KILL SCREEN 008: Rob Fusco of ONE KING DOWN May Let Gravity Win, But Not You

“What the hell am I doing here in such august company?” Underplaying himself from the outset is the prolific vocalist Rob Fusco. For nearly 30 years, Fusco has been an active part of the hardcore scene known for his high-energy performances and commanding bellow, most notably during his time in Most Precious Blood and the recently reactivated One King Down. Even while the world shuttered in 2020, Fusco kept his head down and abilities sharp by collaborating with Insvrgence guitarist Rafe Holmes which lead to the release of 2022’s You Are Nowhere—a down-tuned and decidedly more metallic approach to his misanthropy. Take Life has yet to appear in front of a live audience, but Fusco will return to the stage once again with One King Down for a brief northeast run supporting fellow New York hardcore legends Earth Crisis, as well as a European tour in June with Shutdown and No Turning Back.

Those close to Fusco know quite well that part of what has kept his mind nimble is his deep dedication to gaming. Though most often preoccupied by analog games—he’s been a chess fanatic ever since childhood and has recently started competing in poker tournaments—Fusco has a long history with video games that has resulted in our meeting of the digital minds via Zoom. Styling glasses with thick magenta frames, braided pigtailed hair and a beanie with “LIT” in bedazzled rhinestones across the front (“the sickest fucking hat of all time”), the frontman’s ever-pleasant demeanor does not belie his serious appreciation for gaming and the problem-solving opportunities it provides. Gaming is such a prevalent part of his life that he has passed down his love of the controller to his main love: His son Lucien, whom Fusco states has been playing games since he was a toddler. So, before you brush up on the lyrics to “More Hate Than Fear,” take a moment to read our chat with Rob and learn about his epic gaming legacy.

What was your first gaming experience?
I used to play—and I’m definitely dating myself here, but everyone knows that I’m 600 years old, at least—Commodore 64/ColecoVision. And yes, I am that old, where as a little boy I would spend my summers kind of bouncing between digging holes in the dirt in the back yard and playing Gorf, and I distinctly remember Yars’ Revenge for Atari. That game plugged right into my imagination. I remember sprinting around the house imagining that I was an alien wasp, jumping from planet to planet.
Gorf was just a side-scrolling shooter, and you would level up. You would be ensign, and then whatever, and then captain. And then you would make the rank of admiral, and then you would just loop through the game over and over as admiral. And the reason I know this is because I spent well over an hour as admiral and the phone kept ringing. It was my mom trying to check in and see if I was OK, but there was no “pause” button. So I just ignored the phone because I was on the sickest run of my young life as admiral in Gorf. I was like, “There’s no fucking way I’m stopping this to answer the phone. If it’s that important, they can come up the stairs.”
And then Yars’ Revenge was kind of like this barrier attack, almost like Galaga, except more rudimentary. I absolutely loved that game.

What would you say are your favorite games or franchises?
Final Fantasy, for sure. I played Final Fantasy VII until I became an old man, like I am now. Speaking of losing time—I remember I would play Doom with all the lights off, volume cranked until, like, 4 a.m. Same thing with Final Fantasy VII. Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger; incredible games. I played [The Legend of Zelda:] Ocarina of Time and I even sent away for the Master Quest, like, the tiny disc. That took up a lot of my life.

What have you been into lately?
Besides your standard Elden Ring hole, I’ve been replaying the original Dead Space, which is one of my all-time favorite games, bar none. I have not yet purchase the remake, although the gameplay footage I’ve seen looks spectacular. And I’m super glad that they didn’t make such a vast departure from the original content. I think they just refined it and made it look really crisp and made some mild improvements on the sound and sound quality. The original game is amazing as is, so for them to keep things pretty true to form but make slight tweaks and improvements was very respectful of the original content and makes purists like me really happy.

It’s cool to see when they ride that line very tightly and that it totally works. With the Resident Evil 4 Remake on the horizon and the past ones being tremendous successes, it’s nice to see the things that they can kind of tweak, but then stay true to keep—like you say—the purists happy.
[Nods] For instance, the show The Last of Us—just started watching it, have yet to play the game and now I’m even more hyped to play the game because word on the street is that there are almost shot-for-shot fidelity from the game to the show. I’m very much looking forward to kind of diving into that next.

