Milwaukee band Fight Dice's Dungeons & Dragons-inspired debut album

In 1974, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson began an incredible adventure in Lake Geneva, co-creating Dungeons & Dragons, the role-playing game that inspired books and movies, and became closely linked to pop culture landmarks like “Stranger Things” and “ET.”

Fifty years later, a group of Milwaukee musicians have embarked on their own noble quest, forming a band, Fight Dice, inspired by their love of Dungeons & Dragons. Their debut album, “Total Party Kill,” comes out Friday, a day before they play this year’s Bay View Bash.

“I’m a father of two sons who are almost 20 years old,” said Fight Dice frontman Jay Gilkay. “Lyrically, what do I have to offer? I have to pay my mortgage? It’s not fun to sing or write about. … But we’re playing this game where all these exciting things are happening, so let’s make music about Dungeons and Dragons and some of our adventures.”

Gilkay and his friends in Fight Dice—guitarist Eric Arsnow, bassist Todd Bell, drummer Dan Didier, and guitarist Brett Schwandt—started playing Dungeons & Dragons together around 2019, but some friendships within the band span 30 years.

They are all longtime members of the Milwaukee music scene and have played in well-known local bands. Gilkay and Schwandt were in the ’90s hardcore band Evel; Arsnow is in Devils Teeth and has played with the glam rock band Tigernite; Bell was in the emo bands Braid and Hey Mercedes, and Didier played in the emo band The Promise Ring and its spin-off Maritime.

When the pandemic hit, D&D sessions with friends ramped up. They met for virtual sessions at least two days a week, Bell said.

“It saved our sanity… and became what kept us socially connected during this difficult time,” Bell said. “We’re a pretty creative group of people… and that fits pretty easily into Dungeons and Dragons where it’s structured enough but freeform enough that you can do whatever you want with it.”

“For me, I love creativity,” Gilkay said. “I love the ability to create different scenarios … and characters and paint miniature figures. … It’s become a way to release yourself, something fun to do and take your mind off things.”

As a new normal emerged in the summer of 2021, the five friends’ Dungeons & Dragons sessions became less frequent. Gilkay and Schwandt channeled their desire to play by creating gameplay-inspired songs and recording demos. Arsnow, Bell, and Didier joined them, marking the first time many of these longtime fans of each other’s bands were able to play music together.

The songwriting expanded so that the band had enough songs for a set, and eventually an album.

“Our style is somewhere between sludgy, stoner rock… and almost punk and definitely trippy, avant-garde stuff,” Bell said. “We’re new enough that we don’t have to pigeonhole ourselves. We do what feels natural to us.”

Gilkay rightly calls the result a “rock party,” but he stresses that “we don’t want to be a joke.”

The album is a fun and loving tribute to the game and its players. The band’s name is a nod to a facet of the game where players are called to arms, Gilkay said; the album’s name “Total Party Kill” is a Dungeons & Dragons term meaning “everyone in your party gets killed.”

The songs themselves cover fantastical adventures a player might encounter on songs like “Battle of the Evermoors”, “Attack the Drider” and “I Cast Darkness”, while “The Hardest Thing” is inspired by the difficulty of setting up a gaming session and the enjoyment it provides.

“I’m not someone who wants to fight anybody,” Gilkay said. “But to sing a song where I can chant ‘Fight, fight, fight’ and live in this fantasy world combined with rock ‘n’ roll, it’s a dream come true.”

The long-term fate of Fight Dice is uncertain. Beyond a few Milwaukee shows, Bell and his bandmates are happy to have a record, and, he said, “if we make another record, great.”

But there is one dream for the group that they hope to see come true: to bring Fight Dice back to where it all began in Dungeons & Dragons.

“I would love to do a super-secret pop-up event at the next Gary Con in Lake Geneva,” Bell said, referring to an annual event honoring Gary Gygax. “That would be the cherry on top.”

If you go

Fight Dice will perform on the WMSE stage at Bay View Bash, the street festival along Kinnickinnic Avenue, at 6 p.m. Saturday. The show and festival are free. For more information on the festival, visit bayviewbash.org.

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or [email protected]. Follow him on X at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.