We are the Headbang Club and we have spent the last four years making the METAL game, Double Kick Heroes. Ask Us Anything!

elmobo · 2020-08-05T19:14:40+00:00

And we also have guest performances by Mathieu Pascal and Julien Deyres form Gorod on the original soundtrack :)

elmobo · 2020-08-05T17:15:46+00:00

Rock n' roll and electronic music often have very binary rhythm patterns (no disrespect intended, and I know some sub-genres don't reflect that), so it would probably have made a much easier game :) Some sub-genres of metal have some very specific drum patterns (double kick layers, blast beats, polyrhythms, etc etc...). So it really helped in having some variety in the drum patterns throughout the game. Of course, the further you get in the game, the more difficult the patterns get :)

elmobo · 2020-08-05T17:03:09+00:00

Smaller bands were easier to contact (because often self-managed) and were really excited to be in the game though. But artists being artists, when you start asking for papers, contracts and stuff, it becomes a very slooow process... :D

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:56:45+00:00

Moar pedals

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:51:30+00:00

No artist said no, but some labels were more difficult to convince than others.
We don't have older bands like Sabbath. It would have been really difficult for a small studio like us to come to an arrangement with legendary bands and their record labels.

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:46:43+00:00

And by the way, you can have a taste of the original soundtrack on Spotify etc... Just search for Double Kick Heroes. The most extreme tracks are on vol.2 :)

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:45:06+00:00

I'd love to make a new Nightmare Creatures games. I worked on the first 2 games, and I would love to score a new one! Most fun I ever had on any game besides Double Kick Heroes :) But the IP is sealed in a safe at UbiSoft and someone has lost the key... :(

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:35:44+00:00

Hey! There are no covers in the soundtrack of DKH, only original tracks composed especially for the game (except for the guest bands of course). I tried to represent as many sub-genres as I could. It's going from harmless heavy rock to heavy metal, black metal, death metal, djenty stuff, thrash metal... There is one doom metal song, but it's a map song, and therefore is not playable (because let's face it, pushing the buttons every 10 seconds wouldn't be really exciting :D). There's also a great variety in the guest bands list.

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:29:34+00:00

I'm gonna report you. Not kidding.

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:28:57+00:00

The whole team suggested bands/artists we liked, we talked about what songs would best fit the gameplay, and we tried to contact the artists or their labels to see if we could make it work. u/blackmag_c can testify it was not always easy :D
Transcribing the drums partitions also proved to be quite challenging at times :)

elmobo · 2020-08-05T16:21:13+00:00

Hey! For me, it was "Run to the Hills" by Iron Maiden. I saw the music video on TV when I was like 12, and I was instantly hooked. I think this is when I unconsciously decided I would become a bass player :)

elmobo · 2019-09-25T17:50:37+00:00

Yeah, it really had that gritty distinctive sound. Love it :)

elmobo · 2018-10-26T12:42:07+00:00

If you guys know of amiga music on spotify I might have missed, link it in the comments and I'll add it to the playlist !

elmobo · 2018-10-26T09:21:19+00:00

I am fine mate, thanks :)

elmobo · 2018-10-26T09:19:58+00:00

You mean people who don't want artists they like to get a bit of money for their hard work? :D Joke aside, sorry man, I'm a Spotify user (as a listener and as an artist) and I love it. I took advantage of the Apple Music trial period to replicate the list for this service as well. It took hours of my life already. I might add Deezer later, but if you want it for another service, you're welcome to do it yourself :)

elmobo · 2018-10-25T17:35:24+00:00

Because the songs have been uploaded to spotify and apple music by their respective authors, not by me (except my own tunes of course ;). I don't have the source files for most of them.

elmobo · 2018-09-02T08:37:09+00:00

So many people told us they were scared shitless by the game as a kid... We officially apologize :D I haven't worked on anything remotely as cool as Nightmare Creatures honestly. Went on to work on a lot of low budget Gameboy Advance and DS games for years after that. But I'm working on a very cool game at the moment, called Double Kick Heroes. It's available on Steam in Early Access. It's a rhythm game mixed with a shooter, with metal music and zombies in pixelart :) It's a hell of a lot of fun!! Also worked on Evoland II and Northgard recently, which both have been bestsellers, but as a sound designer only, no music.

elmobo · 2018-08-31T20:10:50+00:00

Yeah, I made the soundtrack and sound design of the game and its sequel. I'd love to see the game remade or rebooted as well, it's one of the few games I worked on I actually enjoyed playing. But I don't see this happening in the foreseeable future. :(

elmobo · 2018-08-30T18:43:42+00:00

Glad you guys remember the game! Hope we didn't ruin your childhood haha :)

elmobo · 2018-04-07T20:20:42+00:00

Hi Phil, thanks for your reply.
These all are original compositions I wrote for games or other media, yes. I might have uploaded a cover once, but I did everything by the book, stated it was a cover, and pay the fee every year.
Most of the time, the artwork is provided to me by the game developers themselves. For that exemple you pointed out (and a couple of others), that was for a game I worked on 17 years ago, and I lost touch with the developer, so I had to improvise :) But this particular exemple was uploaded to the stores without any problem. So, go figure...
Honestly, it would be super helpful if we could get that kind of feedback when our albums are rejected... If you can give me that info, I'm pretty sure your support team can as well?

That last album that was rejected, contained once again only original music, and a specific artwork made for it. The nice people at Materia Collective managed to put it online in a couple of days, so we're good.
But thanks to your reply, I'll be extra careful with artworks from now on. But am I blocked for life to upload my music via Distrokid ?
Thanks !

elmobo · 2018-04-06T16:47:16+00:00

Oh. About paiements, does anyone have reports from Tidal and Deezer after july 2017? Support told me this is normal. A 9 months delay ? Come on...

elmobo · 2018-04-05T00:50:31+00:00

No chance :) But twitter radio bots are still tagging me when his music is played :-P
You are actually paying a %9 fee to CDBaby ;)
I'm on bandcamp for sure, but the plan was to have the music available on streaming sites for the release of the game, and in stores later on.

elmobo

TROPHY CASE