The genre of metal has been largely absent from the image of pop culture in the 2010s. Aside from bands like Ghost (though some would even hesitate to call them metal) who have successfully achieved mainstream success, there hasn’t been any metal music that has kept mainstream attention.
However, despite the genre’s absence from the larger cultural conversation, metal has been far from dormant this decade. We’ve had classic bands like Judas Priest release their greatest work in decades, and we’ve seen bands like Behemoth create albums that will undoubtedly be looked back on as classics. Though if you weren’t actively keeping up with the metal scene, you probably thought the entire genre ceased to exist sometime after 2010. All of metal’s recent big achievements have come from the underground, extreme bands that very rarely get mainstream attention.
In metal’s absence from the limelight, the spirit of metal has cropped up in other forms of media in pop culture. There have been several movies that reflected the visual style of metal. Mad Max Fury Road gave us gnarly cars fighting with fire and fury on the desert roads of a post-nuclear wasteland and crazed warriors playing flame-throwing guitars on the hood of a war truck. Last year’s Mandy was overt with metal influence as it pitted a crazed Nicholas Cage against a demonic biker cult in a bloody feud set against backdrops that looked like they were straight off of a death metal album cover.
Despite inevitably being compared to the genre of metal, neither of those movies gave mainstream audiences metal music to love. Something needed to come along that not only had the visual style of metal, but also had metal music to match. The answer to this need actually came in the form of a video game.
The 2016 remake of the classic first-person shooter game Doom is probably the most metal video game ever made. Yes, it’s even more metal than the game Brutal Legend, which was a love letter to the genre and starred the voices of Jack Black and Ozzy Osbourne. Like the original, the 2016 Doom has you playing as the nameless “doom-guy” as you run around the surface of Mars in a super-powered suit killing hordes of demons that have poured in from an inter-dimensional portal to hell.
The game play is frenetic as the game rewards you for destroying demonic imps. You want a health boost? Kill demons. Need ammunition? Kill demons. Tired of just shooting? Kill demons with your bare hands. If all of this wasn’t metal enough, the soundtrack that plays in the background of all this chaos is, you guessed it, heavy metal.
The soundtrack to the original Doom was already just midi rip-offs of metal songs. It made logical sense that in the 21st century the game should have actual metal music in its soundtrack. The great thing about this soundtrack is that it’s not just fantastic for enhancing the game, but also for listening on its own.
If you had no idea it was a game soundtrack, you might even think you were listening to an album from an obscure underground band. The track to kick everything off is a voice-over from a deep, crackling voice that tells a story about a crazed, vengeful warrior hellbent on conquering every demon in sight. The best part of this intro is how the ending of it leads into the next track as the hellish voice says, “Those that tasted the bite of his sword named him… the doom slayer!” Immediately, the next track, “Rip & Tear,” kicks in with furious guitars and booming drums.
There’s a punch to the music of Doom that I can’t find anywhere else. The tone of the sound is thick and so fueled by the violent, fiery nature of the game that it’s like nothing I’ve heard from any one metal band. The style is clearly derived from the Meshuggah inspired genre of djent, and that influence is on full display in the track “BFG Division,” which is driven by a chorus groove that gets more intense each time the track returns to it.
I had the game recommended to me because of the soundtrack. I loved the soundtrack so much that I bought the game. Thanks to its combination of violence and metal, it’s a game that caters to the teenage metalheads in my generation that muted their TV so they could blast Megadeth over their first-person shooter game. Doom not only lets people like me relive that experience by putting metal in the game, but it lets other people have the same experience of conquering your virtual enemies as a nasty riff cheers you on in the background.
There’s been a lot said about how well the soundtrack is used in-game and how tracks selectively play based on what you’re doing, but my favorite use of the soundtrack within the game is the opening.
You’ve just awakened from an ancient sleep, and you’re riding an elevator to the demon-infested surface of Mars as you watch a monitor where an inept scientist explains how his experiment lead to the demonic invasion. Angry guitars slowly start to rise in volume as you cut the scientist short by smashing the screen as if to say, “Shut up. I don’t care. I’m just here to clean up your mess.” The screen cuts to black as the title appears and the beefy guitars kick in full force. The game fades back to your point of view as you step out of the elevator and pump your shotgun, the sound of which perfectly syncs up with the chugs of the guitar.
It’s safe to say Doom would not be what it is without its metal soundtrack. It’s the reason you feel like an unstoppable force after every successful battle, even if you’re like me and you totally suck at the game. For non-metalheads, what makes it work is that it’s so appropriate for the game. The game is full of hellfire and chaos, and it needs a soundtrack to match that level of intensity. As a result, there are now a lot of people who don’t like metal, but who love the soundtrack of Doom.
Even as metal seemed to fade out of the limelight, Doom came charging in carrying a shotgun and severed demon head, and reminded everyone of the undying energy of metal. Thanks to Doom, we now have a current cultural touchtone for people outside the metal scene to look at and say, “Yeah, metal’s still around, and it’s still pretty great.”
