10 bands that need to be featured in RedOctane’s Stage Tour

RedOctane’s upcoming Stage Tour game has a lot to prove. The recently announced spiritual successor to Guitar Hero has the retro aesthetic locked down, sure, but it needs adrenaline-pumping rock and metal coursing through its veins if it wants any chance of succeeding. That means not falling into the same pitfalls that its predecessors suffered, pandering to the accessible mass market, and losing the rocker edge. 

10 bands that need to be on the Stage Tour set list 

Dethklok

Spearheaded by multi-instrumentalist Brendan Small, Dethklok has captured audiences for over 20 years. A virtual band, primarily known from the Metalocalypse TV show, Dethklok features a blend of heightened, sardonic melodic death metal that holds a mirror up to the metal community and still delivers brutal, catchy riffs.  

Particular highlights that would sing on Stage Tour include fan-favorites from The Dethalbum, chiefly Face Fisted, Awaken, Thunderhorse, Murmaider, and Go Into the Water. However, more melodic and atmospheric efforts from latter releases, like the unfolding technical majesty of Black Fire Upon Us, or the bleakly brutal Crush the Industry. I can picture how any number of these tracks could serve as blistering guitar duels or boss fight anthems. 

Green Lung 

There’s no shortage of hits to choose from when it comes to London’s Green Lung. For nearly a decade, these stoner/doom rockers have been electrifying audiences with Black Sabbath-inspired melodies and soaring clean vocals. Whether you’re a fan of their early work from the Free the Witch EP and Woodland Rites, or got into them with This Heathen Land, you’re spoiled for choice with tracks that will get the fret board worked up. 

Living Fossell, Lady Lucifer, and Let the Devil In would be prime candidates for the grandiosity demanded from Stage Tour, at least if its visuals are anything to go by. That isn’t to take away from the more rocking tracks; Mountain Throne, Templar Dawn, and Maxine (Witch Queen) go suitably hard. 

Unto Others 

Whether you knew them as Idle Hands prior or only experienced them as Unto Others, there’s no taking away that the Portland quartet is goth-rock royalty. Mana, Strength, and Never, Neverland are transcendent records, raging with grit, gloom, and rage. There’s something so pleasing about how Gabriel Franco’s iconic screams cut through Sebastian Silva’s piercing guitar that never gets old. 

Unto Others has such a unique energy and vibe that Stage Tour could harness wonderfully, but nailing down exactly which songs make the cut is a challenge. The slasher-tinged Momma Likes the Door Closed is an easy contender, as is the hauntingly beautiful Suicide Today, but deeper cuts like By Way of Kingdom and Destiny are ideal openers for any club-level openers in the game’s story mode. 

Clutch 

It’s criminal that only one Clutch song ever appeared officially in any guitar-based rhythm game, as The Mob Goes Wild from Blast Tyrant was playable on Rock Band 4 in 2019. The Maryland-based Earth Rockers are among the most consistent and hard-working rock bands on the planet, and their back catalog is full of nothing but fire choices that would get Stage Tour fully up to speed. 

Genuinely, where to start with which Clutch songs to include? Burning Beard instantly comes to mind, as does X-Ray Visions, Firebirds, Subtle Hustle, Ghost, Cypress Grove, and Profits of Doom. That’s to say nothing of (arguably) the band’s biggest track, Electric Worry, or its hardcore roots with A Shogun Named Marcus, El Jefe Speaks, Escape from the Prison Planet, Tight like That, and Rock n’ Roll Outlaw. You really can’t go wrong here. 

Gojira 

If you’ve ever picked up a guitar or attended a metal festival, then you’ll know Gojira. The French metal band needs no introduction; there’s nothing quite like the combination of brothers Mario and Joe Duplantier bring to the groove metal genre. The band’s earliest efforts, Terra Incognita and The Link, are suitably strange and eerily melodic, but it wasn’t until the breakthrough mainstream success of From Mars to Sirius two decades ago that they shot to superstardom. 

