NEW GAME+: When Video Games Started Influencing Heavy Music

From Halo deathcore and Skyrim black metal to DOOM, Death Stranding and Sonic boss fights - gaming didn’t just introduce us to heavy music. Eventually it started shaping the music itself.

PRESS START: Gaming stopped being the thing beside the stereo

For years I’ve soap boxed about the music I’ve found BECAUSE of games, from Tony Hawk who introduced generations of us to bands while we launched our little dude into concrete walls a trillion times, trying to land that one trick… Racing games became accidental mixtapes as we destroyed our favourite Lamborghini into other concrete walls and games like FIFA gave us a theme to run to the bathroom to on menu screens we spent far too much time AFK to!

However… somewhere along the way, the relationship reversed. Kids who’d spent years shooting at pixellated monsters and trying to “catch them all” picked up musical instruments and instead fed these experiences into the music. Games turned from musical discovery playgrounds and morphed into themes for bands to write about, sample and create FOR.

LEVEL ONE: FINISH THE FIGHT

Some games I read about and I’m excited to pick up the controller… other games inspire people to take that a step further and pick up a guitar! Halo a prime example in the birth of Shadow of Intent.

Shadow of Intent took in-game deaths to deathcore in one swift shred of the guitar. Their NAME alone escaping the screen having being pulled directly from the Halo universe with it being the name of the Covenant assault carrier commanded by Rtas ‘Vadum (you should see him with an energy sword, phwoar!). Primordial and Reclaimer even built around Halo’s story and characters.

Let’s face it, if you’re going to deathcore a game, Halo isn’t lacking in material to swipe from! Genocide, religious fanaticism, extinction, parasitic space zombies and humanity begging not to be utterly fucked by a rogue alien empire? That’s a delicious menu! Ben Duerr didn’t exactly have to write about collecting Korok seeds or being killed by a level one cow (what a song that would be though… that’d be MY theme!).

To the unknowing, these songs could be little more than a story of old but to the keen, the enlightened, they sing a battle song that hits deeper than hearing about someone’s irl unrequited love every hook!

Halo hasn’t just found its wayinto heavy music through influence either, at Download festival (while watching a laggy stream on TikTok because my disability meant I couldn’t be there) Sleep Token commanded the legion with the opening of Rain, Vessel tinkling the ivories into Never Forget from Halo 3… LITERAL. GOOSEBUMPS. As if that piece of music wasn’t enough to set the endorphins racing on its own, now I had Vessel combining two of my favourite musical worlds. Anyone who knows me could reasonably argue “Stick Sleep Token near anything and you’ll love it…” and okay… RUDE… but definitely accurate.

There is something sacred and almost ritualistic about Never Forget. Those first few notes are instantly recognisable to those who know them and not as some run of the mill backing to a mediocre game. Hearing thousands of people audibly gasp, in communal recognition, made it even bigger for me. No introduction needed. People knew.

I think THAT is where we are today, where this symbiotic relationship has grown, not some niche nerdy reference that needs explaining… but as part of a shared experience that speaks for itself. An entire generation can quickly translate a few notes and suddenly that nostalgia comes flooding back.

HEY LISTEN! - WHEN YOU RECOGNISE THE REFERENCE

It’ll come as NO surprise that I pre-saved Sleep Token’s album - Even in Arcadia… but what DID surprise me, at least, was Zelda’s Great Fairy Fountain influence appearing in one of my favourite tracks, Past Self. Again, no big fanfare, no clear mention of it, just a deep cut for the enlightened that started for me as “where the fuck do I remember this from?” into “NO WAY, VESSEL, you cheeky nerd!” Though I can’t for certain tell you that this is a confirmed sample of Nintendo’s recording, I can definitely hear the resemblance and was sent immediately to Hyrule.

These snippets are exciting because they send me into a real-world Easter Egg hunt and it feels like I’ve stumbled upon some treasured collectible that the musician is offering me if I’m worthy. Gaming influences don’t need to be as overt as an entire song about Master Chief, they’re tidbits woven into the music itself.

RIP AND TEAR - WHEN GAMING BECOMES METAL

Having looked at musicians taking the nuances of games and adding them as real-world extras to their writing, what happens when metal goes the other way and becomes part of the game dimension itself? If anyone was going to blur that line it’s Mick Fucking Gordon (clearly his full government name…) and DOOM.

OG DOOM had metal coursing through it’s veins with composer Bobby Prince, the game already synonymous with heavy metal music and distorted guitars becoming the in game DNA. A fitting soundtrack for turning anything unfortunate enough to stand in our way into a suspicious red stain on the floors, walls and whatever else was unluckily around to be decorated by innards!

Jumping forward to DOOM’s 2016 reboot and Mick Gordon was handed the quite frankly RIDICULOUS challenge of creating a METAL-FREE DOOM accompaniment! Some nameless individual (I don’t know who it was but I’d probably have gone into witness protection if it was me!) had decided that thrash-metal made Doom feel corny... He put his guitars back in their cases and started elsewhere, using distortion, processing to build something that felt like it belonged inside DOOM’s dystopian world.

Gordon created what he describes as the “DOOM instrument”, pure tones going in and being spat out through chains of distortion, pedals, fuzz, phasers, compression, tape echo and other analogue gear until the very clean tones turned into something corrupted and representative of the way we leave those demons in-game, post chainsaw! Hell sounds fit for a hellscape.

