Nerd Rock with Erdrick (original) (raw)

Descendants of Erdrick, Down Right Heavy – It seems like bands covering themes from video games is now a trend, and one that I welcome. After all, there’s plenty of nostalgic value in hearing this music again. Even back in the eighties you could come across something like the Pixies playing the theme from NARC, but it was a rarity.

Now there are bands that play nothing but video game music. I came across the Texas-based Descendants of Erdrick inadvertently, searching for stuff related to the Dragon Quest series. Of course, the descendants of Erdrick are the heroes of the first two DQ games, pretty much forced to take up the heroic life due to an accident of ancestry. The band says they chose this name because they consider themselves successors to the true heroes who actually composed this music in the first place. They play a good mix of songs from games I remember, as well as a few I don’t. The style is pretty much always guitar-based rock, but the addition of a flute on some tracks adds an interesting bit of flavor. As you probably suspected, the music from the original DQ is there, including the rather sparse battle theme that the Descendants manage to make considerably more interesting. It brings back memories of fighting one wandering monster after another in hopes that I’ll get a level increase or enough money to buy a new weapon. That game was pretty tedious, really, but I still have fond recollections of it. Super Mario Bros. is represented, because pretty much anyone who covers game music has to do that one at some point. From Maniac Mansion, we have Dave’s theme, not my favorite piece of music in that game, but still cool to hear again. Actually, the music I remember best from that one was Razor’s, but since that was already rock, I guess there was less of a spin the Descendants could put on it. Finishing up the album is a piece from Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, a game that I don’t know was ever all that popular, since it was basically just a somewhat easier Final Fantasy game. It had some cool rock music in it, though, and the Descendants play the battle theme very well.

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