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In the two and a half years since Albert foolishly greenlit this feature, a wide range of genres have been discussed with our previous player characters: traditional platformers, all flavors of RPG, fighting games, real-time strategy and even visual novels. One glaring blind spot, however, has become too large to ignore: sports games. Though your diligent co-nerds each boast over three decades of controller experience, massive franchises like Madden, FIFA and the 2K series have never gotten the same attention as other recurring column favorites despite their immense popularity. So when PA/Detroit hybrid act Gridiron—featuring members of Never Ending Game, Scarab, Simulakra and Face the Pain—announced their sophomore LP Poetry from Pain, the chance to, ahem, tackle this topic felt even more relevant.

“Karll and I are your worst guests you’ve ever had,” laughs Will Kaelin, guitarist and founding member. This self-deprecating and, most importantly, incorrect observation was expressed after a light ribbing regarding their video game hesitations. The truth is that while Kaelin and vocalist Matthew Karll may not be doing deep dives into Silent Hill lore with us any time soon, their enthusiasm for their franchises of choice is just as infectious as any one of our prior interviewees. Gaming is such a part of their shared history that warranted another wildly successful title receiving a mention in the press release for their upcoming album: “GRIDIRON was born out of a series of COVID-era marathon Call of Duty sessions.” Regardless, Kaelin and Karll decided to squad up with bassist and Nintendo die-hard Lennon Livesay to pad their stats a bit in case the difficulty of the subject became a too much to bear. The result was an incredibly revealing and varied conversation about the past, present and future of the band’s relationships with the medium that was anything but predictable and had both sides sharing a warm “GG.”

Looking for some overtime with this newest installment? Be sure to pick up Decibel’s latest issue (dB249/July 2025) for an exclusive excerpt discussing their upbringing within gaming and “nerd” culture.

Before we get to the real questions, seeing as how Kill Screen is a Philadelphia-based endeavor, I [Michael] have to start this off properly by saying, “Go Birds.”
Karll: Go Birds, baby!
Livesay: You’re in the right company for that.
Kaelin: We’ll get into this, we’ll get into this. This is the bane of Karll’s existence because finally, we got a great band, we’re doing awesome stuff and his dear friend Will lives in Michigan and is a Detroit Lions fan.

This is why I had to set the tone for this interview. Listen, I [Michael] distinctly remember being on Broad Street when the Eagles absolutely fucking crushed in the Super Bowl.
Karll: What time? Because it happened twice.

Both times.
Karll: OK, all right. Just wanted to make sure because, you know, we’re two-time Super Bowl champions now, so.

Already starting off antagonistic, which is the Philadelphia way. What were the first gaming experiences for all of you?
Kaelin: I think Lennon is probably the biggest gamer. I would consider Karll and I “jock gamers.” He’s probably the most game-y of all of us.
Livesay: My first video gaming experience ever, I was six years old. My parents bought me a teal Game Boy Color and a copy of Pokémon Red. I could not figure out how to exit the house, where you walk down—I never played a Zelda game, never played an RPG—so I went to my older neighbor and asked him to show me. And he was like, “Hey, instead of me showing you, why don’t you just trade games with me?” He traded me a copy of Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins. I probably put 600 hours into that game and it was off to the races from there.
Kaelin: Nintendo 64 was the first console I got. The game that sticks out to me is Road Rash 64, which in hindsight playing that as, like, a six-year old, insanely violent game where you’re just riding a motorcycle, bashing someone with a pipe. But on that playlist is Sugar Ray “Mean Machine”—hard ass track. Pause this if you haven’t listened to that and listen to that right now. And a couple of Civ [Gorilla Biscuits’ Anthony “Civ” Civarelli] songs. I discovered this recently in talking to Len, that I’ve been listening to hardcore since I was, like, six years old by listening to Civ on the Road Rash 64 soundtrack.
Karll: My first console—actually, we had two in the house. We had a Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Super Mario World was definitely one of the first video games I ever played, and the first Sega game, Sonic [the Hedgehog] 2, obviously. But another game that I used to play all the time as a kid was Gunstar Heroes. I have the emulator on the Switch and I still play it a lot. It still holds up.

