Metal vs. Ambient

[Koko Ricky]

Doom and Doom 2 famously used hard rock/heavy metal MIDI music as the soundtrack. Those tracks have become as iconic as anything else in the games. PSX/N64 Doom, and of course Doom 3, used dark ambient music, which gave the games a very different feel. Which style of music should Doom 4 contain? I'm going to go with good old fashioned dark ambient, as it's a bit more timeless than than late 80s/early 90s metal. If Doom 4 were to have any kind of hard music in it, it would probably ending sounding like pure shit, like the Doom 3 theme, or any modern "metal."

[Redeemer812]

Why do we have to choose? Both Doom and Doom II had a mixture of rock, metal, and ambient music. This was a good thing because every level was made to have a different theme. Obviously many of them were made to be pulse-pounding arenas, but many others were made in such a way that you would slow down a bit and just appreciate the atmosphere of the place, like E1M8, E3M5, and MAP28, just to name a few.

Doom doesn't exist solely to impress us with pretty lights and impacting architecture, nor does it only exist to give us an excuse to kill thousands of monsters in large, bland arenas.

Those things said, I don't want all of the tracks to be metal/rock, and I don't want all of them to be ambient tracks either.

[ducon]

Heh, you will have ambient metal.

[Ed]

Jesu.

[yellowmadness54]

I almost would prefer ambience (much like that of DOOM64's)

but a great bland of metal DONE CORRECTLY would be great.

I don't want loud, obnoxious metal music and guitar squealing like that you'd expect from CoD or the new Duke Nukem.

Really, now that I do think about it, I can't see metal working. It worked in doom2 simply because it was in MIDI form. Unless they do similar for DOOM4, it will seem...off.

[Gordon]

I think it should have both, like the original Doom did.

[Koko Ricky]

Sorry, I had a brain fart and forgot that both games had a handful of ambient sounding tracks. If they did a mix of both, they would really need to get the hard rock/metal part down. Not that dark ambient is the easiest form of music to create, but crafting metal that actually feels cinematic, instead of cheesy and overly masculine, would prove to be a difficult task. I like the idea of ambient metal, I imagine it would sound a bit like Sunn 0))), which would be perfect.

[DuckReconMajor]

Lock the Big Four in a dungeon/space station/Hell with nothing but an organ and a bottle of lotion.

yellowmadness54 said:

I don't want loud, obnoxious metal music and guitar squealing like that you'd expect from CoD

What? Call of Duty games have an overdramatic orchestral soundtrack.

[printz]

I think it needs to have some thrash/progressive metal background music. Nothing like listening to strong rhythmic riffs and experimental solos while gatling gunning 30 demons at once on screen. IMO metal music is good as long as it's melodic and rhythmic, if it lacks any, I dub it generic and tiring to listen to.

Black metal might not fit because Doom 4 is about invaded 22nd century city, not about black magic and plague. Black metal would work better in a Hexen kind of game.

But what about:
- electronic music (Quake 3, Descent)
- dance music (ROTT)
- blues-rock (Wolf3d, Doom)?

[cbronson]

Ed said:

Jesu.

Joy of Men's Desiring, by J.S. Bach? It would fit quite well!

Seriously, even though I am a metal head, I don't think it fits Doom particularly well. My favorite tunes from Doom are the non-metal ones. Doom 4 could have some sort of interactive music, like some games have, so it would turn the ambient sound into something heavier/guitar driven industrial thing when it's clobberin' time.

[yellowmadness54]

DuckReconMajor said:

What? Call of Duty games have an overdramatic orchestral soundtrack.

In single player, not multiplayer. When you rank up, or pretty much everything, there is a loud obnoxious guitar squeal.

[Xeros612]

yellowmadness54 said:

I don't want loud, obnoxious metal music and guitar squealing like that you'd expect from CoD or the new Duke Nukem.

Nope. Call of Duty has orchestral music and the occasional awful electronic piece (the majority of Sean Murray's work), and DNF has a lot of synth orchestral music and aside from the main theme, there's very little guitar usage at all, let alone "squealing".

yellowmadness54 said:

In single player, not multiplayer. When you rank up, or pretty much everything, there is a loud obnoxious guitar squeal.

Uhhh..... short, simple riff != "loud obnoxious guitar squeal". Are you sure you know what you're talking about here?

As for the main topic at hand, I'd like a more.... existing version of what they tried with Doom 3. Dark ambience with some orchestral actiony stuff for boss fights. Except, you know, the ambient being more than <60 seconds of sounds and the boss music being more than ~10 seconds of an introduction with maybe an ending bit. I actually wouldn't mind them doing a whole The Darkness thing with the action music, along with a dynamic system to "decide" when a particular type of music is more suitable for the given situation.

Or at the very least, a title screen song that isn't a terrible quality 128 kb/s lossy MP3 and a credits song that actually lasts the length of the credits.

