KILL SCREEN 044: JOHN ROMERO Gives Us a Little of …

Doom—a short, monosyllabic word synonymous to which any patron of this website may claim a connection. While our less digitally-savvy readership will bring to mind the image of stacks of amps and the sounds of slowed, mammoth riffs drenched in reverb, the inside kids that keep up with Kill Screen are keenly aware of another meaning—one filled with space marines, pixelated blood, revving chainsaws and Hell itself. Released in 1993 following lofty promises of being “the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world,” Doom permanently changed the course of history literally overnight after the innovative and revolutionary work of the small team at id Software, including co-founder, today’s player character and metal lifer John Romero. How fitting, then, that when Decibel’s co-nerds connect with this long-haired pillar of the gaming community that he be wearing a shirt repping the godfathers of doom Black Sabbath.

Romero’s collected works span decades and have reached triple digits in number. Beyond id’s classic debut, titles such as Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic and many, many more are among the numerous reasons Romero’s name will forever be etched into gaming’s rapidly unfolding tale. Some of our previously featured subjects even directly cite Doom’s MIDI yet distinctly heavy soundtrack (tell us you don’t already have E1M1 playing in your head right now) as part of the reason they laid down their souls to the gods rock ‘n’ roll. There are innumerable places for you to learn about the legend of these series, and we strongly suggest that you do. Though this is a video game column, we come as diplomats of North America’s only extremely extreme mag and as such have done our best to focus on all things metal, both in his life and in his occupation. Despite a packed schedule developing a brand new first-person shooter for his Belfast-based Romero Games, the legend was kind enough to offer up a solid hour and a half of his time, resulting in this Cyberdemon-sized interview. And if you’re ready to rip and tear into even more of this interview, be sure to pick up Decibel’s 20th anniversary issue (dB240/October 2024) right now for an exclusive excerpt from our conversation with Romero, detailing what keeps him going after a lifetime in the game. Hell awaits!

Normally for these interviews, the first question that we always ask is, “What was your first gaming experience?” But because of the situation, we want to flip the script. What was your first metal experience?
I’ve always qualified Led Zeppelin kind of as heavy metal, even though it’s heavy rock kind of stuff. But when I was listening to it, it may as well have been heavy metal. When “Dazed and Confused” came out in the early ’70s, I remember I heard it on the radio because I was at my grandparents’ house and both of them were gone. My aunt, who loved rock, basically cranked their stereo up really loud and I was outside and I heard “Dazed and Confused.” I remember I was hanging on the fence. There was a door that opens into a garden, and I’m hanging on there and I’m listening to “Dazed and Confused” like, Wow, what is that? [Laughs] And I was just like, Wow, I’ve never heard that out of grandma’s stereo!, because it’s always 1940s music. But as soon as they leave, my aunt kicks on the rock station.

You gotta leave it to the aunts and uncles to corrupt the youth, they’re doing the best work out there. What was the first show that you ever attended?
The first heavy metal show that I saw was in 1985 and it was Mötley Crüe, and Loudness opened for them. I have the pictures of me dressed up before I went to my first metal concert. And they were embarrassing, but they’re awesome. [Laughs] I had bandanas tied all around, I think I was wearing a net shirt and I have W.A.S.P. bandanas on my legs and all kinds of stuff. I was ready to go.

That’s the way it should be. You should have those embarrassing photos!
Absolutely. I have them, unbelievably, from 1985.

I [Michael] very much value your attention to preservation and collection when it comes to these items. Seeing so many interviews where you have all of this ephemera from [the] decades, so much stuff—it’s truly incredible.
[Points to framed map in background] That’s an Ultima II cloth map signed by [game creator] Richard Garriott on the wall. I have a painting up on the wall that [id Software co-founder] Adrian Carmack did. It’s in a gold frame and he painted it in one hour for a video that we were making. It’s a demon that has a bunch of rabbit skulls in its stomach and it’s holding a rabbit, it’s about to eat it. You can see his stomach is all ripped open and it’s just got skulls sitting in it. Bun in the Oven is the name of it. [Laughs]

You bring up Adrian Carmack. In the FPS documentary, you remember your first encounter with him where you said, “I just look around the room and I saw this long-haired guy on a computer. I was like, Oh, he probably listens to heavy metal. He’d totally fit in.” First and foremost—does he listen to heavy metal?
Oh, yeah. He listened to speed metal. He loves Slayer, Pantera, he listened to all that. The stuff I listened to mainly was a lot of hair metal and a lot of guitarists. If they were a guitarist, I had their albums, like, all of their individual, single albums, and the ones when they were in groups like Yngwie and Alcatrazz and all that stuff.