What games have you guys been playing lately and what are the games that you typically prefer to play?
Livesay: I turned into a teenager who was no longer such a Nintendo loyalist, so I play a lot of different stuff. I am really, really into FromSoft games. FromSoft stuff and Nintendo stuff is realistically my bread and butter, which is funny because those are two very opposite ends of the video gaming spectrum, generally speaking. But I also play a lot of indie games and I play a lot of stuff that kind of falls in the middle of those things somewhere. I’m playing this game Tunic right now. It’s like [The Legend of Zelda:] A Link to the Past with Souls elements put into it, essentially. You pick up pieces of the in-game booklet, which looks like an SNES-era game booklet and you learn how the game works from there. It’s pretty cool. And I’ve been playing a lot of Balatro and Blue Prince lately also as well for more of a pick-up-and-play, roguelike games.

Karll: The game that I have been playing pretty much every night, my fiancée and I have been really into Overcooked recently. It is, like, the most frustrating game ever. We beat the whole entire game. They have the star system, so if you get, like, X amount of points per level, you get three stars. Once you get through the whole entire game, it unlocks a fourth star for each level, which is almost impossible, so some of these levels we’re stuck on for days. But you find yourself almost putting yourself into a kitchen environment when you’re playing—you’re just screaming at each other over stuff. But it is a really, really fun game. And besides that, Verdansk just came back for Call of Duty: [Warzone]. It’s taken me back to the glory days of CoD recently, so I’ve been dropping back into the battlefield recently, too.
Kaelin: [EA Sports] College Football 25 has pretty much been all I’ve been playing the past year for the most part. I haven’t gotten the new one yet, but was big into MLB: The Show. Like I said, I’m a jock gamer for the most part. I like Wreckfest, a little demolition derby style.
I’m a mindless gamer for the most part. I really don’t like to play games that make me think too hard, if I’m being completely honest. Life is frustrating enough. I don’t need extra frustration. That’s why when I play Grand Theft Auto, it takes me, like, two years to beat the game because I boot it up for an hour and just run people over for a while and I’m like, Eh, I got my fill. I like to just turn the brain off for a little bit. I will say in College Football 25, when it gets to recruiting, that is where I’m like, I’ve got the headset on, clipboard, I’m watching guys practice. That’s where I really care. But if I’m playing any game, I play on the easiest mode. I’m just wired that way. I want to enjoy the game and see all of it, not just be like, This person keeps killing me 500 times. I don’t get gratification after, like, Yes, I beat him! I just kind of want to watch a movie with my thumbs, you know?

In the press release and in previous interviews, you’ve said that Gridiron came about during the pandemic when you were playing a lot of Call of Duty. Karll, you said you’ve been playing Verdansk. Will, do you still enjoy Call of Duty? Do you still play together?
Kaelin: I definitely haven’t played as much just because the band has been doing so much recently and we all work full time. It’s been trying to find those pockets of time to play it, because when I play Call of Duty with Karll, I want to play for, like, nine hours. And that’s why it was so great during COVID, because there’s literally nothing else to do. And if I remember correctly, Verdansk dropped the weekend the world shut down—it could not have been better timing.
Karll: Yeah, the timing was crazy on that.
Kaelin: So it was just a moment in time where I was like, Yes, this is my entire life. And obviously I’ve played since then, but there’s just something about that period that hit so perfectly for everybody. I was almost talking to my friends more during that time than now because we were playing every single night from, like, 5 p.m. until 4 in the morning. It was just like, I’m just going to drink a few beers and talk with my boys for, like, 12 hours. So, yeah, I still definitely play, but I need to get back into it like I did during the COVID era.