[Koko Ricky]

When I think of metal in first person shooters, I think of the corny, terrible music in Painkiller. Q3A's music was mentioned, which I actually like very much; a really solid mix of ambient and industrial. Whatever comprises Doom 4's music, it had fucking better not be techno. I like plenty of electronic music but generic OOM-CHE-OOM-CHE-OOM-CHE techno is just a boner killer and totally takes away from the game.

I wouldn't mind hearing some very extreme metal instrumentals that sound like Gorguts, Autopsy, Portal, Darkthrone, Hellhammer, AngelCorpse, Obituary, Carcass, Haemorrhage, Morbid Angel, or the various other extreme metal that I often have playing when I'm in the middle of Doom or Quake or some other shooter.

I think it's really hard to beat the dark ambient music in the PSX Dooms. I think more than anything I'd like to hear stuff like that.

[darkreaver]

In games, metal only works in MIDI imo. I love the metal tracks in HR2, but I would have hated them if they were recorded with real instruments. Ugh.

[yellowmadness54]

darkreaver said:

In games, metal only works in MIDI imo. I love the metal tracks in HR2, but I would have hated them if they were recorded with real instruments. Ugh.

This.

and thanks above, the MW2 one also proves my point. Its noisy and doesn't fit in and cant be taken seriously.

Metal may fit into doom4, but it has to be done extremely well, and fit in entirely. Songs like stairway to heaven would fit in well, so will some of candlemass's stuff because there isn't alot going on.

Say for example, solitude, or at gallows end.

I can see those songs coming into play well enough.

[Gordon]

I would prefer that if it has ambient music, it's like it was in the classic Doom games. I really disliked the PSX Doom music.

[Koko Ricky]

yellowmadness54, Stairway to Heaven?! One of those most overplayed rock songs of all time? It's also not at all metal and I could never imagine it fitting in any video game. Candlemass is cool.

[Xeros612]

darkreaver said:

In games, metal only works in MIDI imo.

The Darkness and Red Alert 3 would like to differ.

[PRIMEVAL]

Would really depend on the scene. It also depends on what style of Metal you are talking about (eg. Thrash, Industrial, Progressive, etc).

Personally, I think both would work if done right. Metal would be more fitting for some suspense, tension, and action (depending on how it's played). Perhaps Metal for the theme (granted) and certain battles and boss fights. Ambient would work just about anywhere else.

Also, on the topic of Ambient Metal... there is a subgenre called Ambient Black Metal. However, I am unsure about how it sounds as I generally don't listen to Black Metal. Black Metal can be fitting if it was more closely related to the original 80's form (Venom, anyone?).

[yellowmadness54]

GoatLord said:

yellowmadness54, Stairway to Heaven?! One of those most overplayed rock songs of all time? It's also not at all metal and I could never imagine it fitting in any video game. Candlemass is cool.

Led Zeppelin is heavy metal, man. One of the pioneers of it.

And I've played it in one of the doom 2 WADs, and I can see it in some of the hell levels... the ones that aren't all firey.

[Face23785]

Ambience, metal is too juvenile

[DuckReconMajor]

Nice blanket statement you have there. It would be a shame if someone were to set fire to it while you were sleeping. jk

[AirRaid]

Face23785 said:

Ambience, metal is too juvenile

Tell that to all the guys who were playing those songs back in the 80s/90s, who are still playing them today. Aged 50.

[printz]

Face23785 said:

Ambience, metal is too juvenile

You've probably heard too much crap that's too much roaring and too little music. Try to listen to other bands, maybe you'll find something that while not your taste, doesn't really sound too juvenile.

But it's very easy to make some "metal" soundtrack for an action game that sounds too generic, predictable for the genre and juvenile, like a kid wielding an imaginary gun and making repetitive shooting noises with his mouth.

[Face23785]

AirRaid said:

Tell that to all the guys who were playing those songs back in the 80s/90s, who are still playing them today. Aged 50.

Age doesn't make you grown up. I really shouldn't have to explain that to anyone.

[Mr. Freeze]

AirRaid said:

Tell that to all the guys who were playing those songs back in the 80s/90s, who are still playing them today. Aged 50.

Must suck being middle aged and having no actual job skills.

Back on topic, metal CAN be done in music but requires care like all musical genres. You could even say moreso, because for some reason metal is really easy to make generic-sounding.

[Use]

Let's talk about what's juvenile on a Doom forum.

[Xeros612]

Mr. Freeze said:

Must suck being middle aged and having no actual job skills.

Because "musician" isn't a job.

Face23785 said:

Ambience, metal is too juvenile

cool story ignorance bro

[magicsofa]

GoatLord said:

Which style of music should Doom 4 contain?

D_RUNNIN

[ducon]

Face23785 said:

Ambience, metal is too juvenile