But yeah, with Adrian, he listened to Metallica and everything, so we got along perfectly—like, immediately. He’s the only long-haired person in the company and I didn’t have long hair at that time, either. So it was pretty great. A guy that I brought into the group that I was building, he listened to both hard rock and heavy metal. He was a big Alice Cooper fan. This boombox that I had from 1987 is what we listened to every single day in the office. I just had it on the windowsill and basically every day was somebody’s day to listen to anything that they wanted, so everyone had to listen to whatever they were into. We all knew who was into what, and it was pretty great. We just kept that going for years—and I still have that boom box.

So, name names. What are some of the albums that were being played in Suite 666?
Man, everything. I mean, all of it. This is fun, just because [Queen guitarist] Brian May’s badass: Queen had just come out with an album [around] 1990 and [id Software co-founder/lead programmer] John Carmack got it, because he was listening to all kinds of stuff, too. And so he played that album and I loved it, it was so good. It was my most extensive introduction to Queen. I had heard “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I used to deliver newspapers to “Another One Bites the Dust” at 3 in the morning, so I knew Queen. [Laughs] But it was great to hear something that came out way later and still just sounded really, really great.

And seriously, like, everything. All Ratt, all Mötley Crüe, Great White, Satriani, Vai, everybody, every single person. Because it was ’90, late ’80s and stuff, there was a lot of Skid Row because they just came out. BulletBoys, a bunch of those groups that were out at that time like Jackyl. Lane [Roathe], who was the Alice Cooper guy, actually used to be a backstage helper for a group called Wicked Jester that was local in town, because he loved hanging out with metal groups, too, so he would go do that with those guys. I mean, really, it was pretty much you name it, we were listening to it. And this was before getting into groups like Fates Warning and Crimson Glory and other groups that weren’t out. Some of them were out, but I just hadn’t heard them. I didn’t even hear Zebra until, like, the late ’90s. I just kept on listening to tons of stuff. Psychotic Waltz, they’re super awesome. Darkstar, which is the guitarist from Psychotic Waltz paired up with a German drummer and they made albums. They were just incredible albums, kind of independent. Solitude Aeturnus, that’s late ’90s stuff I was listening to. But the stuff that we were listening to all the time, it was tons of all of the albums of Ratt, all of George Lynch, all of Dokken, all of Winger, all of you name it, every album. And all the latest stuff that was coming out. I loved Firehouse, loved all of the late ’80s stuff. And then when it got into ’90s, I was just pissed because they killed metal, except I give Alice in Chains a pass because they’re, like, the best.

But when I first started listening to metal in 1983, Black Sabbath, I had listened to everything that they had.’70s Judas Priest, all the way up to Screaming for Vengeance, which is where it was at when I started listening to them, because Defenders [of the Faith] hadn’t come out until ’84. So I was right there in ’83. Iron Maiden, listening to all the Iron Maiden albums. Basically everything, you name it, I probably have listened to it and we were listening to all of that shit. The amount of CDs that I had to listen to was just stacks and stacks and stacks.

When groups change or whatever, then I’m getting the next thing. I was all over Lynch Mob because George Lynch was basically my favorite guitarist. If I played guitar, I probably would have a sound like his just because naturally the way that he plays, the notes that he hits and stuff, just feels like something that I would do. I just love George Lynch. I’ve actually met him and he was about to do music for one of my games that I was going to make called Black Room, but we didn’t start on Black Room, so I never worked with him. But I’ve hung out with him, he’s really cool.

Do you keep up with metal releases that are coming out today?
Not like I used to. I used to get everything when it came out, but daily rotation now is not all metal all day long. It’s actually mostly not even music because I’m in meetings solid all day long. And if I’m not in a meeting, then I’m listening usually to vaporwave. And it’s funny because vaporwave is a nostalgic style of music. It’s being nostalgic about the ’80s and ’90s consumerism, the lens that it sees it through. It sounds like ’70s, a lot of ’70s stuff that they throw in there, the singing and stuff. The style of singing that was in the ’70s more than the ’80s. But I’m a real huge fan of vaporwave and listen to pretty much everything I can get my hands on. And now basically people are making videos that are compilations of all these songs from all these different artists and giving them all credit and everything. When you’re playing a lot of different one hour vaporwave [compilations], you’ll hear a lot of the same tunes. But sometimes you’ll hear some new stuff and then I’ll save those.

