{"id":48526,"date":"2016-05-17T13:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T18:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toiletovhell.com\/?p=48526"},"modified":"2016-05-17T13:17:34","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T18:17:34","slug":"remember-that-time-trent-reznor-wrote-the-soundtrack-for-quake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/remember-that-time-trent-reznor-wrote-the-soundtrack-for-quake\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember That Time Trent Reznor Wrote the Soundtrack for Quake?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There’s been a lot of hype lately over\u00a0id Software<\/strong>‘s<\/strong> newest entry into the storied\u00a0Doom<\/em> video game series, and for good reason. The latest installment, simply titled\u00a0Doom<\/em>, pits a supersoldier marine against an unending onslaught of spooky demons, all while heavy metal guitars blare and explosions erupt and enemies burst into sprays of gore and violence. I haven’t played the game yet, but it looks like a fun throwback to old school first person shooters: all speed and violence and evil imagery. That’s just the kind of thing we dig around here. While watching some gameplay footage of the new game, though, I was reminded of the first\u00a0Doom<\/em> game, and how a mutual respect between id and\u00a0Nine Inch Nails<\/strong> led to\u00a0Trent Reznor<\/strong> designing the soundtrack for id’s next ultra-violent, ultra-evil shooter\u00a0Quake<\/em>. Let’s revisit that timeless classic and its excellent soundtrack together.<\/p>\n

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id Software released their very first\u00a0Doom<\/em> game in 1993. That game, a groundbreaking first person shooter that would set the tone and pace of the next generation of shooters, particularly multiplayer shooters, drew heavily from 90s pop culture satanism and heavy metal aesthetics. It featured a green-armored protagonist, the eponymous Doom Marine, battling the invading forces of hell on a ravished Mars. The next year, Nine Inch Nails released landmark album\u00a0The Downward Spiral<\/em>, earning international acclaim and allowing Reznor to become producer du jour in the American rock scene.<\/p>\n

As fate would have it, one of the most metal and gothic-obsessed workers at id, American McGee<\/a>, was a massive Nine Inch Nails fan<\/a>. After he and the other employees at id discovered that Reznor had an equal admiration for\u00a0Doom<\/em>, id developers tapped\u00a0Reznor to create the soundtrack for their next hyperviolent shooter,\u00a0Quake<\/em>. Building on the frantic fury and devilish aesthetic of\u00a0Doom<\/em>, McGee and fellow developers crafted a Lovecraftian shooter of monolithic proportions, housed within a brand new, state of the art engine that would catalyze online deathmatches for years to come.<\/p>\n

Quake’s<\/em> story revolved around a sole survivor of an interdimensional invasion at the hands of some sort of malevolent entity codenamed “Quake.” To combat the entity, players had to travel through a series of labyrinthine worlds, including Cycolpean structures based on Egyptian, Gothic, and Medieval settings adorned with flaming pentagrams, hellfire, and occult symbolism. Players were tasked with fighting a number of reanimated corpses, malicious beast, and eldritch horrors before finally confronting Quake himself, revealed to be the Black Goat with a Thousand Young herself, Shub-Niggurath.<\/p>\n

Trent Reznor’s soundtrack for that journey is the perfect accompaniment for blasting mummies with shotguns and decimating demons with grenade launchers. The official soundtrack, which you can hear below, features 10 tracks of alternately pulsing and brooding dark industrial music. Some tracks, like “Aftermath”\u00a0and “Damnation,” feature strong kernels of the sounds that would eventually germinate in\u00a0The Fragile<\/em> and\u00a0With Teeth<\/em>. Other songs, like the main theme and\u00a0\u00a0“The Hall of Souls,” are truly eerie, using backing vocal effects and heavy reverb to create an unhinged, disturbing (and insidiously surround-sound) soundscape. The soundtrack itself is mostly understated, using texture and tone and subtle yet driving\u00a0backbeats to capture the feeling of journeying deeper and deeper into a chthonic underworld to face malevolent beings of ancient and evil intent.<\/p>\n

“[The Quake<\/em> soundtrack]\u00a0is not music, it’s textures and ambiences and whirling machine noises and stuff. We tried to make the most sinister, depressive, scary, frightening kind of thing… It’s been fun.” – Trent Reznor<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n