwhile, Dan Avidan and Brian Wecht have a flourishing musical career in their own right as Ninja Sex Party (who we interviewed last year) not just recording comedy but also earnest attempts at classic covers.

So while anyone could’ve said something funny like “A 1990s Biggie/Tupac anthem about Mario Party” or “Rap-rock about the long Tetris piece feeling neglected” it takes real writing and musical craft to make those jokes into parody songs worth listening to.

The writing is about where’s it’s been the whole span of the group’s career. It’s juvenile and scatological but in that rebellious infectious energetic little boy Newgrounds way, with subtle laughs for more mature tastes. Any fan of a good Bart Simpson episode should appreciate this. Detailing some of these premises spoils the jokes but the lyrics mostly shine in little sketches about games like Dream Daddy and an Eminem-esque freestyle. A late meta track rattling off abandoned song ideas makes us wish they were all real. “Bomberman goes through the TSA and you can guess the rest.” But in many of the songs proper specific words, especially choruses, sound drowned out in the mix.

However, it’s easy enough to find the lyrics online and listen to the cosmic delights of The Tryforce’s actual sound. Another beef of mine with the whole nerdcore rap scene is geeky white kids enjoying the “irony” of partaking in an African-American artform. But Starbomb (mostly) sidesteps that with an eclectic spacey synthy musical style that just happens to use rapping and hip-hop as the most efficient verbal joke delivery for an ode to Dark Souls sadism or inexplicable Kingdom Hearts plot breakdown.

This album brought onboard Jim Roach as producer and Tupper Ware Remix Party as backup band and the increased production value really shows. Like The Lonely Island, Starbomb understands that you need the music to be seriously good jams for the joke to work. “Vegeta’s Serenade” features soft DBZ-themed crooning from Hanson. A Donkey Kong Jr. song perfectly demonstrates the ape’s charming stupidity through its simple but catchy instrumentation.

One disappointment to that took me longer to notice however was that despite how good the music is, unlike the last two albums, The Tryforce doesn’t really try to mimic the style of the music from the games it parodies. Pikachu’s wailing guitar solo recalls the Pokemon anime intro but that’s about it. It’s a shame because a Castlevania banger that sounded like a modern “Monster Mash” or a Punch-Out!! boxing training montage anthem that felt ripped from the Rocky soundtrack added the parody and reverence in those earlier songs.

Still, The Tryforce is a delicious piece of video game audio candy and kudos to Starbomb for not overstaying their welcome with a concept with probably limited gas in the tank. Just keep taking cues from The Lonely Island and make a Starbomb movie. It’ll automatically be the funniest, most entertaining video game movie.





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