EVENTUALLY guitars were pulled from their cases and crept back into the demonic formula. He even combined a nine-string guitar with the original DOOM chainsaw sound! It wasn’t simply a task of writing a metal soundtrack to go with some demon shooting, these homemade industrial electronics, ridiculous low-end guitars and rhythmic aggression became recognisable as DOOM’s own sound.

Rather than music-makers carrying the games they love with them as though real-world achievment lists, metal helped create DOOM’s IDENTITY. It’s in the very BLOOD that runs through those games. Somewhere along the way, DOOM’s own musical DNA escaped back out and became part of heavy music culture in its own right.

I can listen to BFG - Division in it’s own right, without in game attachment, cleaning the house or gardening that usually requires maybe less BFG! Gordon didn’t even want to really call this “metal” but we definitely claimed him as metalheads with a penchant for suplexing Satan!

NEW OBJECTIVE - WRITING FOR THE GAME

We’ve gone from games sneaking their way into musical writing to metal becoming part of the game’s DNA itself… but what happens when the game actually asks you to write something FOR it?

For Bring Me The Horizon, that call came from the world of Hideo Kojima. IMAGINE THAT PHONECALL?! I’d have probably had a coronary! but that’s why I’m not on Hideo’s speed dial list I’m sure…

Ludens wasn’t a song that Oli Sykes had written and somebody later thought would sound “really cool” accompanying Norman Reedus lugging several metric fuck-tons of parcels across Iceland like a modern day Santa. It was birthed FOR Death Stranding: Timefall, a collection of music inspired by Kojima’s DS. With Mr. Sykes already being a self-confessed Kojima-fan, particularly of Metal Gear Solid, you’d imagine he’d spend a good few months lovingly crafting and preparing his contribution… oh no… HE HAD FIVE FUCKING DAYS!

They’d been in talks for some time, discussing the project with Sony and Kojima but legal wrangling meant, at times, they weren’t even sure it was going to happen! Because Murphy’s Law apparently applies even when Hideo Kojima is involved, they were in the middle of touring Europe when they finally got the green light and go ahead, with one SMALL proviso, if it wasn’t written by Saturday it wasn’t going in, like a shitty metaphorical YOU’RE NOT COMING IN UNLESS YOU CHANGE YOUR SHOES from a boss-level bouncer.

Oli, Jordan Fish and a laptop essentially went full Norman Reedus, carrying the project from hotel room to hotel room and Ludens emerged from the chaos. Oli didn’t just write Death Stranding: The Musical TM. Rather than straight narration, he investigated Kojima’s philosophy which led him to “Homo Ludens” - “playing man” and the belief in humanity’s ability to create, invent and adapt (pretty much what he was having to do with a FIVE DAY TURNAROUND!) Elements and quotes of course made their way into the song but Oli used those ideas as a jumping-off point, describing humanity, connection and our ability to keep ourselves alive.

Ludens was given a video-game feel, with a cinematic and cyberpunk/post nu-metal sound that perhaps would have been lost in conventional recording sessions! So the lyrics aren’t just hiding a line that we can point to as in the Leonardo DiCaprio meme… being asked to write FOR a game, changed what was created.

Ludens lives on in POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR, something commissioned because a video game had crossed back into the band’s own musical world.

Skip the cutscenes to 2026, Oli Sykes is at it again, this time in a HARDCORE level vocal party of bosses! Grabbitz, Oli Sykes and Courtney LaPlante release “If The Sun Burns Out Tonight”, the official anthem for Valorant CHAMPIONS 2026.

Oli and Courtney together feels suspiciously like RIOT has an incredible marketing team OR that someone there has been rifling through my playlists! Gaming knows EXACTLY who it’s audience is and some of metal’s biggest bands are being deliberately brought into this world. This isn’t an accidental crossover anymore, they’re actively listening to each other’s audiences.

From Never Forget ringing out at a metal festival to the opposite direction of travel, games now creating music for competitive events, specifically intended for thousands of people to experience together!

BONUS LEVEL - THE REALLY NERDY SHIT

Halo and DOOM were apparently just the tutorial for me, in researching and ultimately falling into a worm hole of wonder, I realised that there were many more examples of games and heavy music making sweet love together.

ACHIEVMENT UNLOCKED: CASTLEVANIA

The Black Dahlia Murder weren’t too subtle with their “What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse” ripped straight from Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. Every time night descends we are greeted with the now infamous line “What a horrible night to have a curse”, it turns out even NES boxes can grow up to be death metal!

GENRE UNLOCKED: Nintendocore

When simply referencing games isn’t nerdy enough… we needed an entire genre! Acts like HORSE the band smash synths and hardcore in a way very reminiscent of the 8-bit music we grew up hearing blasting from our Nintendo consoles. When breakdowns and Gameboys are left unsupervised, would we call that a genre reveal as opposed to a gender reveal on its birth?!

CONTINUE?

I started this article reminiscing about all of the music gaming had given ME over the years. I didn’t realise I’d discover quite how many musicians had been feeding gaming back into the music in return.

It’s a loop: gamers become musicians, games inspire their writing, metal becomes embedded in games, games then comission metal musicians… and new players hear their music THROUGH games.

They’re no longer two separate entities colliding by happy accident. At this point they’ve been sharing a save file for decades!

PLAYER TWO?

What’s YOUR favourite example of gaming finding its way into heavy music? A sample, lyric, song, band, soundtrack or ridiculously obscure Easter egg I’ve missed; tell me what I should unlock next?