Any particular favorites that jump to mind?
The first favorite that I had was Neon Palm Mall. That one was so popular that people came out with variations of the name to trick people into playing their video instead of the original Neon Palm Mall. I’m not into the Macintosh Plus stuff. That’s a little too computer-generated—images spinning and the Greek statues and the swimming pools and stuff. I’m into Moonlight Melancholy, which is the kind of singing that I really like to hear in vaporwave. It’s not electronic music type stuff, but it’s singing. Obviously it’s slowed down. “Eyes Without a Face” is hot on TikTok right now, that is part of a bunch of different vaporwave mixes. But there’s a lot of other stuff in there that comes from the ’70s and maybe the ’80s that I really like. Moonlight Melancholy 1 and 2 are both really, really good, along with that Neon Palm Mall one. I think Silver Richards does a song called “Sunset” that’s really great. I could just listen to it forever. It sounds like it’s from an anime, it just sounds great. It’s stuff that doesn’t really intrude when I’m working on stuff because even if it’s singing, it’s slowed down, it’s almost background noise. But typically I won’t listen to music that has lyrics in it when I’m trying to write stuff.

Have you like made the leap into synthwave like Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, GosT, stuff like that?
Oh, that happened before vaporwave. FM-84 was my favorite synthwave [act]. It was so good. And the thing is, a lot of synthwave stuff to me sounds like someone’s trying to make music that sounds like it came from the ’80s and they never were in the ’80s. It’s trying to pretend to do something. If you were there, you know what it sounded like, it felt like, because it was so such a mixture. And synthwave is [an] approximation. FM-84 is, to me, almost as close as it gets. That could have been released in the ’80s and it would have passed the ’80s test back then. But a lot of the other stuff, it’s just repetitive. Carpenter Brut is awesome. The Hotline Miami soundtrack is awesome. For years I was into synthwave, and then I found vaporwave thanks to Dan Bell’s Dead Mall Series that he put up on YouTube because he’s going through this phenomena of the malls that are inside the United States. So many of them are just shut down. He found his way into these malls and he’s just walking through talking and he’s just recording all this shit that people used to walk by on a daily basis, and it’s all just been dead for so long. What he did was he put in the background this vaporwave stuff. I heard it and I was like, What is that music in the background? It’s so good! It’s so appropriate for walking through a dead mall. This is what it used to sound like, except through that messed up vaporwave lens. And then I found out what it was, and that was the rabbit hole. [Laughs]

For stuff like synthwave and vaporwave, at first blush, that’s not something that you would typically associate with metal or extreme music. The Hotline Miami soundtrack, it’s a synthwave soundtrack top to bottom—but that is pretty metal, especially stuff like Carpenter Brut and Perturbator. Those are charged, heavy riffs that are accompanying these really bouncy synths.
Yeah, Carpenter Brut is so good. Carpenter Brut is like when Judas Priest started getting synth in there—just like Van Halen, right? They’re experimenting with the sound of synth in their stuff, like Turbo, obviously. This is like if they kept going and they didn’t do Painkiller, they would have probably ended up with these badass Carpenter Brut sounds with metal guitar on top of it. They could have gone in that direction—but Painkiller was fucking awesome anyway. [Laughs]

A lot of the connections that were made in the ’80s and ’90s, so much of it revolves around tape trading. So much of Doom’s success obviously can be credited to the shareware of the first few levels and spreading out the game that way. Was there any similar thought processes with the experience in the metal scene of that idea of tape trading, or was it just kind of coincidental that these two things are going on around the same time?
I don’t think it was coincidental, but it wasn’t our idea to do shareware—it was our publisher’s idea to do it. Scott Miller at Apogee Software said, “Will you guys please make a game for me?” “OK, yes, we will.” “All right. What you need to do is make three games—take your idea for a big game, split into three—and then we will give the first third entire game away. And then people will buy the other two and they’ll feel like they bought three because they’ll feel like they paid for what they played. But then they’ll buy the other two. And it has to be two because that’s the value proposition that makes sense. Anything less than that doesn’t work. So if you guys can do three games…” We’re like, “Whatever you say, you’re the marketing guy and it works for you, so we’ll do it.” And we did. So it came from Scott. Shareware started in ’87 and it actually had several different ways of trying to figure out how to get money from people. Scott’s way was just the best. It was like, “Here’s a whole free thing, you don’t owe us any money. And if you like it, pay for the rest and pass it along, copy it and give it to your friends.” Like mixtapes, right? Give it to your friends and maybe they’ll like it. And if they don’t, they’ll hand it to their other friends and hopefully it just gets out there. It’s all about distribution. It was at the same time, but different reason.

