Doom Eternal continues to grow with its Ancient Gods DLC. Ahead of the release of Ancient Gods Part 2 later today, Stevivor sat down with composers Andrew Hulshult (above, left) and David Levy (above, right) to discuss their contributions to the franchise that rips and tears.
Andrew Hulshult is no stranger to video game composition, having worked on titles like Duke Nukem 3D Reloaded, Quake Champions and Amid Evil in the past alongside a Doom mod called Brutal Doom. Bethesda's so impressed by his work, it's dubbed him a "sweet metal Viking".
David Levy comes from more of a TV & film background, having composed tracks for Rooster Teeth productions including gen:LOCK, RWBY, Red vs Blue and more. He's also served as a sound engineer and mixer, working with mentors who've produced tracks for the likes of Madonna, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Creed and more.
More importantly, they're both really awesome guys.
In conversation with Stevivor, the pair discussed how they've collaborated with one another to produce The Ancient Gods soundtrack, how video game composition differs (and is similar to!) that of TV & film, the freedoms id Software provided them, how Doom Eternal's core game influenced the DLC and much more. Clocking in at around 30 minutes, you can watch the interview or listen to the exchange below. The interview will also be automatically available to those who've subscribed to the Friendly Fire Show podcast.
https://youtu.be/vvscSvU9dyE
We're also happy to provide a full transcript from the conversation, below.
Steve Wright, Stevivor: So my first question is, they're probably all going to be Mickey Mouse, but the first one is extremely Mickey Mouse. Who does what? How does this work? There are two of you, there's-
David Levy: I do everything! Sorry, I had to.
Andrew Hulshult: I just sit in the back and Rick Rubin it up. Yeah yeah. I'm on the couch like, 'yeah, sounds good David.'
No, we both work independently and id [Software] will hand us kind of a spreadsheet of, 'hey, we want you to work on this level and you to work on this level.' And we both just kind of, we have our own sections of each DLC. So we get to focus on that and just work on each one.
David Levy: Yeah. It's kind of segmented, but we talk all the time about everything and there's a lot of information exchange about what we're doing, how we're doing it, the instrumentation, and we send each other work-in-progress clips throughout the process, just to make sure we're in the same key when we need to be, because sometimes certain scenes will go... there's a lot of cut scenes in there in the game. And we have to make sure -- I was handling the majority of the cutscenes -- and I have to make sure that I'm in the right key so it'll flow really nicely. So I needed to know what key he was in and we would exchange tempos and things like that to make sure that everything kind of meshes when it's in the game so it doesn't feel too disjointed since it's two people working on it, yeah.
Stevivor: Andrew, I want to kind of start with you because obviously this is your first official Doom soundtrack, but it's not your first Doom soundtrack. Did that factor into you getting selected in any way? I know there was a bit of fan outcry to get you involved. How much do you think that helped?
