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Today on Sound Breakdown, we're taking a sort-of trip back into the past, and not in the way you might be expecting.
I’ve already touched on the Playstation port of Doom’s soundtrack in an older article I did (and one that desperately needs a rewrite), but I want to go into it in more detail, because it really is something of a landmark in gaming, and one that rather sadly, too few people know about. I doubt I really need to cover Doom’s story, but just in case; Scientists on Mars are playing with portals. Shit goes tits up and they wind up unleashing the hordes of hell. A load of burly space marine gun shooty men are sent up to deal with the problem, but it turns out they’re all really useless and get completely decimated. Except one; you, the nameless marine who later became known as Doomguy, an badass so full of sheer badassitude that (through the hands of a skilled player at any rate) will be able to clear out both of Mars’ moons from demon scum, descend upon Hell itself and completely ruin its shit, and it later games take the fight to Earth, save the remainder of humanity from extinction at the cost of staying behind, and in general being so ungodly awesome and nigh unkillable that it’s impossible to document across all the semi-official sequels and assload of fanmade content that has been made (and continues to be made to this day) since 1993.
The Playstation version of Doom was a special one; most of the original levels made it over with a little bit of texture loss and some minor design changes along the way, but it also includes some original levels designed in-house by the team behind the port (Williams Entertainment) and almost all the levels from Doom II, turning the it into a kind of two-thirds Greatest Hits, one-third Remix album of the first two games. All the monsters made it over barring the Archvile (who in my honest opinion are not sorely missed, because the Archviles are god damn assholes), but a new variant of the Spectre enemy takes it’s place for some variety, and there are even dynamic lighting effects chucked in for sasoning. Williams Entertainment went on to do much the same with their later ‘port’ of Final Doom, which combined maps from The
Master Levels, and both the TNT and Plutonia levels of Final Doom, before moving on to do a game with complete design overhauls for everything not original and completely new levels, Doom 64. But of course, the biggest change to the PS1 version of Doom is the music. The person behind soundtrack to the PS1 version of Doom is Aubrey Hodges, who boasts a fine pedigree in game sound, having done music for Sierra, Midway (who had extremely close ties to Williams), and eventually EA Games. His most recent work was Fieldrunners, which came out for most downloadable services just last year, so he is still very much active in the business. His talent as a composer is immense, spanning from sweeping orchestral numbers to hard rock, and from bright folky jigs to electronica. And, of course, dark ambient music.
The soundtrack that gifts the Playstation version of Doom has absolutely no ties to the MIDI Butt-Metal soundtrack provided by Booby Prince for the original version, and which graces most ports of the game. I don’t know the details, but I know that Williams and Bobby had some kind of disagreement going on behind the scenes that led to Aubrey’s introduction to the project. In an interview conducted with the website gamescares in 2009, Aubrey said he was initially pressured to do a soundtrack closer in concept to the original, but ultimately went with his instincts and pursued his vision of a dark, dense, foreboding soundscape that amplified the darker and more terrifying side of Doom’s atmosphere, and definitely for the better given the identity he crafted for the game in the process.As I said the last time I discussed the soundtracks, music has a much bigger effect on the overall product of any form of media then many people realize, and creating tracks that best fit the product and represent what image or message you wish to showcase isn’t as simple as you’d think. You need to think about the tone of the product you’re working with, the kind of atmosphere it’s trying to cultivate, the kind of genres or types of sounds that will best blend with the style of the work, how to play around with those styles to create something that stands out, something people will remember, and so on. Now, that’s hard enough when you’re doing something much more contemporary, like a Rock score or one heavily influenced by electronic music; imagine trying to create the same impact when doing something as abstract as ambient music! However, people like Aubrey Hodges, and later on industry legend Aikra Yamaoka showed that it was possible to create something very dense and abstract, and have it be incredibly memorable and integral to the identity of the media their work was used in to the point where some people couldn’t imagine the media without it.And the way in which Aubrey worked his craft with Doom is incredible. CD based formats had a while before the Playstation and many of them relied solely on the use of Redbook Audio for their backing tracks, allowing for high quality recorded music instead of chiptunes. Many Playstation games did too, especially later in the consoles life, but not all of them did; many of them made use MIDI in some form or another for their scores. Doom, believe it or not, is one of those games. In the same interview mentioned above, Aubrey stated that he used soundbanks comprised of samples he’d created, and utilised the MIDI software designed for the console by Sony to sequence it. The effect is damn near flawless, and for the longest time I assumed everything was Redbook Audio (even though popping the disc into the computer turned up only a few songs instead of the whole soundtrack, which should’ve been my first clue). Apparently the RAM limitations were so fierce he had to be mindful of the sample rate, and how long the samples were, and that in most cases, any samples he took are played 6-10 octaves lower then they were recorded, which alongside the compression rate created a very gritty sound that added to the score. And if you need further proof of just how much of a genius Aubrey is, keep in mind the songs I’m about to link to feature samples such as, and I quote from the interview itself: “the sounds of mini blinds being lowered, a defective/humming lava
lamp, a baby crying, whispers, a bee trapped in a can, a squeaky old rusty metal door, and my favorite technique was to use a massive Taco Bell drink cup (like 64 ounces!) and make weird sounds into it. Most of the monsters were done using that cup*.” I won’t be linking to every track like I have done with previous Sound Breakdown articles, because Aubrey has his own bandcamp page, which offers a lot of his soundtracks and some original work for relatively cheap rates, and the money goes directly to him. He also updates with new stuff fairly regularly, so you’d do well to bookmark the page. His soundtracks for all the Doom games he worked on (and the Quake games he worked on as well) are already up on the site too, and ready for purchase!*It should be noted here that Aubrey also redid all of the sound effects for Doom, Final Doom, and Doom 64, and definitely for the better in this writers humble opinion.