[Wim Coppers of Living Gate] had mentioned that he had a group of friends and they were in some different time zones, so somebody would always be playing. It’s kind of cool that you’d be able to just drop in, hang out with your friends and enjoy a game for a while.
Karll: Yeah, absolutely. It was like from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. it was your East Coast friends, and then people would start dropping around 6. But not to worry, because your West Coast friends were just logging on for the day. It was very easy to put in, like, a 16 hour Call of Duty day during the pandemic.
Kaelin: The best was we would do these massive custom games with, I think 20 people is the allotment, and there’d be a wait list for people. And they would be psychotic, like [rocket-propelled grenades] only, whatever it is—infuriating stuff. I had a PS4 at the time and I had this gold controller. I would get so pissed off that I would squeeze the controller together [laughs] and this little piece of plastic would pop off. I had a screwdriver that sat right on my desk that was the perfect size for the tiny screw and I would just unscrew it, pop the plastic back in. [Laughs] It was the best. We would have these insane sessions. But we’d have these sessions [and] it’d be like, “All right, who wants to play Warzone?” Then, like, four people would do it. Then it would drop down to, like, two and you’d run one duo. No one would be talking, it’d be, like, 3 in the morning. That was the cue of, “time for bed, we’re done, the fun has been had.” Me and Karll at 3 in the morning, we’re not getting anything done. [Laughs]
Karll: “All right, we redeploy in four hours. Get some shut eye.”
Kaelin: But it just got to the point where we did it so much and we’re like, “We’re not doing anything. Yeah, this is awesome, I love being with my boys, but we gotta do something creative here.” Literally, it was as simple as this: Karll texted me, “Can you write some music I can rap over?” I still have the screenshot of the text from the 2020. I was like, “Hell yeah, no problem. Let’s do it.”
Originally, the band was going to be called Phatphuck. Then I wrote the first song and sent it to the guys who were all just playing Call of Duty. It wasn’t ever going to be a band. It was just going to be like, Yeah, let’s just have members, even though I was just going to write the songs and our buddy Mully [Tyler Mullen] was going to drum and Karll was going to rap. I sent the first song and I can’t remember who said it at the time—I think it was Jake [Abbot] who was playing bass at the time—and he was like, “Hey, this is too good for the name Phatphuck. We have to change the name.”
Karll: The dream died as soon as it came to life.
Livesay: There is a timeline somewhere where Gridiron is still called Phatphuck.
Karll: The joke is when Will and I hate each other in 15 years and we’re suing each other, there will be Gridiron and there will be Phatphuck playing the same songs.

Did you ever find any kind of creative influence from CoD or any other video game that you were playing? Or was it always just kind of a distraction outside of your creative endeavors?
Kaelin: It’s weird because I feel like it goes in parallel. Without playing Call of Duty, I literally don’t know if this band would exist. I met Karll a long time ago on tour and we’d always kept in touch. When our friend groups met, it just felt like, Wait, are we best friends now? And we kept in touch through texts and stuff, but I wouldn’t just pick up the phone and call Karll. We weren’t really at that level. So whenever we were playing video games together and hopping in the lobby, I was like, Damn, Karll’s fucking awesome. He’s the funniest guy I know.
Karll: Aww.
Kaelin: Yeah, I don’t mean to get all sappy on you, bud. And then from there, that’s when we started texting more and little group chats that would be for video games would turn into just regular talking all the time. Obviously we had very similar musical interests. Everyone else was starting these little COVID projects, and I think that paired with just talking all the time is what led to it. So in an indirect way, I would say yes. But I’m not kidding—from the shit talk in lobbies, there’s definitely lyrics that came out of that, like, “That was hilarious, you’ve got to write that down.”

“Without playing Call of Duty, I literally don’t know if this band would exist.” –Will Kaelin

