DragonForce has been drip releasing tracks from their upcoming “Warp Speed Warriors” album, and this week’s is an opus to Nintendo’s favorite elf-based series. And while it has a real solid DragonForce vibe, something about them doing a song about vidya games is a little odd to me.

The video is cheesy and fun, with the guitarists apparently able to shoot lasers or something from their gear, which is great to see. In general, this is a standard-bearing DragonForce song, with Herman Li’s by now trademarked squeadlies and meadlies. Also apparently the singer is worthy of wielding the master sword.

I feel like, with different lyrics, this song could’ve been pulled from any of their older albums, like they had this framed out for Sonic Firestorm but couldn’t figure out what vocals to put on top, so they shelved it. And I appreciate that after hearing the departure that is Doomsday Party, I was worried they were drifting into that kind of party metal sound you hear from later Alestorm, for instance. Leaning on Zelda references for a song is interesting, but also it feels, to me, like pandering to the overlap in the Venn diagram of metalheads and video gamers (it might be concentric circles.)

Again, this song slaps, and I’m sure it’ll be a big hit when they’re on tour. Maybe I’m just being a grumpy old by bristling at the lyrics and thinking of Valley of the Damned or Operation Ground & Pound.