Video
Game
Music

Heretic Sinphony

Platforms: MacOS, MS-DOS
Year: 2017
Catalog Number: OCRI-0010
Published by: OverClocked ReMix

Number of Files: 6
Total Filesize: 36 MB (MP3), 133 MB (FLAC)
Date Added: Aug 11th, 2022   | Change Log
Album type: Arrangement
Uploaded by: DustyCartridges

Description

Heretic Sinphony
Comments from album director Thomas Nelson (Ghetto Lee Lewis)
Album freely available at http://ocremix.org/info/Heretic_Sinphony

Heretic Sinphony is a 6-track commissioned album inspired by the music from the 1994 Raven Software classic Heretic. It was commissioned by Emmanuel EXE (http://youtube.com/groundmanexe), with original artwork by Tedd Leger of Mehxôhorr Artworks (http://facebook.com/mehxohorrartworks).

This project started out with an e-mail I received about two years ago. What began with a remix of "The Cathedral" soon turned into a full-blown remix album of Raven Software's Heretic. This game is a classic first-person shooter from the Doom era, with some really good, but overlooked music. I composed and produced this album while working a full-time job (sometimes 60+ hours a week), while putting together a recording/production studio at the same time. It's been a long two years, but I'm finally glad this album is finally coming together and getting released.

EastWest samples (HW Orchestra, Stormdrum, Ministry of Rock) were heavily used throughout this project, and also some 8Dio libraries (Requiem and Studio Sopranos). For the synths, I mosty used Native Instruments Massive and FM8, along with a few sounds from Sylenth1. FL Studio is the same DAW I have used for the last 15 or so years, and I still use to this day. It has great VST and sample library support and provides a super-easy-to-use interface for both arranging and automation.

- Thomas Nelson (Ghetto Lee Lewis)

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1. "Damnation and Betrayal"
Source: "The Docks (E1M1)"

I actually wasn't crazy about the source material for this song, but, as an old fan of Heretic, I remember the opening stage music to be really iconic. I wanted to pay homage to the original as much as possible. At the time when the game came out, there weren't any other games like it. The experience for the gamer was very fresh and chaotic. I wanted to embrace that chaos by creating a fast-paced DnB song. I pretty much started by chopping up some drum loops, and eventually went and blended together a deep sub bassline with a higher modulating bass to put under the main melodies.

Since my setup uses JBL LSR305 studio monitors, I couldn't hear the bass very well when I was mixing. I actually had to go back and revisit the song later and play it in my car a few times to really hear the bass properly on my car subwoofer. This actually meant having a vehicle (I had a lot of car problems when I was making this album and eventually had to sell my Saab when the engine died).

The title of this song actually refers to the main theme of the game in several ways at once (you're a damned main character fighting damned souls while betraying the leader who is a tyrant, who basically betrayed you by casting you as a heretic). The title, of course, is also wordplay on "D and B" (drum and bass).

2. "Unchained Zealotry"
Source: "The Gatehouse (E1M3)"

I really enjoyed working on this one. The melody during the breakdown of the original song really inspired me to create some beautiful backing melodies during my own breakdown section, using the EastWest Hollywood Strings library, along with Requiem choirs. I wanted a somewhat more medieval feel to the music to go with the spirit of the game and was able to capture this in some of the melodic and harmonic changes (especially with the parallel fifth harmonies in the choirs and use of some mode mixture in the chord changes).

After the main melodic breakdown with the strings and choirs, I thought it would be appropriate to bring in an epic guitar section (the guitar used is from Ministry of Rock 2), and eventually build up to a higher-energy electronic section and tie the song back together with the 4-on-the-floor intro. The gated pads during the electronic section play the main melody during the synth solo, while also backing up that melody. After the big electronic section, I then wanted to tie the song back together with the slow strings and felt that would be the perfect place to end it. Of course, the title is a play on "Unchained Melody." The main villain of the game is a religious zealot who basically labels you a heretic for standing up to him.