I [Michael] personally have a theory that gamers had a slightly easier time during the pandemic, not just in the sense [that] they had a built-in way to kill their time, but that it allowed for them to escape through the screen into a world. They just have a better sense of immersion. Having these long sessions, was it that immersive escape from reality that lessened the impact and eventually led to a creative outlet like Gridiron, or were you chomping at the bit, ready to go back to shows, get outside, touch some grass?
Kaelin: That’s an interesting question. A lot of beautiful things in my life definitely came out of COVID. I met my fiancée, who I’m marrying this year. I started an amazing band with my boys. At the same time, there’s a lot of terrible things happening at that time, so it’s a really weird time to reflect on. But I think it definitely helped me. Me and my buddy [guitarist] Mike [Wasylenko], who’s in my other band Never Ending Game and is Gridiron’s manager, we would do these Madden streaming sessions and people would gamble on who was going to win in the chat. All these stupid community-type things, when you say it out loud, it sounds dumb, but it gave someone a reason, like, Oh, sweet. Tomorrow I get to watch Mike and Will shit talk each other and I’m going to bet that Will’s going to lose again because he always does. Those little things, as stupid as they are, they helped me get through the day, and I think other people as well. So yeah, I think it was definitely an inclusive thing for the community for sure—at least in my world. I don’t know about Lennon and Karll, if you guys feel the same way.
Livesay: I was working during the pandemic. I was a manager at a grocery store, so I was working full time beyond full time. With the whole “there’s no toilet paper” time period, people were not very nice to the employees at the grocery store. And when people were like, “I want to speak to the manager,” I was the guy who got wheeled out as the punching bag. So I was working and all my roommates were just sitting at home, not working and they had more money than I did. It was just a weird time. I moved to Philadelphia in March of 2020, so it was right at the beginning of the pandemic, everything was all fucked up. It wasn’t like I could go out and explore the city really. I would go out and ride my bike around or walk around, but I couldn’t really do anything.
So it was sort of just like, I’m just gonna go home and play games. And honestly, that time period for me was going through and playing a lot of games that had been on my back catalog for years and years that I had either owned and never gotten around to playing or wanted to play. At that time, I wasn’t really spending a lot of money so I was like, Fuck it, I’m buying all these GameCube games off eBay. I’m just catching up on my backlog. It wasn’t so much playing online. I was playing Overwatch online a little bit and playing Street Fighter online, too. But for the most part, gaming for me—with the exception of Overwatch and fighting games—has always been more of an individual thing where I can just kind of immerse myself in it. And after working at a grocery store for 40 hours a week, getting to come home and just not talk to anybody and just be like, I’m going to play [The Legend of Zelda:] Breath of the Wild overnight for 10 hours right now, was just an incredible experience.
Karll: I just think that that was the closest you could get to hanging out with people, so I think you were almost chasing the dragon of actually hanging out with people by playing video games. It’s like, OK, I can’t be in person with these people right now, so the next best thing is just being able to talk and do something interactive with them at the same time. So I think that was a huge thing for me; it was the best way to be social during that time period.
Kaelin: It was also sick because I had friends who never played video games. Like [vocalist] Mikey [Petroski], who’s in our band Never Ending Game, he is not a video game player. I remember doing one of those big custom matches on Call of Duty and he had a FAMAS with a thermal scope and he was the last one in search [and destroy], just hiding in the corner and everyone crying laughing at his setup. I think about that all the time and make fun of him all the time.
Karll: Shout out to Small Mike.
Kaelin: Shout out Small Mike. Those little moments of hilarity. Also, it brought people who maybe didn’t play video games into that world—that’s really cool, too.

People tend to get a little bit particular when you [discuss video games]—“I’m not a real gamer, I only play one game.” For all of you, what is your comfort level with being interested in video games? I’m [Michael] looking at Lennon, who has a GameCube behind him and a Mario statue, and Will, where it’s like, “I only like to turn off my brain and escape the world for a little bit, not necessarily take this seriously.”
Kaelin: I think we cover all spectrums of it, which is cool. I can talk to Lennon; maybe I’m like, “Eh, I mean, I don’t know if I can play that game,” because I just get my own head on that. And then Lennon will be like, “No, you can definitely just play it.” I just put limitations on what I think I can or can’t do. And it probably just comes from frustration of something new. But I think I’m going to play something hard now—what I would consider hard. I’m going to try it.
Karll: I do like all kinds of video games. I haven’t brought this up yet, but another game that I started playing when I was really, really young is Diablo on PC. I’ve played every single one. That’s a game that I feel like a lot of people play online. I’ve never played it online, I only play the campaign mode or the story mode. But all the Diablos, I absolutely love. I think that game is awesome.
Livesay: Karll, I had no idea you were Diablo guy.
Kaelin: I didn’t either.
Karll: Big Diablo head. Yeah. I played I and II on PC, and then I had III for PlayStation 3 and then I have IV. II is the goat to me. I think II is untouchable.

