Soundtrack Review: NHL 08

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This is part seven of the NHL Soundtrack Project. Here’s where you can find NHL 2002, NHL 2003, NHL 2004, NHL 2005, NHL 06, and NHL 07.

More than anything else, the NHL 08 soundtrack is really goddamn weird. At 21 tracks it’s the longest one in the series. It features five British artists, 12 American, one Australian, one Norwegian, one Australian, one Swedish, one Finnish, and — for the first time —zero Canadian bands. It’s got the widest range of genres in the series, spanning indie pop, twee electronica, post-hardcore, dance-punk, glam, retro rock, pop-punk, pop-rock, indie rock, and Christian alt-country. You could say that this variety is reflective of how what could cohesively have been called mainstream alternative rock when the early 2000s soundtracks were put together was permanently splintering into a set of sub-genres that had little to do with one another and not a lot of cross-over in terms of fans. Or maybe EA just wanted to expand the palette a bit from the usual punk + metal + emo + hard rock selections I’ve been writing about for the past two months. Either way, the result is definitely the strangest mix of songs we’ll see and made for a weird menu music experience, but how does it actually hold up?

(By the way, the inspiration for this series was this blog post reviewing this soundtrack which I remember reading back in 2009)

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Airbourne - “Stand Up For Rock ‘N’ Roll”

In the 2000s, as rock music was permanently falling out of the pop mainstream and replaced by rap and club music, a pretty serious cultural backlash started to form, encapsulated by games like Guitar Hero, programs on VH1, and movies like Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, that aimed to re-assert that classic rock and heavy metal were the “real” music and pretty much everything else was trash. For older listeners, it was mostly straightforward nostalgia, but it also gave smarmy teens and tweens an easy way to basically feel superior to everybody else, a phenomenon eventually justifiably ridiculed as “Le Wrong Generation.” A pack of retro bands emerged at this time including Airbourne, Wolfmother and Priestess who basically replicated classic rock radio for both the older crowd (“Great to hear the younger generation playing real rock and roll and not that Nickelback garbage 🤘”) and kids (“Everyone at my school listens to Fall Out Boy and Rihanna and Kanye West while I’m listening to real music”). I know this because that was 100% me at age 12.

Priestess and Wolfmother have some decent stuff, but Airbourne, the Greta van Fleet of AC/DC, was an absolute scourge on video game soundtracks in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Some of their songs are more bland than terrible (including the one we’ll see in NHL 09) but “Stand Up For Rock ‘N’ Roll” is just god damn corny that I can’t tolerate it:

Alright people, welcome to the show
Are you ready to rock? Are you ready to go?
Yeah, we've got what you want and we've got what you need
So, get your ass down here n' let your ears bleed

An intro that sounds like “Thunderstruck” played on Medium difficulty on Rock Band, a generic and boring riff, capped off with lyrics that sound like they were made up by an eleven year old with a Squier Stratocaster. Garbage. 3/10

Anberlin - “A Whisper & A Clamor”

I really like Anberlin, a mostly Christian kind of emo sort of pop-punk band from Florida who built up steam through the mid-2000s, culminating in the 2008 release of hit single “Feel Good Drag”. Right before that breakout, they put out a record called Cities, and while I would personally rank it one of the best in their vaguely Warped Tour-ish alt-rock genre. But I wouldn’t rank “A Whisper & A Clamor,” never a single or a fan favourite, as one of the better songs on it. That’s not to say it doesn’t have anything going of it; it’s got plenty of energy, I like the bridge where an acoustic guitar and piano play a really nice part simultaneously, and singer Stephen Christian, has some great moments here. His flashy and versatile voice was kind of the main appeal of the band, but even he can’t sell the “Clap your hands all ye children” refrain, and in fact his crystal clarity just underlines how awkward it is. 6/10

Bayside - “The Walking Wounded”

Even the relatively normal songs on NHL 08 have a bit of weirdness to them. “The Walking Wounded,” the opener of Bayside, New York band Bayside’s album The Walking Wounded, is an ambitious emo-pop song that jumps from post-hardcore riffing to carnival waltzing to a poppy hook to a shredding guitar solo over the course of three and a half minutes.