At that time, do you remember thinking, Wow, this makes a lot of sense, this is a great idea, or were you kind of skeptical of it?
I thought that was great. When when we started talking to Scott, it was September of 1990. And in the entire month of August, John Carmack and I basically had to write a game. Both of us—he wrote a game and I wrote a game. We both wrote one game in one month. We made two games in one month. And we did that for a demo disc that was going to be given away. It’s basically showing what our games are going to be like if you subscribe to this new product that I was selling called Gamer’s Edge. I made Dangerous Dave and John made Catacombs on the PC. We put it on a floppy and we sent it out with 50,000 disks that were being given to subscribers of the PC disk that Softdisk could put out. It’s called Big Blue Disk. That’s how those games spread all over the world immediately.

Even today in India and Pakistan, Dangerous Dave has way higher status than Doom. Even though Doom was huge, Dangerous Dave was installed on every computer in those two countries for decades. If you bought a computer, you got Dangerous Dave. The amount of childhood memories that I’ve heard from people who are Indian or Pakistani, it’s unbelievable. You wouldn’t believe, it’s a whole segment of people that you would never know. They’re like, “Oh yeah, you made Doom. Oh my god, it’s so good.” I’m like, “Yeah, and I bet you played Dangerous Dave.” [They’re] like, “Yeah!” And I’m like, “I made Dave.” “Oh my god!” [Laughs] It’s like, can you believe that they’re more impressed by that?

But yeah, it was basically a free game. I pirated the shit out of software back in the ’80s, otherwise I never would have played games. So I totally believed in handing stuff out.

I [Michael] wouldn’t say that Doom had the first metal soundtrack—Mega Man had a pretty ripping soundtrack before that—but I could certainly make a case for Doom having the first extreme metal soundtrack with songs that were inspired by bands like Pantera, Slayer and Alice in Chains. Was that an intentional decision going into the crafting of the soundtrack or was that just the bleed through from what was being played on the boombox in the Suite 666 every day?
Because it was going to be demons from Hell and you’re mowing them down as a space marine, it was metal on purpose. To make this soundtrack, I’m like, “This game is metal.” We couldn’t do metal in Wolfenstein 3D—it’s a World War II game. We’ve got to be period correct, so we did that. But with Doom, we could do anything we want. And obviously metal is going to fit the action that we’re going to put in this game. We basically put together a whole bunch of CDs and I sent them to our musician and I said, “This is the kind of music that we want in the game. It needs to be metal.” It’s MIDI at that time, so you gotta be inspired by the sounds of these songs and some of the choruses and some of the types of instruments that are used. Those are really important to nailing the sound of this game so it sounds not like anything that we’ve put out before—which he did all the music, so he knows. He knows what he put out before, which is the Commander Keen stuff and the Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny stuff. So that’s what he did. He basically made a metal soundtrack and it was just perfect. I think I even sent him Last Action Hero. “Angry Again” was a great song on there, by Megadeth. [Laughs]

People have made videos showing where some of the influences for the riffs came from. Have any of these bands ever reached out to you, to id, to anybody?
Never.

Never?
Never. Nope. It’s MIDI. It’s not even close, you know? I’d say the thing that happened back then was metal groups did like the soundtrack and they loved the game. GWAR was a huge fan and sent us all kinds of stuff, wanting to do whatever they could with us. I got an album from the Manny Charlton Band, and Manny was the lead guitarist of [Nazareth]. He made a song about Doom called “Blood on the Walls,” and it is so good. It’s such a good song. If you Google “the Manny Charlton Band, Doom, Blood on the Walls,” you might find it because I posted it a long time ago for people to download the MP3. He sent it on cassette and even made a whole Doom cover and everything for it that’s all custom. It’s not even Doom graphics, he just made something really cool. It just showed people were really responding to the game in lots of different ways. We got tapes of people making music on their keyboards, just like [pantomimes playing keyboard], “Demons coming around the corner, dun dun dun duh nuh.” [Laughs] People were doing all kinds of stuff back then and just sending us their tapes.