On Metal Archives, you’re listed as being involved with a band called Ishimura, which is the name of the ship in Dead Space. Was that intentional? Any particular reason you went with that name? Was it just, “I love Dead Space, this is cool”?
Of course. Nothing deeper than that. Kind of like on the Take Life album [You Are Nowhere], the song “Stormruler” alludes directly to Dark Souls 3 and the primary weapon used by Siegward of Catarina to kill his best friend: Yhorm the Giant. Which is, like, the most heart-breaking thing I’ve ever heard. I think I’d rather be punched in the face by my dad than relive that for the first time. But a promise is a promise.

Are there any other references to games in lyrical content or anything throughout the years?
Yes. Among others, “Blame It on Altered Beast” is a Most Precious Blood song. I used the game mechanics of Altered Beast—which is one of my favorite games on one of my favorite systems, the Sega Genesis. I have a very distinct memory of listening to the Burn EP while playing Super Hang On and it’s the perfect marriage of just going really fast and fast hardcore. And I can smell the summer air coming through the window and everything is crystal clear. I can see every last detail of my room. Anyway, I digress.
So, yeah, “Blame It on Altered Beast,” I took that mechanic and kind of made a connection between the things that you go through growing up and how it can compel you to become something different that nobody really wants to fuck with. But the challenge is, how do you return to your human form? I try not to over-explain the lyrical content because I want people to draw from it what they will, but that was certainly a direct allusion to that game. I’m sure there’s a bunch more scattered throughout my work. They’re in there, somewhere.

We’ve discerned from Twitter that Rafe Holmes from Take Life is also a bit of a gamer. Do you ever bond with him about gaming or have you ever bonded with anybody that you’ve been in another band with or on tour or anything like that?
Yeah, I mean, Rafe and I talked a lot about gaming. He’s pretty dedicated. That was a point of commonality and it was great to kind of connect with him on that, as well. My other band mates—numbered many, as they are—I never really bonded too deeply with any of them about gaming. I was more so a loner Dottie, a rebel.

Is that because it never came up and there was never a clear connection or more that you’re more of a solo player?
I think a bit of both. I’ve always been attracted to single player games. Less so these days, where you team up with the boys and you go into the Lands Between. But, yeah, traditionally—even outside of digital gaming—I’ve always kind of opted for single-player mode with chess and these days with poker, primarily no-limit hold ’em live. A lot of it is that my success or failure is a direct result of both my work ethic at the table and away from it and the decisions I make in real time. I guess it speaks to my reluctance to rely on other people, which is both to my credit and a fault. I’m not speaking about music, because that’s a whole different thing. You have to—to some degree—get multiple people to think like one person and have a lot of trust there. When it comes to inherently difficult or super challenging things, I would much rather live or die by my own merit.

In addition to video games, you’ve also been super into both chess and poker. How did this come about and has the strategic thinking involved with both chess and poker, has that translated into how you approach video games at all?
Yes, both chess and poker and Magic: The Gathering—because I’ve been playing since ’95—have certainly contributed to varying degrees to my approach to gaming. The cumulative effect is real, you know? You learn little bits of a lot from everywhere. Chess taught me to calculate deeply and kind of see a broader picture. Magic: The Gathering and poker teach me patience to just out-sit and not over-extend.
I would say that the first part of the question, early on in my life, I learned how the pieces moved in chess. I think I was 4 or 5 and immediately fell in love with the game. But I ran out of opponents really quickly and people got tired of losing. [Laughs] I ran out of people to play with and then I just stopped for a long time. Fast forward to the early days of One King Down’s career when we were touring, I would keep my mind occupied and I would stay busy mentally by solving chess tactics puzzles. I just kind of came back to the game spontaneously. I would just solve puzzle after puzzle after puzzle and just read old issues of Chess Life and keep chess tactics books with me all the time, both as a training tool for when I got back to civilization and was able to play in tournaments, but also as a repetitious soothing tool, to kind of break up the monotony of mile after mile after mile and just to kind of stay sharp.
And then poker was a relatively recent development. Of course I was around for the poker boom of ’03, ’04. I remember playing a few hands here and there with the bands with whom Most Precious Blood would tour, and that was always a lot of fun, but none of us had any idea what the fuck we were doing. Recently, I started playing seriously. Very late 2018, early 2019, I played my first live hands in the States. And then the world went to shit—even worse went to shit. Recently, I started to take the game much more seriously with data tracking, bankroll tracking. Keeping close track of the data from all of my sessions and studying constantly. There’s so much to go over with that game. It is way deep. It is super, super deep. Which I love. I’ve always been drawn to bottomless, infinite pursuits, which is almost a comfort, because you’ll never get to the bottom. You’ll never reach the end of it. And you never get bored. There’s always something to refine.