It’s also one of the most notable victims of EA’s uncompromising censorship regime. The chorus of the original track goes “Who would want to die as a cowardly little child?” EA inexplicably went with the much less objectionable “Who would want a child?” and chopped two bars out of the chorus to make it fit better. Brutal. I like a lot of Bayside’s stuff but other than the solo — which I wasted several fruitless hours of my early teens trying to perfect — I think this one is just okay. 6/10

The Black Keys - “Just Got to Be”

The Black Keys spent most of the 2000s recording lo-fi blues rock albums in various crummy studios and basements, garnering critical acclaim but not commercial attention. That all changed in 2008 with the release of Attack and Release, and within five years they were one of the most successful and inescapable rock bands around. “Gold on the Ceiling,” “Lonely Boy,” and “Howlin’ For You” are modern stadium standards, and the group’s artistic legacy might be inspiring scores of imitators playing what detractors call “Ford commercial music” or “APRfinancingcore.”

“Just Got to Be” came right before the break-out, and doesn’t sound much like the polished product to come. The Black Keys are comprised of a guitarist and a drummer, and on this track they really do sound like two dudes sitting in a basement recording on cheap old equipment. It might be a “purer” sound than their later stuff (which I’m not even really into, 2013 Mooseheads goal song bias aside), but it’s pretty dull to tell you the truth. There’s some creative riffing but the vocals are weak and the track sounds more like a demo than anything else. 6/10

Datarock - “Fa-Fa-Fa”

In 2007, EA undertook one of the most ambitious public health programs in North American history. Recognizing the risk posed to impressionable youth by addictive substances, they censored the lyrics “I need a shot,” “I need a hit,” and “I need a fix” from “Fa-Fa-Fa,” a shameless bit of pusher propaganda by Norway’s notorious Datarock gang. Thank you, EA.

By principle, I should penalize “Fa-Fa-Fa” for just as shamelessly cribbing from Talking Heads; everything from the guitars to the vocal delivery to the “fa fa fa” itself is just a direct imitation. But it’s such a light and clean palate-cleanser and works so well as menu music that I just can’t hate on it. That bouncy bass line, the the funky guitar loops, the change-up to the instrumental jam in the middle… Airbourne fans can call me a hypocrite if they want, I can take it.

Datarock wisely made the absolute most of the brief attention they got in the late 2000s, licensing their music in 12 different video games, ads for Coca Cola and iPod Nanos, and the film Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet Detective between 2007 and 2009. They still make music, but they peaked hard in the late 2000s so hopefully they invested some of that “Fa-Fa-Fa” cash (preferably after 2008). 8/10

Disco Ensemble - “This is My Head Exploding”

Back to Finland we go, with post-hardcore act Disco Ensemble blazing in with “This is My Head Exploding,” an insanely high-energy track that’s probably as scream-y as this series ever got. Your enjoyment of this one will hinge on your tolerance for singer Miikka Koivisto’s manic performance, which really does convincingly put across the song’s desperately frustrated lyrics (for better or worse). The track has four sections: a purely screamed verse, a more melodic pre-chorus, a hook that blends the two, and a big dramatic bridge. I really enjoy the instrumental performances here, which do a great job of keeping what could be a total mess a track together, but I’m a bit hot-and-cold on the vocal. I will admit that this wasn’t one I looked forward to hearing on the NHL 08 menu (why is this guy screaming at me when I’m just trying to trade for Marian Hossa?) but on its own I think it’s a cool track. 7/10

Dustin Kensrue - “I Knew You Before”

Dustin Kensrue is the lead singer of the post-hardcore band Thrice, but he occasionally moonlights as a Christian folk and gospel artist. “I Knew You Before” is track one of his solo debut Please Come Home (a theme on this soundtrack, by the way; 13 of the songs are track one of their respective albums, which makes me think the EA guys weren’t doing their usual digging through deep cuts).

The gist of “I Knew You Before” is that a woman this guy knew as a child has grown up to commit sinful behaviour, like wearing immodest clothing, having pre-marital sex, and driving a red car(!), and it makes him very sad. He concludes that her life must be completely miserable now that the innocence and purity of her childhood has been ruined and blames media and “music television”. The lyric is full of charming lines like “You dream of sharing your heart; instead you share your bed” and “All you want is to hear the words ‘Dear baby, I love you’ so you hike your skirt higher still.” Even worse, I bet that when she dances, she doesn’t even leave room for Jesus.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Christian or country music, but this is pretty nauseating stuff, and even setting aside the lyrics it’s just a terrible fit for an NHL game. There’s a reason that not a single other acoustic ballad has appeared here. You couldn’t have just picked a Thrice song? 3/10

Enter Shikari - “Sorry, You’re Not a Winner”