Doom was released during the ascent of death metal. Was your interest with violence in video games impacted by this growing extremity within metal? Was there any kind of cross pollination or was that just the vibe of the early ’90s?
That was the vibe. That was not cross pollination. I used to draw bloody comics when I was just barely starting high school. I have a whole book that I want to publish of just my horribly bloody, violent comics. I made tons of those things. I love horror movies. The Thing—that’s super violent and bloody. I watched everything. I used to watch TV on Friday nights and Saturday nights. Starting at 11 o’clock was Bob Wilkins’ Creature Features. My parents, they would go to sleep at 10. So I’m in the living room, no one else is awake, I turn off all the lights and turn on the scary movie and just try and terrify myself. And I did that for years, you know? And this Creature Features show used to show everything that was out at the time other than movies that were brand new. It was all the ’70s stuff, like Frogs, Burnt Offerings and The Legend of Hell House and The Haunting and The Others and every Godzilla movie and Pit and the Pendulum, all the Hammer stuff like Dracula. They played everything, it was great. I was exposed to every scary thing that was being made that was not in the movie theater at the time.

But then going to the movie theater, going to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 when it came out, that was so awesome. I remember it came out, it cost $1.50 to get into the movies back then and my friend and I, we were just going there as fast as we could because it was about to start. We’re in his 1972 giant Ford Fairland or something—it is a massive piece of metal—and this car is rocketing to the place. And we get in there, we go in as fast as we can—it’s already started. The movie’s already going and we find that you can’t even get into the theater because people are standing all along the walls, every seat is filled and everyone is cheering. We’re like, “Oh my god, we’ve got to get in here.” We shove ourselves in through everybody and we just hear chainsaw. It was the scene where the chainsaw is going through the roof of the car just when it got off the highway. [Mimics sound of chainsaw] So cool! And everyone’s clapping, everyone can’t wait for all the blood. That was the vibe. My first double date was taking her to The Fly and Aliens. [Laughs]

Hey, that’s a hell of a pair of films, though.
I know! For $1.50!

The violence has carried through your work. Even when you were doing your interview with [then-Escapist reviewer Ben] “Yahtzee” Croshaw and you were talking about Empire of Sin—which is obviously very violent subject matter—there seems to be a very specific interest in it. What is it about violence that adds to the video game experience? Why is it so important to you?
The funny thing is, back then, there just wasn’t violence that you could see in a game represented the way that we had done it, because there were not 3D action games before we made our games. Everything was pretty much static screen and it was like, what a phenomenon to have a game like Commander Keen that horizontally scrolled smoothly. That was on Nintendos for a long time, but the PC never had it. So when we did it on the PC, it was massive. And if that was huge—having a kids’ game scrolling smoothly—you can just imagine what Wolfenstein did when it came out. People had never seen blood like that, speed like that game. Shooting Nazis? There weren’t games that did that! The last time was Wolfenstein 10 years earlier, 11 years earlier. So it was not a thing.

That’s why it was so huge when it came out. You could not represent violence in a really fast-action, almost movie cinematic style. No one had the programming wherewithal to be able to get that on the screen as fast as possible. And a lot of times if you were that good, you were working for some big publisher where you did not have that decision authority to make something that’s more violent than anything than everyone’s ever seen. We were lucky that we got together and decided to form a company on our own and we all had 10 years of experience making games every single day. So when we got together, it was like, Here’s four experts and we’re going to do stuff that no one has seen before, and we’re going to go violent. Nothing else is violent—why wouldn’t you pick that? For us, it was just natural. We love watching violent movies. If you’ve seen Toby Hooper’s The Funhouse, when you see that thing unmasked—my kids will never forget that moment. [Laughs] It’s burned into their mind forever! When they see the Frankenstein mask taken off of that guy, that was terrifying. But that’s why it’s so great to watch these monster movies, just like the terror of that. And then you’re feeling for those main characters who are about to get shredded. But now in a game, you can do that! [Laughs]

Was that kind of the tone that you were thinking of? Were you channeling that?
Yeah. When we were coming up with the ideas that we’re going to put together for Doom in this design, we had strong obvious influences. We basically said, “This is what this game is.” It’s our Dungeons & Dragons ending of the world, which is when demons flooded through into the prime material plane and ruined the entire planet. We’re taking that idea. The main character is going to be like they’re in Aliens. They’re going to be a space marine with plasma guns like Aliens. The dark humor, that’s just the way that we are—dark humor is everywhere. The dark humor of Evil Dead 2 with the shotgun and the chainsaw as a space marine using this stuff and plasma guns and everything, we’re putting all of that into this game. Those were exactly the influences.

