When the Minibosses released a handful of video game covers back in 2000 it was novel and fresh. In the years since there’s been a ton of bands providing variations on the theme. While the Minibosses specialized as a four-piece exclusively providing interpretations of NES music, other bands have added their own twist: dedicating albums to single games (The Bit Brigade), adding vocals to otherwise instrumental tracks (The Blast Processors) or just re-arranging everything as speed metal (Powerglove).

As the concepts become more niche, the breadth of available material diminishes. So when a band like Metroid Metal comes along and pledges to give the Metroid series of games the prog-metal treatment, I wonder how far they can take it. Other Album is the follow-up to 2009’s Varia Suite and evidence that there’s still plenty of life in the concept. This time around they dive into some of the lesser known tracks from the Metroid series: Metroid Fusion, Metroid II and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes as well as a couple of the less celebrated tracks from Super Metroid. Their adaptations are very loose and they give themselves plenty of room to mess around. There’s plenty to like here as the overall sound is quite heavy and the riffs are huge, not unlike what you’d hear on a contemporary metal album. As a bonus treat, a cover of the Autobot/Deception Battle theme from the 1986 Transformers movie is included at the end.