Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week or so, you know that Activision, the video game developer that gave the world such brilliant button-mashing fare as Fishing Derby and Popeye 2, has decided to put an end to what is arguably their fattest cash cow, the Guitar Hero series. I can’t believe how fucking inconsiderate the folks at Activision are for doing this. Did they ever stop for one second to think about the ill effects this will have on music listeners?!
Think about it. Millions of utterly shitty rock and metal bands have sprung up in the past 5 years, but if it wasn’t for Guitar Hero, the number of crappy bands coming out of the woodwork would probably be at least double, if not quadruple or worse.
You see, keeping kids pacified with fake plastic instruments keeps them from forming real bands. This is a good thing. Kids have shitty taste, so the ones that pick up real instruments are 99% likely to form shitty bands. How else do we explain metalcore, deathcore, crabcore, slam and djent? What else could possibly account for the popularity of bands like Waking the Cadaver, Oceano, As I Lay Dying, All That Remains, All That Remains of My Mother’s Uncle’s Brother’s Cousin’s Former Roomate Who Lays Dying, etc? By keeping today’s teenagers glued to the tube, Activision was helping to keep even worse sub genres and bands from happening. God only knows what other abominations against music might have sprung up over the past half decade, if not for Guitar Hero keeping youths safely away from Guitar Center.
The loss of Guitar Hero means more and more kids will start taking their misguided rock ‘n’ roll dreams and delusions of talent out of the living room and onto the stage. In turn, more embarrassing sub genres will be created. Record labels will sniff yet another flavor-of-the-week bandwagon to jump on, causing them to spring enormous dollar sign-shaped boners and start a signing frenzy, filling the shelves of the last few existing record stores with utter tripe to the point of bursting.
However, that record label wood will soon go flaccid, because no one actually buys music anymore. Those same kids responsible for this shitty music are also thieves who only listen to whatever they can get their grubby little paws on for free, effectively shooting themselves in the foot and crushing their own perverse fantasies of rock stardom. You can’t get rich and famous if all your peers are sharing your album on Soulseek or whatever the fuck it is these delinquents use to kill the music industry these days, instead of going out and buying it.
Critics and journalists like myself are going to have it rough. My inbox is already brimming with digital promos from bottom-of-the-barrel bands on a daily basis as it is. I can’t begin to imagine the shitfest it’s going to turn into now that Guitar Hero isn’t around to stop more turd records from being recorded and released. Isn’t it bad enough that I’m already getting a dozen press releases a day about Winds of Plague and some fucking band called The Browning?! The last time I checked, The Browning was something that happened in my pants when one of the local burger joints gave me food poisoning. It’s hard enough to find good bands to write about, but with Guitar Hero gone, the vast ocean of awful bands is about to become an entire universe of craptacularness.
At the end of the day, the people who really lose out are older rock and metal fans. As the bad music begins to propagate, there will be no escape. You’ll hear it in movies, on the radio, live at the local enormodome and on MTV at 4:00am when they actually play music (do they even do that anymore?!). Older fans will have no choice but to stay in their homes, rocking themselves in the corner and listening to their vinyl copies of Rust in Peace on repeat. Yes, the dude with the graying beard and the sleeveless Saxon shirt he’s been wearing since 1982 will be reduced to a pathetic shell of his former self, a shut-in traumatized by the musical crapocalypse that Guitar Hero‘s demise will ultimately bring about.
As you can see, the cancellation of the Guitar Hero series is not only a blow to the gaming industry, it is also the death knell for rock/metal as we know it. We can only hope that something else comes along that will distract children and teenagers from taking an interest in music. Maybe pogs are due for a comeback?
[NOTE: I shouldn’t even have to reiterate this, but above piece is meant strictly as satire and is not meant to be taken seriously in any way, shape or form.]
Friends, Romans, THKD readers,
THKD 