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Few songs speak to how unbelievably fractured alternative music because over the course of just a few years in the mid-2000s than “Sorry, You’re Not a Winner,” an electronicore classic that would have sounded like it came from another planet if you put it on NHL 2003. The UK’s Enter Shikari came out of the post-hardcore basement show scene, and this track reflects the need to get a room going nuts at all costs. The lyrics ostensibly cover a serious topic — a comfortable life sacrificed for the fleeting thrills of gambling — but the song itself could not be any less solemn, helped by the fact that these guys sing like English is their fourth language. The track features a mix of trance synths with manic post-hardcore instrumentals and vocals that increasingly devolve into cartoonishly heavy metalcore (cookie monster growls included) before dramatically repeating a slowed down version of the first verse (lyrics no more discernible) and finally, with a “what? what? what? what?,” launching into an over-the-top chugfest outro. I despised this track at the time because it combined two sounds I couldn’t stand (electronic dance music and screaming metalcore), but I’ve totally come around. It’s just fun. 8/10

Jupiter One - “Turn Up the Radio”

New York’s Jupiter One were evidently lucky enough to stumble on compromising pictures of the EA executive team in 2007, since five songs from their self-released debut record appeared on EA Sports titles. “Turn Up the Radio” is a light and pretty unremarkable track which basically sticks in my head because the synth line kind of sounds like “Subdivisions” by Rush and the singer has some dramatic and fun deliveries. “My reaction was mental I confess” in the second verse is my favourite, and at one point he sounds like Sting when he yelps “Someday! You’ll see! That it’s not a democracy!” Lead singer Kaoru Ishibashi would later have a successful career as an Art Pop artist, going by Kishi Bashi, and the Jupiter One album is not on streaming services. 5/10

Luna Halo - “Kings and Queens”

More straight-ahead pop. “Kings and Queens” basically sounds like if you dragged out the bridge from “Mr. Brightside” for three minutes, which isn’t a bad thing necessarily but doesn’t make for a super interesting track. For real, that post-chorus is literally just “Mr. Brightside.” Unfortunately the singer is very much not Brandon Flowers, and the lyrics are unbelievably generic: “hear the sound of my heart beating for you,” “c’mon c’mon I think you’re so special,” “I know that you belong in my arms,” etc.

For such a boring song, these guys have a kind of interesting backstory, though. They started out as a Christian rock group on their first record Shimmer, which is described by two RateYourMusic users as the OK Computer of CCM (we gotta take their word for it, because it’s not available anywhere). They toured around for a bit and prematurely announced a deal with Dreamworks Records, who took the leak as a negotiating gambit and backed out. Tough. Then Rick Rubin signed them and exec produced their self-titled album, but the release got delayed because he dipped for a different label. Then all the classic “drummer is leaving the band to go to college” type stuff happened and the group fell apart. Their main legacy is the song that immediately follows “Kings and Queens” on the CD, “Untouchable,” which was covered by Taylor Swift for the deluxe edition of Fearless and rerecorded for Fearless (Taylor’s Version). That version has a combined 80 million streams; “Kings and Queens” has 250,000. These guys remind me a lot of NHL 2004’s Dexter Freebish, another pop rock band from the American south which made a go at stardom and fell short. By coincidence, the Luna Halo record also has a song called “Falling Down” on it. 5/10

Manchester Orchestra - “Wolves at Night”

There are two bands I became a huge fan of because of NHL 08. One is Anberlin, the other is Manchester Orchestra. By the time I was a teenager I’d become obsessed with Brand New, and MO not only toured with them constantly but bridged the gap between Brand New’s whole emo Christian alternative rock thing and the kind of indie rock I was increasingly getting into. When I had been playing NHL 08 originally I wasn’t that into “Wolves at Night,” but being familiar with the song from the game gave be a bit of a bridge to get into their catalogue (which was a lot smaller at the time than it is now).

“Wolves at Night,” the first track off of I’m Live a Virgin Losing a Child, is really well-orchestrated, with clever touches like the warbling feedback in the intro, the almost melodic drum part that anchors the verse, and the organ deepening the excellent riff whenever it comes up. Even as a teenager, Andy Hull had a great instinct for how to pull back and push in each instrument to keep the song interesting and flowing. I would also argue that he’s got the best ear for melody of any songwriter in that scene (2017’s A Black Mile to the Surface is plenty of evidence of that), and while by 2006 he hadn’t yet figured out that his voice — admittedly an acquired taste — was best used as an instrument in its own right, “Wolves at Night” is packed to the brim with memorable sections. It wouldn’t rank among my favourite of the band’s tracks, but it’s great. 8/10

Mando Diao - “The Wildfire (If It Was True)”