[At the time of this interview,] you guys are gearing up to go out on the road with Sanguisugabogg, 200 Stab Wounds and Mutilatred. Do you guys ever find time to game on tour or is that just an at-home thing?
Karll: [Holds up a Nintendo Switch Lite]
Livesay: [Holds up a Gamecube-skinned Nintendo Switch] I have a Switch. I also have a Retroid Pocket 5. I’m borderline computer illiterate—like, legitimately borderline computer illiterate. So I’ve had my friend who’s a tech guy coming over occasionally over the last few weeks since I got it and just loading games on there. I have a GameCube emulator on there right now with a bunch of good stuff and we’re trying to get the Dreamcast emulator going. But that’s probably going to be my gaming on tour. I plan to play a lot of Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 in the van.
Kaelin: This is the first real tour for Gridiron. We did Europe last summer and we did a five-day thing the summer before. But this is the first real American tour we’ve done. I’m a big into the emulators on my phone and I’m big into playing Nintendo 64, Game Boy, those types of games. Just running through NFL Blitz or whatever gamer I’m like, I forgot about that game. I’m going to emulate that on my phone. That blew my mind when I figured out I could do that. I remember texting Karll, like, “Dude, you can play Blitz on your phone!” [Laughs]
Karll: This was, like, six months ago, too. [Laughs]
Kaelin: I just didn’t realize I could do it. Someone who also tours—I think it’s my boy Jacob from Detroit—he had put something out there on Instagram like, “Yo, download this, you can do this. For my touring friends.” And I was like, Oh shit, this is sick! We went to Japan a couple summers ago and I literally played Blitz for nine hours straight. I was like, My god, what am I doing right now? But it was awesome.

Karll, was that a Switch you had held up over there?
Karll: Yeah, it’s a Switch. We have the regular Switch here. Before we went to Europe, I didn’t want to take that one from here, so I was like, I’m going to buy myself a Lite and I’m going to play it. I played Super Mario Odyssey for maybe an hour and a half and I just have not turned it on since, so I might actually try to start using it a little more.
Livesay: Great game. It’s, like, the sixth best game ever made.

What’s 1 through 5?
Livesay: The 6 was arbitrary, but I know my number one is Super Metroid. Super Metroid, Super Mario World, [The Legend of Zelda: A] Link to the Past , probably Dark Souls III, Hollow Knight and then we’ll go Mario Odyssey. There we go. That’s my top 6 right there.
Kaelin: You wanna hear mine and Karll’s?

Yeah, please!
Karll: Call of Duty 1, Call of Duty 2…
Kaelin: Madden ’06, Madden ’07…

[Laughs] We’re joking, but now I’m curious: What are the best years for Madden?
Karll: [Madden Football 64] was awesome. I don’t know if it was a timing thing. That was when I really started getting into football, when Madden 64 came out, but that’s probably my favorite one. And then my second favorite, outside of NFL Blitz and stuff like that, ESPN made a football game [ESPN NFL 2K5] and Terrell Owens when he was on the Eagles was on the cover, and it was the first one where you had the helmet view. So if you were running back, you got the handoff and you had the helmet view, trying to find your lanes and stuff. I thought that was awesome. That one’s also one of my favorites.
Kaelin: I vividly remember that game.’06 is an all-timer for sure.
Karll: ’06 is awesome. ’04 was an all-timer as well.
Kaelin: Yeah. But is that nostalgia? I don’t know. It’s tough. I have to go back because you never play the old one once you get the new one. I think ’04 through ’06 are really solid years. There wasn’t too much going on, there wasn’t too many extra bells and whistles. Back to the managerial thing, sometimes I can get lost where I’m like, What the fuck am I doing right now? I don’t understand what I’m supposed to achieve in this game. There was just the perfect amount of bells and whistles going on there.

When it comes to sports games, I’m [James] a false fan because I love the over-the-top ones. Give me Blitz and NBA Jam. Are these acceptable titles for you guys, too?
Kaelin: It is what Gridiron is built on.
Karll: Yeah. Gridiron is like the music form of NFL Street 2.
Livesay: NHL Hitz 2002? Any Gridiron track would have fit in perfectly on that on that soundtrack.
Kaelin: MLB SlugFest 2003, Dry Kill Logic, they had the theme song. Hard ass track. Any of those games, like the early 2000s NFL Streets, the NBA Jams, I was obsessed with. NFL Street 2, I believe, had a No Warning song on it.
Karll: Yeah, the one with [former NFL running back] Ricky Williams on the cover.
Kaelin: Exactly. My biggest goal with Gridiron is to get on a sports video game. It’s weird to look back. It shaped some of my musical likings. I liked the heavy stuff because I heard it on whatever sports game of the time. That’s what was popping in the early 2000s, like Dry Kill Logic on SlugFest—it goes perfectly together. Gridiron is an amalgamation of all those things. So yes, to answer your question, it is 100 percent a sports game and awesome.

