Composers: Taro Bando, Hajime Wakai

The entire soundtrack of F-Zero X is a shredtastic speed metal opus, and while there are a few slightly more iconic tracks that will certainly be featured in this series in the future, the one I find myself bringing up the most often is this one. “Devil’s Call In Your Heart,” sometimes called “Devil’s Forest” for the name of the track it’s associated with, isn’t just a metal track on your Nintendo 64. It’s straight-up death metal — growling vocals (I wonder if they snuck those in there and blamed the heavy compression), rapid-fire double bass drum, and an intro lifted from one of the genre’s seminal offerings.

There is no mistaking it. That intro is taken straight from the title track of Carcass’s 1993 monumental album, Heartwork. And what’s funny is, I’ve heard riffs from Heartwork used elsewhere before, but it’s not usually that intro, with the change from those rapid, harmonized 16th notes to the heavier chords. It really just makes it all the more certain, along with the track title, “Devil’s Call In Your Heart,” that composers Hajime Wakai and Taro Bando knew exactly what they were doing. Not that you could make the whole F-Zero X soundtrack the way it is and not know which metal bands you want to emulate.

We all know what the original N64 track was missing, right? Tons of shredding solos, of course! Enjoy this cover and its copious amount of face-melters, including one on saxophone!