The band has only exploded in popularity in the previous decade, too, most recently opening the 2024 Summer Olympics in France with a brutal rendition of Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!). You can look back to either of the two most recent records, Magma and Fortitude, for technical, powerful tracks that could put Stage Tour players to their limits; Silvera, The Cell, Born for One Thing, Another World, and Grind are just as mind-bending as The Art of Dying, Born in Winter, and the irreplaceable Flying Whales. 

Paradise Lost 

Who says metal needs to be upbeat to be good? That’s been the mantra of Halifax’s Paradise Lost for more than 30 years. Their back catalog of records is about as kaleidoscopic as you can get. They’ve done it all over the years: death/doom, death metal, goth rock, and even Depeche Mode-inspired synth/darkwave, too. 

While I’d personally love to hear Beneath Broken Earth, Falling Forever, or Until the Grave darken Stage Tour’s setlist, it’s far more plausible for something more palatable, such as Say Just Words, Tragic Idol, or Tyrants Serenade bring the doom and gloom instead. It’s all incredible, and a testament to just how masterful the band has been for more than three decades. 

Witchery 

The Stage Tour announcement trailer features a man in corpse paint, and that’s good enough reason for me to include lip service to my beloved black metal. Witchery is an explosive mixture of blackened thrash/speed metal, backed by some of the greatest vocalists in the game. They’re currently fronted by Angus Norder, but they’ve previously been led by Dark Funeral alumni Emperor Magnus Caligula and Marduk’s Legion, too. 

It’s that crucial mix of black metal’s oppressive atmosphere and piercing banshee screams combined with the lightning-fast fretwork of thrash that makes Witchery an ideal late-game pick for Stage Tour. Recent slices like Popecrusher and Witching Hour are good tests of skill, but it’s hard to surpass the infernal majesty of Witchkrieg, Nosferatu, and True North. 

In Flames 

The Swedish metal band has been in the ears of rhythm game players ever since Take This Life melted plastic controllers all the way back on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock two decades ago. They have had a resurgence in the last handful of years, particularly with 2023’s Foregone, which saw the aggression return in tracks like Meet Your Maker, State of Slow Decay, and The Great Deceiver. 

With that said, to really bring the house down, you need to tap into when In Flames was (arguably) the greatest metal band in the world. That means the likes of Artifacts of the Black Rain, Graveland, Moonshield, Jotun, Scorn, The Hive, Food for the Gods, Ordinary Story, Embody the Invisible, Bullet Ride, and I could just keep going. There’s just as much to be said for the band’s mid-era works, with the surprisingly infectious nu-metal tinges of Touch of Red, The Quiet Place, Trigger, and Free Fall, which would complete the throwback feel. 

Behemoth 

There’s no extreme metal band quite like Behemoth. While the Polish trio started out as a straight black metal project founded by Nergal, the band has undergone many iterations, evolving into the blackened death metal we know and love today. Depending on your age, you may be most familiar with their 2014 masterwork, The Satanist, or have experienced them through their more aggressive, technical outings in the trilogy of Demigod, Zos Kia Cultus, and The Apostasy. 

There’s a ton of Behemoth tracks that would sear nicely onto the Stage Tour set list, and it isn’t all that far-fetched either. Mortal Shell II famously used Ben Sahar for its cinematic reveal trailer, as the studio did previously with Rotting Christ’s Χ Ξ Σ (666). In other words, blasphemy could be on the cards. I’d love to see Ov Fire and the Void, As Above So Below, Slaves Shall Serve, Conquer All, and Lucifer carve up the game, but softer efforts like The Deathless Sun, The Shadow Elite, and Angelvs XIII drive the nails into the wood, too. 

Ghost 

Say what you will about how Ghost has tweaked its sound over the last decade or so, but there’s no faulting how well the Swedish rockers would fit into Stage Tour.

Given how guitar-driven the game is, you would hope that early efforts from Tobias Forge and company would suit best: Elizabeth, Stand by Him, and Satan Prayer are solid, but the more 1980s tinge of Spillways, Rats, Lachryma, and Marks of the Evil One are just as powerful. Equally, too, if RedOctane somehow pulls off including Dance Macabre or Square Hammer, too.

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