Level Up: Crown Lands Drummer & Vocalist Cody Bowles Discusses His Life as a Gamer

Tirelessly working on their craft, Crown Lands has become one of the most influential Canadian rock acts over the last five years. The duo returned last month with the release of their Ritual II EP, which was preceded by Ritual I the month before. Both instrumental, the EPs, released via InsideOutMusic, further expand and diversify the Crown Lands’ sound. The purpose of recording these EPs was as a reprieve or a decompression from the way they recorded their 2023 album Fearless. That record was recorded in a fairly mechanical fashion. These EPs were free-flowing and completely open-ended. Musically, there are no limits on these releases.

A Juno Award-winning group, Crown Lands features singer and drummer Cody Bowles and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Comeau. The release of Ritual I and Ritual II comes as the pair continue work on the third proper Crown Lands studio album. Before recording and releasing that album, it was important for Bowles and Comeau to fill out their sound. They have a very liberal creative process, and these two EPs were meant to reflect that.

Outside of music, Crown Lands, like many musical acts, look to video games for inspiration. Cody Bowles joins us today for a Level Up interview to discuss gaming, how he got into it, his favourite game ever, and much more.

What video game introduced you to the world of gaming?

Cody Bowles: “The Legend of Zelda introduced me to the beautifully vast world of gaming at the tender age of four years old. My father was the one who introduced me. He was obsessed with Zelda since as long as I can remember, and he would often stay up late at that time in my life playing the original Zelda on the NES, or Zelda II: The Adventure of Link! I completely fell in love with gaming as a whole when I used to watch him play Ocarina of Time, struggling to beat the Shadow Temple until he finally let me make my own save file. Once that happened, I was sold, and the Zelda franchise became my favourite.”

What are your favourite types of games to play?

“My absolute favourite types of games to play are RPG games! The more obtuse and dense the progression systems, the better. I am a massive fan of permanent progress in any sort of game, and grinding things out to unlock the newest item/feature/skill points to slot into skill trees or help traverse the game world around me. I am also partial to games that are pretty difficult or punishing in terms of combat and timing/puzzles.

“I’m a big fan of games like Old School RuneScape, World of Warcraft, Baldur’s Gate, Diablo, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Knights of the Old Republic, to name just a few. Narrowing that scope a bit, my top favourites are action RPGs in particular, such as all of the great Fromsoft titles, the Monster Hunter franchise, the Elder Scrolls, Black Myth Wukong, Black Desert, and, of course, the Zelda franchise (which I know isn’t technically an action RPG but I personally count it here).

“There’s nothing like the satisfaction of overcoming a difficult enemy and using their drops to help progress as a character, or a well-designed environmental puzzle that rewards you for thinking outside the box. It just scratches a certain part of my brain in a specific way that is so incredibly pleasing and never gets old!”

Crown Lands Drummer & Vocalist Cody Bowles Gaming, photo courtesy Cody Bowles

Have video games ever inspired you musically?

“Video games have inspired me in many facets of my life and how I digest media, but most of all, it has deeply inspired me in a musical sense. I think my sense of melody construction came partially from Zelda, specifically at a very early age. (Japanese composer) Koji Kondo’s ability to weave the greatest musical hooks and colourful motifs fitting the myriad landscapes of Hyrule throughout the franchise has truly put a permanent mark on my soul.

“In a similar vein, there have been many great games/IPs with fantastic soundtracks that have deeply moved me, such as Shadow of the Colossus, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Ghost of Tsushima, Monster Hunter, Spyro, Shadow Man, and RuneScape. The latter of which was my deep nostalgic intro into the world of progressive influenced music with odd time signatures outside the scope of rock. I still hum some of those classic songs to this day.”

If you were given an unlimited budget to create a video game based on your band, what would it look like?

“If given an unlimited budget to create a video game based on our band, it would 100 percent be an open-world 3D game with an esoteric art direction (think Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Age meets Shadow of the Colossus) style action RPG featuring Fearless as the player character. He would be on a mission to uncover the mystery of his people’s eradication and set on a path of revenge against the evil Syndicate. It would be really cool to flesh out the lore of our story, too, by including other characters and locations from our band’s Fearless Chronology lore, such as the Oracle that Fearless seeks for guidance, the Frozen Wastes, and perhaps even a Dragon Riding survivor of Fearless’ long-lost people.”

Crown lands ‘Ritual I’ album artwork

What is the hardest game you’ve ever played?

“I’ve gotta say that out of all the games I’ve ever played, Nioh 2 has got to be one of, if not the most challenging game for me. I’m quite the glutton for punishment in a soulslike, having gone through Sekiro twice, but I’d say Nioh 2 stands in a league of difficulty entirely of its own. It’s a sort of souls-like with punishing bosses that take only a few hits to steamroll you, and an incredibly complex skill point-based combat system with such a steep learning curve, specifically with the presence of three variable weapon stances usable for each weapon (of which there are eleven main weapon types and three ranged secondary options).

“On top of that, there’s this deep Yokai shift and skills system in combat that are pretty essential, yet hard to wrap your head around. There’s a handful of meta animation cancel tactics and perfect parrying that quickly become integral for survival, considering the sheer speed and unforgiving damage output of even the most basic enemies. I’d have to say it gave me quite the unmatched challenge as of yet, and I love it to death for it.”

What is the most beautiful game you’ve ever played?

“Nostalgia aside, the most beautiful game I’ve ever played has got to be The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s beautiful, cell-shaded graphics and deeply saturated, hand-crafted open world absolutely floored me from the very moment I played it. I, of course, played the previous entry (Breath of the Wild), and all other Zelda games prior, but the breathtaking world and atmosphere of this specific rendition of Hyrule really stood out to me, and it whisked me away into its world, unlike any other game I’ve played before.”

What is the best game you’ve ever played?

“The best game I’ve ever played is such a hard decision to make. I think I have to give it to two games: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. The action combat and the story of Sekiro are pretty hard to beat, in my opinion. The combat is the tightest and most rewarding pixel perfect sword combat I’ve ever played in a game, and the story is filled to the brim with astonishing details, secrets, hidden quests, and a vibe that really made me fall in love with every little piece of text divulging even the smallest modicum of information about the Fountainhead Palace, the Rejuvinating waters, and even the tragic story of Mibu village.

“In Elden Ring, they hit a similar level of perfection to me in the environmental design and overall aesthetic of the open world and the depth of this grand story about a pantheon of demigods fighting over pieces of this Elden Ring. It drew me in so deeply that even though it was easier than other souls like I’ve played, the sheer scope and scale of the game and how consistently good everything felt, from the sound design, to combat, to world exploration, it just impacted me in such a way that I will never forget the first time I played it.

“The map just kept expanding every time you thought you’d seen it all, and there is just so much to do absolutely everywhere you turn. I pretty much locked myself in my room for a month between band practices and one-hundred percented it within a month of release. No regrets (laughs).”

Much has been made about whether video games can be art. What do you think?

“In my opinion, video games are unquestionably art, and I’d argue that it is a melting pot of many different disciplines of art coming together in a way that has the potential to be more impactful than movies, and possibly one of the highest potential forms of art. I think the nature of games to give the autonomy to the player to uncover where to go next and what pieces of the world and story to uncover really makes it such a uniquely personal experience for everyone interacting in that fabricated world.

“In my personal experience with games, I feel emotionally attached to the characters and adventures in these handcrafted worlds as if they are extensions of real things I hold dear in my heart. If that effect isn’t the result of falling in love with a piece of art, then I don’t know what is.”

Crown Lands Drummer & Vocalist Cody Bowles Gaming, photo courtesy Cody Bowles