We had [what is] called the Doom Bible, which is the design doc that Tom Hall had written up and it had all of this stuff in it, but it had so much more. It had characters that had names and backgrounds and that’d be who you’re playing in multiplayer mode and it just had a lot more to it. If we had put all of that in the game, I think it may have detracted from what the message is that we’re trying to get across. And the fact that you’re Doom guy and you don’t have a name, like Duke Nukem, you are the Doomguy and you’re whoever your name is. It was definitely different. B.J. Blazkowicz is the person in Wolfenstein that you’re playing and Billy Blaze, a.k.a. Commander Keen, is a character that you’re playing in the previous game. But in Doom, you are Doomguy and everything that happens, that’s you. You’re not playing a character—you’re playing you. That was another different thing that games really didn’t do back then, because you always have a named character. Sometimes they self-talk and all that. But I mean, really, at the very beginning, there was very little digital audio anyway, so Wolfenstein was some of the very first digital audio that people heard speaking on a PC—or screaming in our case. [Laughs]

Now we move on to Quake. Very famously, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails signed on. They created the soundtrack and not only that, they helped with the sound effects of the game. It seems like Nine Inch Nails was more of a star-struck moment for Carmack and [then id Software designer] American McGee, but was it flattering to see not only somebody within the extreme music community, but also this rock star, reaching out to you and being like, “I’m a big fan of what you do and I also want to be involved”?
That was cool, yeah. Well, we were the ones that contacted them because the idea to have them create a soundtrack for Quake came from I think American McGee talking to John Carmack about it. They came to me and said, “What do you think about this idea?” And I was like, “If they can do it with no lyrics, hell yes. That sounds great. But we can’t have singing in the game. But you know what? Let’s see what they think.” So our biz guy, he contacted our Hollywood agent at ICM. His name is Bill Block. He just happened to be representing Nine Inch Nails as well, so he’s like, “I’ll just hook you guys up.” And he goes, “Oh, by the way, I found out that they play your game networked on their tour bus all the time. They love your game and they’re totally excited to talk to you.”

When we talked to them, it was Trent coming over to our office and it’s nutty. They don’t tell people where they’re going most of the time, like “I’m going for business meeting”—they don’t do that. But nope, there are, like, hundreds of little girls out in front of the building when the limo pulls up. [Laughs] How do they even know this is happening? And he gets in and there’s security everywhere. This is a nothing building, nobody needs security ever to go in this building except when Trent Reznor shows up. He comes up the elevator to our 666 suite and then we’re just basically hanging out, talking about what we’re doing and showing them the game and all that kind of stuff. But that was really cool. It was totally cool. We hung out probably three or four times when he’d come to Dallas and we’d go out, hanging out at bars or going out to eat or whatever.

Moving on to Sigil, you got Buckethead to contribute music to that. How did that come about?
I love Buckethead. I was making levels and I’m just listening to Buckethead, everything, which is hundreds and hundreds of songs because he’s made hundreds and hundreds of albums. I’m listening to his stuff and I’m making the levels, the music and the level design goes hand in hand. I remember my wife came in and she had said, “What kind of music do you think you’re going to have?” And I was like, “I wish I could have Buckethead in it, but I’ll have to figure out something else. I’ve got some ideas.” And so she’s just like, “Why don’t you just ask him? Because it’s ‘no’ right now, and maybe it’ll be a yes.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right. I might as well.”

So I emailed and his biz guy had answered. And so he basically just said, “Yeah, I’ll talk to him and see what he thinks.” And Buckethead basically said he was a huge Doom fan, loved Doom, and he would love to have his music in it. And he’s like, “I really want to make a song for it.” And I just said, “You don’t have to because you have so much music. I will be happy with any of your stuff.” He’s like, “I really want to make a new song for it.” I was like, “Hell yeah, dude. Go ahead.” And so he did. He made a brand new song. And when I heard it, I’m like, This is the first level song. This is the intro to all the shit that’s going to happen to the player in the entire episode. This song sets the stage in the tone and everything. It was great. It’s called “Romero One Mind Any Weapon,” is the name of the song. So I was just like, “I love it. Any time you want to do more…!” [Laughs]

So, this is something I can’t believe, but it’s true. He’s been playing music since the ’80s, right? And he got really big when he signed with Guns N’ Roses, but he’s made hundreds of albums. And guess what? Not a single compilation album. Not a greatest hits ever—until Sigil. Sigil’s the first compilation album, which is a really great intro to Buckethead and the different things that he can do. Level five is the disturbing type of music that he makes. That was absolutely straight from his 31 Days Til Halloween series. He has such disturbing shit and it was perfect for that level. I was listening to the album. I’m like, Every level can have these songs on it because they match what’s happening in Doom. It’s so eerie. But the metal stuff in there, I was just like, “Here is a really great array of Buckethead. And if you like this, you will like all the stuff that he makes.” And so I made the first compilation album and he started selling the Sigil soundtrack and he started paying me royalties. What? Buckethead’s paying me royalties?! [Laughs] I’m paying him royalties for selling the soundtrack in the game, but if he sells the soundtrack online, he pays me. It’s so crazy! [Laughs]