Sweden’s Mando Diao return with “The Wildfire (If It Was True),” a sentimental lyric-heavy indie rock ditty reflecting on a brief relationship. Compared to “Down in the Past” from NHL 06 it’s a lot more gentle and low-key, with a pleasant hammond organ carrying through. I don’t know that it’s a great NHL game song, but if I was the music supervisor for How I Met Your Mother or a show like that I might’ve chucked it in an episode. What’s too bad is that the album that “The Wildfire” appears on begins with a track called “Welcome Home Luc Robitaille,” a great and moving song about the singer stumbling on a loose hockey card in his parents’ house and reminiscing about his childhood. Missed opportunity there, EA. 6/10

The Mooney Suzuki - “99%”

The Mooney Suzuki, a band that always gets brought up as the hidden gem of the early 2000s NYC rock revival, do their best Rolling Stones impression on “99%.” The opening track of their not particularly well-liked final record, it’s got some nice bits and pieces but singer Sammy James Jr. is unfortunately no Mick Jagger and the “na na na” chorus is kinda catchy but not that compelling. The highlight is the two-minute outro where the tempo revs up and they smack the big red “gospel backup singer” button, which sounds pretty good. 6/10

Paramore - “Misery Business”

I’ve given EA shit here plenty of times for what I’ve jokingly called poor drafting — licensing not-great tracks from bands that maybe seemed like they were about to blow up but totally fizzled out. Picking “Misery Business,” on the other hand, is taking Erik Karlsson with the 15th overall pick. Paramore were an up-and-coming emo-pop group who’d done short stints on Warped Tour and toured with such NHL artists as Bayside, Cute is What We Aim For, and Quietdrive. They were really popular in the UK (maybe too popular, since Kerrang! readers creepily voted underage singer Hayley Williams as the #2 “Sexiest Female” in 2006) but hadn’t made an impact in the States when EA licensed the lead single from Riot! in the summer of 2007. “Misery Business” coincidentally entered the Billboard Top 40 the week NHL 08 came out, and became the breakout single and signature song of what would turn out to be one of the most notable and successful rock bands of the 21st century.

There’s so much that’s great about this track, from the awesome riff to Williams’ exciting vocals, but what elevates “Misery Business” to the next level for me is an absolutely electric drumming performance by Zac Farro, who by the way was 16 years old when he recorded it. His combination of energy and creativity drive the track, from the verse pattern mirroring the intro riff to the dynamic snare rolls in the bridge, which crescendo and cut out in exactly the right spots to build up to the solo, and then he pulls off the same trick again in the drum break to launch the final chorus. It’s a masterclass, one of the best performances I can think of in the genre.

Paramore wasn’t my thing at all at the time but even I couldn’t deny this song. When the NHL 08 trailer dropped, it featured the song prominently:

I have a distinct memory of putting it on the computer that was in my basement, cranking the volume, and running over to the ball hockey net in the adjoining room and absolutely smacking tennis balls into it. 11 year old me was hyped. That’s the sign of a true NHL classic. 10/10

PlayRadioPlay! - “Complement Each Other Like Colors”

“Complement Each Other Like Colors” is the clearest signifier of how weird the NHL 08 soundtrack is. What about this song could possibly make somebody think it belongs in an NHL game? The gentle voice cooing about his faulty relationship and his friend Donny? The pillowy 8-bit synthesizers?

Texas songwriter Dan Hunter started PlayRadioPlay! when he was 15 years old, releasing electro-pop tracks inspired by the Postal Service on MySpace and accumulating an increasingly passionate fanbase on the platform, culminating in a major label deal signed before he even graduated high school. “Complement” appeared on his first EP with Island Records. Within a year, he’d assembled a live band and was supporting Fall Out Boy and Yellowcard on tour. Unfortunately that’s where the story peaks; the debut Texas didn’t do much, Island dropped him, he renamed his project Analog Rebellion, and things kind of fizzled out from there. I can imagine he might have been a bit annoyed when fellow MySpace songwriter Adam Young rode a similar electro-pop sound to a #1 hit under the name Owl City just two years later.