“Gridiron is like the music form of NFL Street 2.” –Matthew Karll

Sports games have kind of become very managerial and serious. Are you into those games as well? What are the aspects of that that we’re missing in terms of fun?
Karll: I think that there’s multiple ways to play these new sports games. You can just play arcade mode. It’s just like playing an older Madden, it’s just more realistic. Obviously the gameplay is a lot different now, as opposed to if you were playing on a GameCube or something like that. But I grew up playing football, so I think playing those games lets me stay on top of the Xs and Os aspect of football. I love looking at the plays or picking a play and reading the defense before. It almost feels like I’m coaching in a way. I think that’s probably why I enjoy the newer sports games so much.
Kaelin: I think I’m gonna go opposite take—I love them because I grew up on them, but I much prefer arcade-y style of the NFL Streets, the NBA Jams, just because back to the thing of turning the brain off. It’s just like, Yeah, I’m going to play my buddy. Also, local multiplayer dying crushes me because it’s awesome. Sitting next to my brother and just destroying him in NFL Street was the coolest feeling ever. Actually, beating my dad was probably the number one thing. But you lose some of that with the new games and it does get very managerial sometimes. But I still love it just because I kind of think it’s a nostalgia thing and obviously I like to keep up on what’s going on. You learn everything about these teams. For College Football 25, I made a coach and I’ve been coaching North Carolina Tar Heels for four years. And as part of the bit, I bought a Tar Heels hat and wear it when I play. I love a good bit, so those aspects are funny.
Karll: I was very alarmed to see Bill, who is a known huge Ohio State fan, just casually stroll in somewhere with a North Carolina hat on. I was just like, “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” He’s like, “Oh, this is my team! I coach! I’m the coach!”
Kaelin: My name was Larry Teggerdine. My fiancée, her family lives right off of Teggerdine Road, so that was my inspiration. I made him as fat as he could be. That was also my thing, we can get into that. Create-a-characters, I would always do as tall as you could be and as fat as you could be.
Livesay: That’s a tale as old as time right there.

This sounded almost more like you were playing Dungeons & Dragons or something. You’ve got a whole character planned out and everything.
Livesay: We gotta get you on Baldur’s Gate 3. You can just play the create-a-character for a while and just have fun on that. You can get hours in on that create-a-character.
Kaelin: I just like taking screenshots and sending it to the boys. MLB: The Show, when you could take a picture with your phone, put it in there and it’s me but with long hair. I was like, Wow, that’d be so cool if I had that hair. [Laughs]

The funny thing that we’re learning today is that when it comes to high fantasy nerd shit and sports games, the Venn diagram, there’s not a lot of overlap but it’s not two separate circles.
Kaelin: It’s not! My 6’8”, 500 pound create-a-character is laying right in the middle of it. [Laughs]
Livesay: I do feel like the EA Sports BIG era and the era of those Midway Blitz, Hitz, SlugFest, those games? My friends in the neighborhood who were Madden kids and my friends in the neighborhood who were Final Fantasy VII kids, that was a weird, like, “OK, we can all agree on these arcade-y, ridiculous sports games.” Those were definitely unifying games.
Kaelin: Why did they stop making them? That’s what I don’t understand.
Livesay: There is a new Backyard Baseball that is either out or coming out. Bill and Karll and I have talked about Backyard Baseball a lot.

So you’re saying that there’s going to be a Gridiron team-building activity where you’re all playing Backyard Baseball?
Kaelin: Totally, yeah.
Karll: 100 percent.
Livesay: Then the band breaks up almost immediately afterwards. [Laughs]

On that note, is there ever any Madden where it’s Lions versus Eagles and there’s epic levels of shit talking?
Kaelin: It’s happened many times. We try not to cross into that world too much. We’ll do that every once in a while. We’re mainly three randoms and whatever your third random is, you stick with because I know the level of shit talk may take a few days to simmer down and we have so much going on right now that I have to talk to Karll every day. It’s like, “let’s not add this to the mix where it’s going to get brought up every single day.” I play our buddy Mike all the time in College Football. One time beat him with an amazing 75-yard touchdown as Colorado. It was incredible. I recently just got drafted Travis Hunter and threw it right to him, 75-yard touchdown, beat him in the last second. I wanted to make sure I brought that up so he could [read this] so he knows that again. But we try to avoid the teams we root for playing each other for the shit talk aspect.
Karll: Yeah, one of the best things that happened this past year was the Eagles not playing the Lions in the playoffs. That was a blessing in disguise that that did not come to foot because this podcast might not be happening right now. [Laughs]