3. "Cathedral of Carnage"
Source: "The Cathedral (E1M6)"

This is the song that really drove and created the inspiration for the album. The main melody on the piano that the original song starts with created a mood of mystery and foreboding. At first, this inspired me want to build to a very energetic electronic section during the climax of the song. Eventually, however, I went back and revisited what made the original memorable: that feeling of mystery and foreboding. I wanted to enhance that feeling, and really showcase that element of darkness Heretic was known so well for; and really tie the music into the game's theme (so, basically, I wanted to draw the listener in using a dark, foreboding atmosphere before going on a bloodthirsty killing spree).

This song is the first one I worked on for the album. It was produced using FL Studio, and features samples from EastWest Hollywood Orchestra and Native Instruments, along with a mishmash of VST synths, and drums from the Vengeance library.

4. "Frozen Inferno"
Source: "The Ice Grotto (E2M4)"

This is one of the last songs on the album I worked on, but it was actually one of the original songs requested by Emmanuel EXE. The title is a sort of vague reference to the original, "The Ice Grotto." I wanted something more fitting for a hellish, fast-paced action game.

I really didn't like the original source material and decided early that I probably wasn't going to remix it. However, later on, while working on another track, I decided I had become really bored and tired of the old synths I was using and wanted some new sounds (up until now I had mostly been using NI Massive, FM8, and FruityLoops 3x Osc). While watching YouTube, I came across a little toy called Sylenth1. It was super-easy to use out of the box and gave me some fresh ideas for new sounds I could use. It wasn't long before I came up with that hard-hitting bassline that I decided I could use for this track. After pulling some other sounds from Sylenth1, I eventually realized I could turn the source material into a full-blown hard-hitting dance remix. The "wind" noise you hear during the buildup was inspired by the wind from the original game, which would blow around you while you tried shooting at enemies and basically make the game absolute hell. xD

5. "Embrace the Darkness"
Source: "The Great Hall (E2M7)"

This was actually the last song I worked on for the album, and, honestly, I was feeling a bit burnt out by this point. I pretty much wanted to bring some energy out that I felt was missing in the original source (with a hard-hitting tripleted electronic rhythm) and still maintain that dark element. I feel like I accomplished this with the choirs and use of dissonant textures in the mix. The guitar section essentially represents the struggle of the hero against the insurmountable forces he must overcome, before he himself comes to the self-realization that he must truly embrace the darkness in order to defeat it.

6. "Vengeful Requiem"
Source: "The Graveyard (E1M9)"

My original plan was to basically use the iconic drums from the original and build something truly huge and epic that could be deemed worthy of an end-game boss fight. I decided to depart from the orchestral dance music I had focused on for the rest of the album and throw pretty much everything I had at it. I pulled samples out of EastWest's Hollywood Strings, Hollywood Brass, Hollywood Woodwinds, Stormdrum 2, Requiem, and even a Studio Soprano I picked up from 8Dio (for the section at the end).

The source material in the original to me seemed so minimal and so generic that I didn't actually want to use any of it (except, of course, for the drums and a 2-note melody used for some low strings), not to mention it just seemed really inappropriate for an end-game boss fight. However, after some critique from some OCR judges (*ahem), I decided to completely rewrite the woodwind breakdown section and use basically all of the original source. As for the title, a requiem is normally a song to play for the souls of the dead. The irony is that you're pretty much killing monsters the whole game who are either damned souls or demons straight from some insane region of hell, putting them out of their misery or possibly sending them to an even worse sort of hell, or maybe even a better place? Who knows, really?

People who viewed this also viewed

Heretic (MS-DOS, IBM PC/AT, IBM PC) (gamerip) (1994)	Heretic Reworked Midi Soundtrack (2019)	Heretic (1994)	Heretic II (Windows) (gamerip) (1998)	Hexen - Beyond Heretic (IBM PC/AT) (gamerip) (1995)	Hexen Reworked Midi Soundtrack (2019)
Hexen - Beyond Heretic (1995)	Hexen II - Portal of Praevus (Windows) (gamerip) (1998)	Doom II: Delta-Q-Delta (2008)	Hexen 2 (MacOS, Windows) (gamerip) (1997)	Hexen - Beyond Heretic (PS1) (gamerip) (1997)	Hexen - Beyond Heretic (Saturn) (gamerip) (1997)

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