Do you prefer working with bands [or] musicians that you already admire, or do you seek out specifically composers for games, people who have that track record with the medium?
Kind of both. If someone makes a certain style of music that I think is really cool that would really work out, I don’t care how long they’ve been doing it because what they did there was awesome. And if they can do more of that, I am very happy. Whatever groove they were in when they started making that style of stuff, if they can get back to it, yes.

And that’s basically how Thorr came about with Sigil II. I’m listening to a shitload of independent artists—like, tons of them—and this one guy just kept on coming up and I’m like, Man, his sound is really cool. It’s unique and it’s new and it is hardcore, and it would fit so well with these new levels I’m making. So I contacted him and another guy and just decided instead of having two people, I’m going with him. They’re both really good, but he was just so good. And he’s such a professional. And it turns out that he’s worked with the other guy many times that I was going to talk to. Maybe someday, but right now, I just want to focus on you because your stuff is amazing. This guy lives in Nashville, he’s a drummer by trade so he’s always out drumming gigs all the time, driving for hours to go places and drum. He is a daily musician. He makes hip hop music, bluegrass music, he makes metal, he makes everything. The guy is just a genius. And he knows when he’s going to make a metal song, he’s not a Satriani, right? He’s not a Steve Vai badass guitarist—he gets one to play on the album. He’s already got the composition and then he has them do their badass magic.

And so the music that’s in Sigil is from Thorr. And if you haven’t heard it, it’s probably on YouTube and it is so good, very hardcore. To play a game like Doom and hear that kind of music coming out of it changes it into something new. And the editor-in-chief of PC Gamer magazine, who put Sigil II on the cover of January’s issue, he wrote an editorial in there that was basically his pick for Game of the Year was Sigil II. He wrote a really great article, what it makes you feel like and what kind of experience it is. To have a game that’s 30 years old feel like something you’ve never played before is really unique, and he really loved it. It was really nice.

You weren’t part of the Doom 2016 process, but [Doom 2016 composer] Mick Gordon did an interview where he was talking specifically about the soundtrack and he was given the directive at the very beginning of the process: “no metal.” They didn’t want it to be a rehashing of Doom ’93, they wanted it to be new. The way that he describes it, he started with synthesizers and drums, and then it just turned into a full-blown metal record. Even without being part of the project, and I guess almost especially because you’re not part of the project, is it validating to know that metal is inexorable from the Doom experience?
To me, it’s the definition of that IP. Doom is metal. And if you’re trying to do something that’s not that, then you are changing what that game is. So to me, absolutely must have metal. It was a critical part of why it was badass. The music, people will always cite that soundtrack, even though it was MIDI. It made that much of a mark. What other MIDI soundtracks do people talk about like that?

We’ve talked to people who cite the Doom soundtrack as getting them into metal. People have talked to death—and we’re guilty of it as well—about how Doom is very much a pillar of gaming history, inarguably. Would you consider Doom to be part of metal history?
I think it is. Iron Maiden kind of believes that, too. I was just in their Piece of Mind: [The Official 40th Anniversary Art Book], talking about what a big deal it was to hear Piece of Mind when it came out and what a great album [it is]. I loved all their albums, Powerslave and everything. Piece of Mind was so polished, so good. I was just in Metal Hammer magazine also talking about how musicians are talking about how Doom really defined what they love about metal music and it was their gateway. There’s a really nice article about all these musicians who were just like, “Doom was so metal and that made me want to play that kind of music.”