We’re still seeing hardcore bands still getting into soundtracks: Turnstile, Speed, Gorilla Biscuits, Cro-Mags, Hatebreed. What is the game that Gridiron should be on the soundtrack? You only get one.
Karll: Madden, obviously.
Kaelin: I was going Madden or Grand Theft Auto VI.
Karll: Grand Theft Auto would be awesome.
Kaelin: Liberty City Hardcore in GTA IV also could have been a place that kids… I mean, for me, I’m listening to Agnostic Front while I’m driving.
Karll: Killing Time, yeah! “Tell Tale” was on that, too, and just listening to it over and over again and not having any idea what the hell it is. And now it’s like, Wow, that’s one of the best hardcore bands ever!
Kaelin: I know. Saints Row 2, I was really big into that one for a while, too. You could change the radio to only play certain songs and I would just have Lamb of God and Chimaira play when I got into my car. That’s the only thing that would play. So yeah, video games soundtracks are huge for me. So probably GTA VI would be my pick.
Livesay: GTA is a good one. I remember going to my friend’s house. My parents were pretty cool about whatever. The only video game that they were like, “You can’t play that,” is Grand Theft Auto because they saw something on the news about how you can have sex with prostitutes and then kill them and get the money back. So I’d have to go to my friend’s house to play and we would play Vice City, and I specifically remember when the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” would come on. It was like, “All right, controller is set down, we’re going to sit here and we’re going to listen to this badass song and then we can start playing again after that.”
Kaelin: Every kid our age had that friend who you’d go over their house only to play Vice City. You didn’t really like them that much, but you just wanted to play Vice City. [Laughs] I had that friend as well.
Livesay: I know they’re remastering all the [Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater] games since they did the first two. The Tony Hawk games were a big one for me as far as getting me into music, so I’ll say that one.
Karll: That’s a good one.
Kaelin: That’s a very good one.
Livesay: There’s a 25 ta Life song on Tony Hawk’s Underground 2.
Kaelin: That is true. And then also the KISS level. I’m a huge KISS guy. The KISS level in the first THUG was awesome.
Livesay: Yeah, you get all the KISS letters and they start playing.
Kaelin: It was so sick. [Laughs]

“I’d have to go to my friend’s house to play and we would play Vice City, and I specifically remember when the Scorpions’ ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’ would come on. It was like, ‘All right, controller is set down, we’re going to sit here and we’re going to listen to this badass song and then we can start playing again after that.’” –Lennon Livesay

What would you say is the most important soundtrack to a video game in terms of your musical upbringing?
Livesay: I would have to say Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland because that was one where it’s a bunch of, I guess you would call them sort of “mall emo” bands—My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday, whatever—and they’re all covering Misfits, Descendants, Gorilla Biscuits, Minor Threat, Black Flag, and that was a big gateway for me into a lot of stuff like that. One that’s maybe a little less obvious and maybe feels like cheating because it’s the nature of the game, but Guitar Hero. I’m sure Guitar Hero probably got so many kids my age into metal stuff and more punk-leaning stuff.
Kaelin: Me! It was my doorway to playing guitar because I got Guitar Hero for Christmas one year and then I was like, Man, I feel like I could maybe just play guitar. And I asked my parents for a guitar, got a First Act from Walmart. It was that and Pantera because I think “Cowboys from Hell” was on the first Guitar Hero. I had a friend—I was living in Texas at the time—we went to FYE and bought whatever “best of” Pantera CD and I was like, Oh, I want to learn how to do this. This is way cooler than a plastic guitar. I’m in this weird age pocket where I played Guitar Hero before I played real guitar. Yeah, absolutely—that would be a super, most influential soundtrack for me because it got me to think, Oh, I can do this for real.
Karll: For me, I feel like it’s more on the hip-hop side than it is the heavy music side. Madden ’04 was a big one for me because it had Bone Crusher “Never Scared,” which is a song that I heard. I used to listen to that before games, but I discovered it through Madden. And it also had “Pump It Up” by Joe Budden, which is an all-time track as well.
Livesay: You know where I first heard “Pump It Up” by Joe Budden? It was on the Def Jam Vendetta soundtrack.
Karll: That soundtrack is obviously awesome.
Kaelin: If they made a new one of those, that is Gridiron right there.
Livesay: The second one, too: Fight for New York. You can play as Henry Rollins! Pretty cool.
Karll: The Vendetta soundtrack had Ghost Face, RZA, [three] DMX songs. That has all kinds of cool stuff, like Eric Sermon was on it, Noreaga, Method Man. The Vendetta soundtrack was insane.

