Kraid (2000)
The Minibosses are (were?) a band that was primarily active in the early 2000s, but still were releasing records as recently as 2015 (if you count a split 10" with Mega Ran that had a previously released song on it). I've been a fan of these guys for a while with their big guitar take on classic Nintendo video game music. They've put out a few records over the years, covering some of my favorite background melodies from my early days playing video games. This is their very first self released album from 2000 and it's one that has been eluding me for many years.
What really surprised me when I got it is that half of the songs aren't covers of video game songs. They're originals. With vocals. Was not expecting that and after listening to them I can understand why they decided to pretty much switch to an all instrumental, all covers version of the band after this. As far as video game covers, we have six in total.
Of those six, four of them ("Ghosts 'N' Gobilns," "Contra," "Castlevania" and "Metroid") have ended up on other records of theirs. These versions sound a little rougher, I suppose, but they still sound great with the guitar virtuosity shining through as always. Two of the video game covers have only been put out on this album, "Wizards and Warriors" and "Castlevania 2." I think at some point I had MP3s of both of these from maybe Napster or something like that, but I'm happy to have official versions of them finally.
I'm not really sure what happened to this band lately. They were fundraising to do another album a few years ago, but it never came out and honestly, I'm not really sure what ended up happening with that. I do hope they come back eventually though, I always enjoy those nostalgic listens to music that I didn't know was clawing its way into my head back in the late 80s.
The Minibosses - "Wizards & Warriors":
https://youtu.be/-r2SwzRpZgk?si=mJjDhZmIQo709wbx
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