We currently reside in a community filled with fantastic game music bands from all over the world that span almost all genres. When you have dozens (if not at this point, hundreds) of bands and musicians that dedicate themselves to covering and arranging game music from the Atari all the way through to the current generation of gaming, it can sometimes be a bit hard to catch everything. Extra Lives is a band out of Los Angeles that is a simple, straight cover band that doesn’t do anything fancy; they just do really fantastic covers of music from all sorts of games.
The four-man band has been releasing their covers regularly to Youtube for the past year, touching upon everything from Chrono Trigger to Final Fantasy 4 to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and more. One might be keen to wonder why, with all the bands out there doing remixing and arranging of game music into grand metal, rock or orchestral variations, should a band that just does straight covers be something to pay much mind to? There is a simple charm to bands that not only play covers, but play them well. Bands like The Minibosses became the legends they are breaking into the field of game music bands with straight covers, and sometimes it’s nice to go back to those roots.
It’s also nice to find new bands that straight their legs a bit and cover songs that might otherwise go completely uncovered, such as The Adventures of Bayou Billy.
The band recently performed with Kirby’s Dream Band during their first live performance, and hopefully will be doing more in the future. You can check out all of their video on their Youtube channel and check back for new videos regularly.
What are you opinions of straight cover bands as opposed to bands that do more arranged game music? Let us know in the comments.
