Music rhythm games may no longer enjoy the mainstream success Guitar Hero and Rock Band had in their prime, but the absence of heavy hitters has seen plenty of innovative newcomers rise to fill the void. It is rare to see metal music take centre stage without a plastic instrument in tow, but that is exactly what Double Kick Heroes brings to the table. It is a love letter to heavy metal and the blistering drum beats so fundamental to the genre. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but there is a lot to love here for headbanging fans.

You assume control of Derek, the drummer in a metal band attempting to survive a zombie apocalypse in a desolate 8-bit wasteland. With your kit strapped on the back of your car, you will need to hit the skins and pound the beaters in time with dozens of hard-hitting songs to unleash firepower upon the ever-approaching zombie hoard. The story sees the band hopping between locales, blasting the undead and encountering plenty of amusing characters along the way.

There is a clear reverence for the genre across the brief journey. Almost every metal-sub genre is represented both musically with an all-original soundtrack, and thematically with plenty of nods and winks to metal icons. The cast of characters includes some almost-but-not-quite familiar faces from Metallica, Motorhead, Marilyn Manson, Tenacious D and loads more. The colourful banter between these characters and your band, filled with enough swear words to make a sailor blush, strikes an amusing tone, and is entertaining enough to make the story worth seeing through.

The core gameplay will look familiar to music game veterans. A series of notes travel down a highway along the bottom of the screen. On the easiest difficulty, the notes only represent the titular kick pedals. Each bass drum has its own button, with one blasting high on the screen and the other low. The oncoming hoards of undead zombies, chickens, sharks, and various other creatures will steadily pursue your vehicle. You will need to pay attention to whether enemies are hitting from above or below to ensure they are kept at bay.

Chaining together successful notes will increase a combo meter that powers up your default weapon, from a simple pistol all the way up to a cannon. Higher difficulties start to add in snare drum notes which builds up a separate meter that can unleash a grenade to clear huge swaths of rotting foes at once. Step things up to the Extreme difficulty and you will also have crash cymbal notes to contend with on a third row that can add sniper shots to your arsenal.

Rock Band and Guitar Hero have featured metal tracks before, but the breadth of metal sub-genres on offer here goes very deep. You have got hard rock, stoner, death metal, black metal, thrash, nu-metal, grindcore…just about everything you could think of and then a dozen more you never would have. It gets extremely heavy, and it certainly will not be to everyone’s taste, but you may just uncover a style you like or gain a new appreciation for the technical complexities of metal music.

With the bone-crunching musical feats on offer, be prepared for a drastically different experience depending on the difficulty you choose. The game does not hesitate to throw a lot your way. Even lower difficulties throw a barrage of notes at you but step it up to Metal or Violent and your fingers will be getting an intense workout. Violent, the second hardest difficulty, maps every bass and snare hit note for note with the song, and if you are familiar with heavy metal, you will know that can be a lot. If you have an affinity for this style of music, you will likely find things a bit easier as you will more naturally feel your way through more elaborate kick patterns. Be prepared for sustained rapid-fire double kicks, blast beats, snare rolls, tricky triplets and much more.

There are times where it can all become a bit too much to successfully pull off whilst still monitoring the rest of the game. With so many notes heading towards you, you will not have any time to be looking at what is going on above, and you will be missing out on some great enemy designs. You also will not really know if enemies are coming from above or below, and there is no indication on the note highway to indicate where your most immediate threat is coming from. It is sometimes easier to get through a section with just one button, but you risk missing enemies coming up behind you. It would have been nice if there was an option for it to automatically fire up and down alternatingly regardless of which button is pressed.

Thankfully, there are plenty of options to tinker with the difficulty. The much-appreciated Chill mode turns off the pursuing undead allowing you to truly focus on playing the song. You can also turn off the overheat mechanic that kicks in if you get a little button mash happy. There is also an option to turn on the requirement to steer your car in some boss levels if for some reason you wanted another thing to try to manage whilst staring down a machine-gun fire of double kicks.

These options proved essential to my enjoyment, as the path through the story is subject to some wild difficulty swings. One moment you settle into a nice rhythm and are travelling fine when a Black Metal song pops up to crush your wrists and your spirits. The construction of some songs also can mean that almost perfect runs sometimes is not good enough. The zombies never stop, so if you reach a quiet bit of a song without many notes, often there will not be enough opportunities to get shots off to behead them before they reach your car.

Going back to revisit songs, I found the most enjoyment playing on Violent with Chill Mode on to be the most satisfying. It has the madness and joy of playing every note without having to worry about the enemies, even though you will need to adopt some unconventional ways of holding the controller to have two fingers on the face buttons. One thumb simply does not cut it.

I would also be amiss to not mention to reason to pick up the Switch version – motion controls! If you have two pairs of joy-cons, you can hold one pair in your hands for the snare and cymbals and pop the second pair in your socks to control the bass kicks. The system works surprisingly well and is a lot of fun. Just do not be surprised if your calves start to burn when the songs pick up the pace.

If you prefer not to have a narrative in your music games, Arcade mode lets you skip the chit chat and play straight through the setlist. Hellgate mode features a sizeable selection of licensed songs from the likes of Gojira, Jinjer, Antheus and more. There is some great stuff in here, so it is a shame that they were not interwoven into the main story or Arcade modes. Rounding off the package is Fury Road, a survival type mode with rogue-like elements where players compete for high scores. It makes for a comprehensive suite of features with lots of ways to enjoy the music.

Some minor quibbles could be levied at the game. The audio/visual calibration does not seem to be perfectly calibrated with the Switch in handheld by default, which is a little baffling. Sometimes button prompts do different things in similar menus, song difficulty can only be changed in the pause menu during a song, and I encountered a couple of complete crashes that forced me to restart the game.

None of these are enough to detract from the overall experience. Double Kick Heroes is a refreshing take on the music rhythm genre. The pure insanity of keeping up with such intense music makes for an incredibly fun game once you wrap your head and hands around it. For fans of music games, it is thoroughly worth a look. For those who are also metalheads, it almost moves into essential territory. Even if a song called Flesh and Bones is not in your typical music library, you might just find yourself tapping along to the groove and having a great time.