With this lifelong interest in chess and the more recent interest in poker and RPGs, would you say that your play style is more rooted in slower, methodical strategy rather than high-paced action?
I think so, yes. In chess, I’ll opt for slower, positional games where the tactics will come, but they’ll come much later. Initially, things are a little bit slower and more positional, more static. And then things become more dynamic later on when I’m sufficiently confident in the pluses in my position. Same thing with poker. I adhere to a relatively strict—if not at times inelastic—range in each position and rarely do I deviate from that because mathematically that’s what’s been proven to be most profitable long term.

Have digital clients been able to help you stay sharp, especially during the pandemic? Did you play and practice online, both chess and poker?
Yes. And I still play online chess every single day; primarily bullet, which is just one minute for the whole game. It’s a lot of fun. Even in my job, between clients, I’ll sit at the desk and play 5 or 6 bullet games, just to kind of decompress. Over the pandemic, I would play very often with a private group on Poker Stars. That kept me busy and sharp. But online play is decidedly a different beast than live play.

When you play poker, you actually have some paraphernalia that exposes that you’re a “true gamer.” What would that be?
I have a Mega Man Amiibo card protector and it’s brought me a lot of luck thus far. People have all manner of card protectors at the table. My buddy Mike Gallo has this little Buddha statue, my good friend Nick has a coin. People have all sorts of trinkets and reminders or card protectors that express who they are as a person away from the table. I think Mega Man is an ideal representation: Small, but mighty and looks good in blue.

Fusco’s Mega Man Amiibo protecting his poker chips.

I know that you’ve been introducing your lovely son to video games. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Has he kept up with it?
Lucien is a whiz kid. He’s been playing Dark Souls 3 for as long as Dark Souls 3 has existed, and he was 2 when he first got on the sticks. These days, he kind of switches gears between your standard Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox games. But he also goes really deep into Titanfall 2. He loves that game. I remember realizing what a talent I had on my hands when he asked me to help him get through a level and I had to tell him, “Honestly, no, you’re already better at this game than I am.” Which is a proud dad moment, you know?
But the first game he ever beat was the game Journey, which I think that game company released. That was one of the most proud moments of my life, strangely enough—to watch my son just sit at a very young age and problem-solve and run through an entire game. And then at the end of the game—now I’m not sure if you’ve ever played it, but it’s a goddamn tearjerker. It’s really heavy. My son turned back to me and excitedly proclaimed, “Look, dad! I completed the lesson!” And I had to choke back tears. I was like, “You sure did. You sure did, son.” And so, in that game, there is no dialogue and the only thing you can do is kind of sing your hieroglyph into your environment. And so I had him sing his hieroglyph and I took a picture of it with my phone. And the very next day, I got it tattooed over my heart.

Left: Fusco’s photo of the glyph from Journey. Right: His fresh tattoo, the very next day.

The last interview before this was with Vincent Bennett and Devin Shidaker from the Acacia Strain. I know that you and Vincent have helped out Forgotten Freshness Gaming at TooManyGames. How did this come about for you and what has the experience been like working a gaming convention?
Frank is one of my dearest and closest friends in the whole universe. I’m glad you brought him up, that was it saves me the trouble of working the plug in somewhere. [Laughs] I was friends with Paul, who started TooManyGames. And so I though, Hey, Paul and Frank are two great tastes, taste great together, let’s get the ball rolling. And they’ve been close friends ever since. I would come out and help Frank every year that I could and Vincent jumped on the wagon. It’s a fantastic opportunity to just celebrate friendship and gaming and have a great time.