Metallica is in Fortnite right now, Iron Maiden has their own mobile game for some reason, DragonForce are the power metal representatives to the video game community. But we’re also seeing the underground [in video games]. Is it validating to see metal being represented in video games accurately as opposed to the trope-y “dude wearing corpse paint with a bullet belt being the comic relief”? Don’t get me wrong, I [Michael] love Tim Schafer’s games, but Brütal Legend, I can’t fucking play it. I can poke fun at myself all the time, but man, talk about missing the mark for a lot of this.
Yeah. And, you know, Tim is a huge metal fan. He really is. His style is just so funny. He can’t not be funny. And even when he wants to have a really great tribute to metal, Jack Black kind of sets the tone. [Laughs] It was funny because he asked me and I think a few other people, “What song do you think really epitomizes ’80s metal that I should have for my title song?” And that is such a question. Of course you’re going to say something about Ozzy, but I feel like those are overdone songs. And for me, I would want to choose a song that wasn’t overdone, but had everything in it that says to me, “This is absolutely ’80s badass shit.” So I said “Kiss of Death” by Dokken. It’s a hardcore song, it’s badass guitar, it’s fast and driving, [mimics drum beat]. It’s very Iron Maiden-ish and stuff, but it’s so good and it’s not a song that everybody listens to. But it’s one of my favorites of all time.

Am I [Michael] incorrect then in assuming that metal has gotten sporadic representation? Doom has obviously been around since ’93, but I feel like there are very few and far between examples of metal.
There’s barely any. I think Metal: Hellsinger is a good example of getting metal integrated into a game that is about the music. One of the greatest things about Metal: Hellsinger is the fact that you are building up to hearing the singing. You’re building up to hearing that kickass singing part by getting those massive multipliers. You get 16 or 32 or something, then you get to hear the track. It’s a payoff for this crazy mayhem of just shooting the shit out of demons. What a combination! And it’s cool that it was integrated in a really great way, and it didn’t feel to me like it’s trying to be a “cool” metal game. It was just like, “This is what the game is.” You’re killing demons from Hell, it’s heavy metal and it’s singing. When you get to the end, you level up to the singing part and you get to hear these really great vocals. As far as metal stuff goes, that’s one of the few great metal games out there. You really don’t hear metal in stuff very much, which is why I’m really happy about Sigil I and II being just pure metal, both of them.

Are there any games that you’re looking forward to?
Definitely my game. [Laughs]

[Laughs] You want to spoil that release date with us?
No, I can’t. I can’t say anything about anything. I’m making a shooter and it’s in Unreal 5 and it’s got a major publisher and it’s been a long time.

You going to be putting any hours into the Elden Ring DLC?
You know, I have not gotten [Shadow of the Erdtree] yet because I haven’t gotten enough time to even play all of Elden Ring. I played a lot of it, it’s so good. I love that game’s attitude. I love the Soulslike hardcore, “you’re getting screwed,” which is exactly what Sigil II is all about. You play Sigil II on Ultra-Violence, you’re dead. People who think that they’re bad ass—go play that. It’s very difficult, but it’s such a fun challenge because you feel like it’s your fault, like in Elden Ring. It’s just like, I should have known not to go in there. Just the timing of everything, it’s really critical.

I spent time in Starfield and there’s [Shattered Space], the new DLC that they’re going to be coming out with. I played it for a while. I totally agree with everybody about all of the cool journeying that you do between destinations was missing because you just teleport everywhere, and that’s part of the fun, like playing [The Legend of Zelda:] Breath of the Wild. It’s like, I’m going over to that tower over there. Two hours later, you finally get there after wiping out all kinds of shit and getting excited about about things, what you’re doing.

As far as new stuff coming out, it’s mostly DLC things versus brand new stuff. I would love to find time to play [World of Warcraft:] Dragonflight. I just barely started Dragonflight and played it for hours. That’s a game that you live, pretty much, and there’s a lot there. I really loved what they were doing with Dragonflight, playing it. When I have a little bit of time to play something right now, I always jump into Ghost Recon Breakpoint because that game has been completely done for me. I finished that game. And there’s no more DLC, the game is finished as far as Ubisoft is concerned, but they’re putting out another one at some point. But I just love that world. I love Wildlands, too, but that Breakpoint world is so just “jump in and just make up a rule for what I’m going to do now,” because you can do that. So it’s like, I’m going to just make sure that I’m never seen and take this whole place down. It’s got to be one of my favorite games of all time. Absolutely. It just matches what I love and it is so good. That’s when I have extra time—I’m watching a movie with my wife or I’m trying to jump into Breakpoint for just a little bit because I have so much stuff going on that I have almost no time for for anything.

And if I can listen to new music, it’s pretty rare. I think the last thing that I had listened to that I just loved is the Meridian album The 4th Dimension. If you haven’t heard of Meridian, they are ’80s. If you listen to this album, you will swear that this came out in the ’80s. It is so good. They’re I think Swedish or something. Such a good group. That album’s perfect as far as I’m concerned. I love it.

Let’s say a big fan of your games reads this article and they want to listen to one album that you recommend. What would you say?
Back For the Attack, Dokken, 1987.

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