Of course, I have to start with the Main Theme, one of the few tracks on the CD that’s in Redbook Audio, and holy shit, it is incredibly impressive how high the quality of the track is given the time it was made in. If those orchestra samples are synthesized, then they’re almost as good as the kind of thing you get in Native Instruments sample packs. But, at the end of the day, the tools are only as good as the composer, so I guess it’s a good thing that the composer is a certified musical mastermind, because the main theme, if you’ll pardon the childish indulgence, kicks so much ass ain't no motherfucker gonna sit down for weeks. It starts off simple enough with that sliding synthesizer sound and that subtle string, and then BAM, heavy distorted guitars, big dramatic orchestra strings and brass, and a marching snare rhythm. This is one hell of an imposing main theme for a game, and while it’s not the best representation of the dark ambient nightmares to come, it doesn’t at all clash with the remainder of the soundtrack or the game itself. In fact, as this track is the closest in style to the music from the original version, I’d say this means the PS1 Doom gets the best of both worlds with its inclusion. The leitmotif and stylings are carried over into the triumphant and slightly faster paced Level Complete theme, which lacks the distorted guitar, but makes up for it by blending a meaty bass synth riff with those big, boisterous strings and that wicked war march backing the whole thing.
But, now, the meat and potatoes of the article, and the reason it’s getting written at all; some of the in-game tracks I think really stand out. Retribution Dawns is first up, and so perfectly captures that bleak feeling and horrifying sense of loneliness that permeates throughout the game. What little melody there is in the track is cold and unfeeling, surrounded by sounds that evoke a bitter wind, punctuated by that slight booming sound, itself made more prominent by the lack of any other percussion. The Broken Ones is slightly more melodic, but it feels quite sad and tragic, almost as if it’s paying tribute to your fallen (and completely fucking useless) comrades; those bizarre, almost animal-like sound effects running in the background keep you nicely on edge and stop you feeling too melancholy, however. Digitized Pain’s title is incredibly apt, because this track’s main riff- that amelodic sound that seems to almost warp and contort- really does sound like a synthesizer having a heart attack, with all the other twisted electronic sounds acting as what I’d imagine the death rattle of a computer would sound like if they could vocalize. Mind Massacre’s uneasy, bassy synth lead and breathy higher notes bring back that sense of understated unease and that sense of not wanting to advance for fear of what’s to come, and the way in which that strange mechanical ‘echo’ the track opens with warps into that high pitched mechanical sound that bounces all over the scale is a really effective and very clever way to get your mileage out of a sample (plus, it sounds so strange and inhuman that it’s creepy as shit). Mutation is an excellent example of a subtly composed song being used very effectively for a fight where many games would use a high-energy backing track; no percussion, a melody that alternates between deep
low notes and shrill high notes, and that warping digital noise make for a very surreal experience when you encounter the first two Barons Of Hell in the game (affectionately known as The Bruiser Brothers in-house at iD during development of the original Doom), and are very good at capturing the raw panic that you feel the second those two mean motherfuckers let out their frankly terrifying battle cry and proceed with a good shit ending- your shit ending specifically. Breath Of Horror is another apt title, as the main hook of the song is a very effectively (and pants-shittingly) used chant-like vocal sample that almost sounds like a strangled cry of “TELL ME WHY”. Aubrey was asked whether or not that’s what the sample said in the gamescares interview, but he only confirmed that it was a spoken bit of dialog from a previous game he’d worked on, and kept MUM about what exactly it was. It should be noted that the bandcamp version of the track makes the sample less prominent then the in-game song however (as it does with many different samples across the tracks), so it will be harder to hear. You can hear it much more clearly HERE. The Grip Of Madness is one of the least melodic tracks on the soundtrack, but definitely one of the most terrifying, and that it achieves such a skin scrawling effecting using largely just that one metallic sounding ‘screech’ is a testament to Aubrey’s talent.
Lamentation is one of the more infamous tracks in the game thanks to it’s inclusion of crying baby SFX- and as we all know, crying baby sounds are always a bad omen in horror work. It also plays this sample at various different
pitches, making it sound incredibly inhuman when played on lower octaves, easily making it one of the creepiest songs in the game. And finally, we have Twisted Beyond Reason, which makes great use of melody notes that start and stop quite suddenly rather then permeating constantly, which combined with that strange, echoing loop give the track a very demented and uneven edge.
To say this soundtrack has had a huge impact on me is an understatement; the Playstation version of Doom is the first version of the game I ever played, and it still remains my absolute favourite, largely in part because of the atmosphere it creates; you truly feel alone and helpless (even when fully armed), and the sheer size and scope of the threat ahead of you is amplified tenfold. It was probably the first proper exposure I had to ambient music, and what an introduction it was; this score is the stuff nightmares are made of, with it’s dark synthesizer riffs, unusual sounds, and most importantly, it’s (mostly) subtle style of composition and delivery. To this day, it remains one of my favourite soundtracks, and I’d say it’s probably one of the scariest scores ever made for a videogame.
And to top it off, the Playstation version of Doom has the best secret level ever put into a game.
IN HELL, ONLY SPEEDCORE AWAITS.
~ Decon, 15/10/13
some information collected and quoted from gamescare. images collected from the doom wiki, doomwikia, emuparadise, obsoletegamer, theisozone, retrospiritgames, and epforums
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