I really hated Owl City and that whole twee bedroom pop MySpace scene, but I gotta admit there is something about this track I’ve always found weirdly compelling. Maybe it’s the melodies, maybe it’s that synth line, maybe it’s the way the 8-bit instrumental has that video-game-y vibe, maybe it’s the immature but still bittersweet lyrics. It’s got the lightness of “Fa-Fa-Fa” combined with the melodramatic longing of those NHL 07 emo songs. When I can get through his nauseating vocal affect (pronouncing Donny as “Dweohnie” is pretty unforgivable), for whatever reason I kind of like it. 7/10

The Ponys - “Double Vision”

“Double Vision” is another back-to-basics garage rock song with a bit more of a post-punk vibe than the others here. It’s got a lo-fi aesthetic with a cool echoing chord progression and a strong bass part as well, which reminds me of the early 2010s surf-punk that was a few years away. The vocal performance isn’t anything special and the melodies are pretty weak, but I like the sound. 6/10

Pop Levi - “Sugar Assault Me Now”

“Sugar Assault Me Now” is a swagless glam rock track (never a good combination) from Pop Levi, an English solo artist with a really annoying voice and seemingly boundless self-confidence. The best I can say about it is that the drums here are pretty cool, and it’s less than three minutes long. Mr. Levi makes a lot of weird little noises that sound especially stupid through the super-powered vocal filter. That’s all I got. 3/10

Santogold - “L.E.S. Artistes”

In this series we’ve seen EA make some weird bets on artists who maybe seemed on the verge of breaking out and then really didn’t. Hell, we’ve seen it a bunch in this article. But maybe their biggest win was “L.E.S. Artistes,” a song by NYC indie pop artiste Santogold which instantly got a huge amount of critical acclaim, ranking #2 and #4 respectively on Rolling Stone and Pitchfork’s top songs of 2008 list, getting a shout out from Michael Stipe as the best song of the summer, and helping build hype for her debut album. But somehow EA got there first! The track actually debuted on NHL 08 half a year before it was even released as a single. Pretty impressive scouting right there.

“L.E.S. Artistes” itself is pretty solid, with a tight and restrained arrangement dominated by palm-muted guitar and lyrics satirizing posers in the New York music scene. I never really connected with it as much as critics did, and it doesn’t fit the sport or soundtrack at all, but it does freshen up the menus a bit. 7/10

Scanners - “Raw”

“Raw” sounds fresh and modern, with a great riff made up of layered synths and guitars, a glammy swaggering verse, and an energetic hook. It’s short, tight, and loud, and sounds even better next to all that other cobwebbed throwback rock on the track listing. The lyrics are basically filler and the heavily filtered vocal isn’t quite strong enough to carry the track as confidently as it should be, but this is a great one and I wish there was more stuff that sounded like it on here. 8/10

The View - “Comin’ Down”

Scotland’s The View start their debut record with “Comin’ Down,” a rowdier re-write of Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” by way of the Libertines and Arctic Monkeys. It’s got good energy and some swing to it, and it probably sounds pretty good in a pub, but here it’s a bit in one ear out the other. The album itself, Hats Off to the Buskers, was huge in the UK debuting at #1 and producing a #3 hit single (not “Coming Down”), but the group didn’t do anything in North America. 6/10

The Wolfmen - “Jackie Says”

We finish things off with yet another retro-rock stomper, this one from the Wolfmen, the project of two vets of the British new wave scene who had played in Adam Ant’s touring band back in the early 1980s. “Jackie Says,” their glammy debut single, got a bit of attention from nostalgic BBC Radio 2 hosts, and was licensed to NHL 08 ahead of the 2008 release of group’s debut album Modernity Killed Every Night. It’s not exciting but hits the right notes, with a good pace to it and nice touches of tambourine and harmonica in the chorus. Low-ceiling, high floor. 6/10

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To me, this is a bit of a case of squandered potential. I like the idea of a longer and broader soundtrack, and drawing from a wider array of genres was well overdue. Paramore, Anberlin, the Black Keys, Manchester Orchestra, Santogold, and *sigh* Airbourne were all good pulls in terms of artists on the verge of breaking out to mainstream success. But there is just too much dull and unmemorable retro rock on here, especially all those British glam tracks. EA’s music director Steve Schnur said that they chose new tracks instead of stadium standards to sound like “what the future of hockey would sound like,” but like half of NHL 08 sounds like what the past of soccer would sound like. There’s some stuff on here I love, bands I got into because of this game, and songs that really do offer a time capsule to 2007. But there’s just so much mid as well.

Onto the superlatives…

Most Valuable Player: “Misery Business”

Up there with the best.

Aleksander Barkov Award: “Raw”

I never see anyone hype this one up but I really dig it.

Healthy Scratch: “I Knew You Before”

Judge not. And write boring acoustic ballads not.

If you’ve been absolutely seething with rage reading my takes here, you can register your own opinion by following the link below and rating the songs yourself in our community vote:

Rate the NHL 08 Songs

Here are the community ratings for NHL 07:

Next week, we will tell (we will tell!) all the stories about the Warriors of Time in NHL 09