Video games and action figures: How to parlay geekdom into a career in music. It wasn’t one of the dozen industry panels offered during last week’s Amplify!! music conference, but the members of Vegas outfit Searchlight can teach a course on the subject to anyone interested in learning more.
“I’m a dork,” frontman Adam Michaels concedes proudly Friday night at Jillian’s, where the local foursome performs as one of 10 competition finalists. “I love comics and video games, and I have a tattoo from a video game [Devil May Cry] on my arm. Everyone is who they are, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it.”
Michaels shouldn’t, considering his passion for gaming has led Searchlight to the precipice of stardom. Though unsigned, the two-year-old rock band has landed a song, “Contagious,” in movie sequel Resident Evil: Extinction. The track’s subject matter? Why, Resident Evil itself.
“I wrote it after playing one of the Resident Evil video games. Who does that?” Michaels asks rhetorically, his voice quickening excitedly as he thinks back on hours spent battling armies of darkness in Resident Evil 4. “It meant a lot to me. Some people write about relationships. I write about what hits me hard.”
“Contagious,” an emotive, hard-edged, radio-ready tune that builds to a thundering finish when presented live, will appear both in the end credits of the movie (set to open September 21 nationwide) and on the soundtrack to the film (set to drop September 18), according to the band.
“We’ll be at the record store on September 18 to see our name on the back of the CD, though we probably won’t have the money to buy a copy,” jokes bassist Kevin Abdon, and he knows a little about financial sacrifice, having sold his Star Wars and Lord of the Rings keepsakes to finance his and Michaels’ move from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, to Vegas in October 2005. “I sold more than 200 toys, basically my whole collection, to get here.”
Once in town, the Havasu duo met guitarist Matt Hopkins and drummer Ricky Torres through MySpace and, with the help of producer Branden Steineckert (ex-drummer for The Used), the tight-knit quartet has recorded a self-titled EP capped by “Contagious,” a tune that could soon garner major-label attention.
“I’m very close with my brothers and my family, and that’s how I feel a band should be,” Michaels says. “Whatever happens, I know I want to spend the rest of my life playing music with these guys.” (myspace.com/searchlightmusic)