Do you have any fun stories from the convention?
There were a lot of really cool stories at TooManyGames. I think one year I set up my chess board and just hustled for cash and that was a lot of fun. I went undefeated, except there was one kid who, you could tell he was a little bit shy and maybe had a hard time relating to people, and he had his mom with him. I think his communication was in need of some assistance. But I sat that dude down and he was so excited, he wanted to play. And you could tell that he was really nervous and shy and awkward. Who of us hasn’t been there, you know? We’re still there. I played this dude to a draw. I had prizes and trophies and stuff that I would give away that I would bait people with. I put a trophy in this dude’s hand and gave him a shirt or whatever and stood up and announced to the entire con: “This dude is the first guy to even hold me to a draw!” I made a big deal out of it and everyone turned and applauded. You could tell the kid was so psyched and just so lit up. That was one of my favorite memories from TooManyGames; giving somebody that experience, that like, Holy crap! I did it!

There are too many try-hards in this world and sometimes it’s just good to remember that it’s meant to be fun.
That’s the thing, right? I mean, a lot of people suck the fun and the joy right out of it because they’re insecure and they need to be, like, top dog. Some buddies and I were talking about sandbagging not too long ago and how it’s the most disgusting, disrespectful shit of all time. People are just afraid to lose. Or maybe they’re afraid of the lessons that loss will teach them. Or maybe they’re afraid of taking an unflinching at themselves; what they’re really made of. I say give me somebody who’s twice as good as me, let me push up against them. Steel sharpens steel. I wanna see where I am in the pecking order and I want to learn from really good people. But sandbaggers or people who have to cheat to get over have to suck all the joy and the fun out of it.
I feel bad for them, in a way, because they miss the whole point. Have fun with your friends and see what you can do. Learn a lot about yourself in the process. We’re all above ground. We’re all here in this moment. Let’s just game our asses off, enjoy the time we have, eat some snacks and go off.

You’ve previously streamed on Twitch though your PS4. Is this something that you’ve had interest in doing consistently? How has it been not only streaming on Twitch, but participating as a member in Twitch channels and experiencing gaming that way?
You know, I wish I had more time to devote to it, but real life gets in the way. There are other things which are kind of monopolizing my time at the moment in relationships, business, et cetera. Real life stuff. Because my primary goal right now is to secure a future for Luke, and the future that I’m envisioning for myself here in central Massachusetts. I’m well-motivated and I just don’t have enough time to devote to streaming. I would like to do it right if I’m gonna do it, you know? I might opt to get a full AV rig and a studio setup and have a consistent schedule. But there are too many things pulling me in too many different directions right now. Maybe in the future when things slow down, because that’s obviously not going anywhere.

Did you ever find that as a frontman for a number of years, that skill set play into that experience in streaming at all? Or did it feel like a different environment for you?
It was fairly similar in that I knew that I was playing, but I also had to consider an audience. So my skill set from doing music was fairly laterally transferable to streaming and I found it fairly natural; my presence was pretty automatic. I felt very at home in that environment and it was a lot of fun. I legitimately hope I get to do it again at some point in the future.
I think—credit where credit’s due—Vincent [Bennett] does a fantastic job. He’s a natural entertainer, but he also reveals a lot of himself. He’s unafraid of being vulnerable, which I think is a critical ingredient in any kind of success, whether we’re talking streaming or music or writing or whatever. You have to have some vulnerability and recognize—it’s one of my favorite sayings in the world—that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are, “What will other people say? What will other people think?” As long as you don’t give a fuck about that, you’re gonna be fine. Primary point is that Vincent does very well as a streamer and I wanna see him be wildly successful because he’s the genuine article and he’s a dear friend of mine, so of course I want to see him succeed.

Any games that you’re looking forward to?
Honestly, the Dead Space Remake and now The Last of Us. Now that I’m getting into the series, I’m itching to play the game. Silksong, the follow-up to Hollow Knight. You get to play as Hornet, which her move set is so awesome and I can’t wait to play around with it. I think Hollow Knight is arguably one of the best games ever made. In terms of aesthetic, attention to detail and it’s hard as fuck.

Any updates on projects that you can share?
I don’t really have much to share at this point, as exciting as that is. But keep your ear to the ground, because I think there are some rumblings from the One King Down camp, so we’ll see what happens there. And I’m always looking for people to work with, if they wanna do fun and faster, aggressive stuff. Look, I’ll even do an entirely video game-themed band. Pick a video game and I’ll do an entire band.

Bubble Bobble.
You know… fuck with me. [Laughs]

Get tickets to see One King Down and Earth Crisis here.