Will, you mentioned how playing Guitar Hero inspired you to start playing a real guitar. Do you see a similar skill set, even if it’s hand/eye coordination or dexterity, between video games and playing an actual instrument?
Kaelin: I’ve never been asked. That’s a great question. I think yes, for sure, because right hand’s doing this and left hand is doing this. And in any instrument, you’re thinking something and doing something with your hands. So I think there’s definitely a correlation there between the two. It would be so cool to get a poll of people who play Guitar Hero and they’re like, All right, I’m going to learn how to play guitar, and stuck with it. It definitely opened my eyes to like, Oh, I press down here, I hit this on that screen. When I’m looking at sheet music or whatever it is, it’s the same activity, but I’m actually doing it. I think there’s total parallels there. I’m not sure, Lennon, if you agree. I feel like you would know.
Livesay: I mean, the drums on Rock Band, you’re just playing drums at that point. So yeah, there’s definitely a parallel. I would say the two-hand dexterity working independently of one another, for sure.
Kaelin: I will say, though: pick up a real guitar, too. You might write the next hit.

Are there any games that are coming out that you’re looking forward to picking up?
Livesay: Oh yeah.

Did you get that Switch 2 pre-order in or no?
Livesay: I did not, but I actually had a conversation with a friend of mine today who told me that there are GameStop locations in Norristown that are still taking pre-orders for it right now. I’ve resigned myself that I do not want to play Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 1; I must play it on Switch 2. And I have to play the new Donkey Kong game [Donkey Kong Bananza]. Mario Odyssey is a top 10 game for me, and this essentially looks like it’s just going to be that level of quality, but Donkey Kong, which I fucking love.
Karll: The next Call of Duty? [Laughs] I mean, Verdansk was the thing that I’ve been waiting for since they took it away and it just came back, so I’m pretty content right now and for the foreseeable future as far as new games go.

You’re not going to be picking up GTA VI?
Karll: Yeah, that’s one. But that’s another one [where] when I play it, I play it very casually. One thing about me is when I get stuck in a game somewhere, I just kind of stop. It just stresses me out thinking about it, so I just stop and some I just will never revisit again. But it’s kind of hypocritical because Diablo was just full of stuff like that—moments in the game where it just is impossible. And then what sucks about Diablo is you have to go and get your corpse back and you have to fight to get back all the stuff you had before you died. So this GTA, I might actually sit down and try to play through it all.

What about you, Will?
Kaelin: I’m looking forward to GTA VI, obviously. Wreckfest 2. I’m telling you, Wreckfest is dope. I love a game where things fall off the car. I was a huge racing game guy. I had the wheel, I had the pedals. We were a big NASCAR family growing up, so I played [NASCAR:] Dirt to Daytona, all of those games. Wreckfest 2 I’m getting pumped for.
Livesay: What about this one, bro? [Lifts sleeve, shows Mario Kart tattoo to the camera] You know this racing game right here? How about that one?
Kaelin: I was a huge Double Dash!! guy! We would drive down to Florida or something, my dad had this TV that he’d bungee cord in between the two front seats. He would run power back and my brother and I played Double Dash!! on the way down.
Karll: I don’t know if I ever played Double Dash!! I kind of have beef with Mario Kart, and it’s because under my roof, my fiancée is somehow so good at this game that I know whenever we play, she’s going to win so it totally ruins the game for me. I know the outcome before I play the game: I’m gonna lose. And she asks every night, like, “Do you want to do a couple races?” And it’s like, no, I don’t, because I’m going to get my ass kicked again. So that’s why I’m really grateful for Overcooked, because I’m not getting cooked in Mario Kart anymore right now.

You’re just testing this relationship left and right between Overcooked and Mario Kart.
Livesay: We’re gonna train you in secret. It’ll be like a Shaw Brothers movie, but instead of teaching you kung fu, we’re teaching you how to play Mario Kart.
Karll: I walk in from a tour, I don’t even say anything. I just turn on the N64 and it’s “let’s go.”

Poetry From Pain is out May 30 via Blue Grape Music and can be pre-ordered here.
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