Aftermath

Album track listing

No.Track TitleTimeRelease DateDownload Links
—Album Cover Art—— Front Back Disc
01And Hell Broke Loose2:092015-12-30 MP3 OGG FLAC
02Blood Shall Be Shed7:282015-03-09 MP3 OGG FLAC
03Dark5:222014-12-29 MP3 OGG FLAC
04Fear3:562020-12-19 MP3 OGG FLAC
05Console Rush3:392022-05-28 MP3 OGG FLAC
06Watching the Electronic Sky6:012023-03-18 MP3 OGG FLAC
07Space Junk9:202024-01-03 MP3 OGG FLAC
—Full Album Download—N/A MP3 OGG FLAC

These tracks saw light after the conclusion of Doom The Roguelike: The Album.

The tracks are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

If you remix those tracks, play them live or record them in a studio, do let me know. The perfectionist in me would like to see my work becoming more awesome than it already is, more than it is in my power. Make it so, and you will win my deepest appreciation and many, many cookies[1].

Author's notes

Tracks below are listed in order of composition.

Dark — 5:22"

Originally, this track was intended for AliensRL, another game made by ChaosForge.

AliensRL is not DoomRL. It has a different dynamic. In DoomRL you run around guns-a-blazing and can reasonably hope to be able to wipe out everything that is foolish enough to stand in your way. In AliensRL, you are alone, up against overwhelming force that will have no difficulty to wipe the floor with you many times over, a swarm that will utterly demolish you if you attract too much attention. Your main tactics are evasion and stealth, as you try to gather just about enough weapons, ammo and items to survive the next few fights.

In AliensRL, the game wants you to be paranoid. My idea was to help a little.

The style of the music reflects this dynamic. It is slow, dark, ambient, with sounds and noises sprinkled here and there. I knew i am doing something right when the following happened:

27 Feb 2015 07:57:09 UTC:
Prolonged listening to the track i'm working on is giving me auditory hallucinations. Perfect!

Then, life happened, and the project got put on hold. I only returned to it when a switch in the music production software provoked me to examine my drafts again; As it happened, a few tweaks here and there, and the track seemed good enough to me to be released on its own.

Blood Shall Be Shed — 7:28"

This track was originally suggested by Kornel Kisielewicz for one of his smaller games, Berserk!, "a game of tactical bloodshed". The IRC conversation went something like this:

(2012-03-31 18:58:08) epyon: Simon-v: you think you could do a piece for berserk? doesn't have to be very original
(2012-03-31 19:00:07) Game_Hunter: I guess if Simon's gonna make a Berserk song, just ONE song, he oughta make it very loopable and listenable.
(2012-03-31 19:03:55) Simon-v: It's going to be HARD. I'm not sure i'll be able to pull it off.
(2012-03-31 19:05:03) Simon-v: I don't even know what it sounds like.

Admitteldy, up to the point, i've only played the game once or twice and have never gotten around to reading the manga or watching the series on which the game is based. Still, giving a listen to the series' soundtrack (to see if anything suitable already existed) convinced me that what i was seeing on the screen while playing was not being done sufficient justice. Indeed, any amount of demon slaying in open spaces that paints the ground red deserves a heroic orchestral arrangement, doesn't it?

Well, this is the result.

The composition process was long and troubled, practically stopping for years to make way to the development of Doom the Roguelike: The Album and real life. Still, it appears that Kornel never really stopped hoping that it would happen someday, for which i am grateful.

Much like the battle in the game, it starts relatively slow and quiet, then gradually builds up towards a medium-scale hurricane.

A "patched" version was released a few months later, addressing a mastering issue that only manifested when listening to the track on low-quality earphones.

And Hell Broke Loose — 2:09"

This track was conceived as a potential idea for the backing track for the Jupiter Hell teaser. Fortunately for the latter, a much better backing track was composed, thus rendering the former obsolete. Still, good ideas have difficulty dying for good, and soon enough, after some thinking, i heard in my mind what the end product might sound if the concept was built upon.

The composition of this track ran into a rather serious problem when no matter what i did, no matter what preset i used, the guitar refused to sound right.

29 Mar 2015 18:12:28 UTC:
Does one have to become a sound technician to get the right guitar sound from his softstudio? I want to make music, not design waveforms!

Eventually, this was sorted, and, despite complaining, i did end up designing a sound effect anyway, as well as making greater use of sound effects in general.

The release was delayed due to a serious bug in the studio software, lying practically ready in the projects directory, but once the issue was resolved, the release happened practically on the same day.

This was also the first time i painfully realized (though, of course, the idea itself was not new to me) that some of my efforts are completely lost when listening to my music on crappy laptop speakers. A second revision of the track was released shortly to address this issue, using the opportunity to examine if any other tracks suffer from the same problem.

Fear — 3:56"

Originally, this track was intended as the track for the Spider's Lair special level of DoomRL, but, for reasons too boring to list here, was never finished.

I always know what this track should sound like, but could never figure out how to actually reach this sounding. It took years upon years of listening to various kinds of music before all parts finally clicked into place.

Like the target level, it starts with a strong, aggressive intro (representing finding yourself in a hall surrounded by mechanical spiders), then fades into a more reserved, but still menacing two-verse and chorus pattern (representing taking cover behind a wall to pick your targets one by one, with the spiders occasionally teleporting behind you). All in all, i feel the track does the level justice, especially if played on repeat.

Console Rush — 3:39"

I missed making music, that's all i can say.

This track is inspired by the "CalSec" special levels of Jupiter Hell. It has me experimenting with the drum patterns, something i was always struggling with. The "chorus" sections use a chaotic sequence of bells and cymbals, creating an impression of numerous mechanical footsteps. The orchestral parts are restricted to the final section of the track, the one where you reach the terminal and frantically type in the shutdown commands, ducking under the machinegun fire from the security bots. Once i got the track's basic structure right, it was pretty much done, and i proceeded to throw away all unused draft chunks, leaving only what was strictly necessary.

While the result might not be one of my strongest works to date, it's still pretty solid.

A second version was eventually released to address a few issues that have been bothering me since the initial release, as well as to give the aforementioned final, orchestral section a bit more volume.

Watching the Electronic Sky — 6:01"

This track was originally intended to be something between the Geoscape theme from the original X-Com and the UNATCO theme from the original Deus Ex, but two minutes in, it unexpectedly developed a character and a personality of its own and started resisting any attempts to bend or mess with its internal consistency.

The track is a fully electronic piece, upbeat, but unhurried, a perfect fit for long nights of watching the radars, waiting for something to happen, and fearing that it does.

The spectrum analyzer output for this track is pleasant to look at as well.

Space Junk — 9:20"

This track is inspired by space exploration games. The vastness and relative emptiness of space suggests a slower, longer, more ambient piece than usual, with greater emphasis on sound, rather than melody. There is probably some Jean Michel Jarre influence there, as well.

Notes

[1] The cookies might not in fact be real.