Mick Gordon has contributed music to many popular games, and now we can hear his work in another exciting project.

Gordon is one of the most renowned Australian composers in the gaming industry. His distinctive, energetic, distorted, futuristic metal sound helped define id Software’s hugely successful Wolfenstein and DOOM reboots. Since his public falling out with Bethesda five years ago, Gordon has contributed to several metal projects and composed most of the soundtrack for Atomic Heart and Absolum. However, he recently revealed that he is working on his next full game soundtrack for the ambitious upcoming cyberpunk first-person shooter (FPS) game Defect.

When the pandemic hit, many projects were put on hold because no one knew what was going to happen. Gordon was finally able to accept a number of orchestral projects that were just getting started. He stepped in and took on production duties for metal bands such as Architects, Bring Me the Horizon, 3Teeth, and Monuments. Defect is Emptyvessel’s first game and promises to be a single-player, co-op, and 4v4v4 asymmetrical PvP game balancing shooting, exploration, stealth (through mind transfer), and tricks. It is similar to Payday or the upcoming Thick as Thieves. In terms of story and graphics, Defect follows the style of 2011’s Dredd, featuring huge skyscrapers and a world in which all-seeing AI attempts to curb criminal anarchy.

Gordon was drawn to Defect‘s unique visual, thematic, and gameplay identity. This made it easy for him to fit in and start working. He and Palalic had previously collaborated on DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal. Palalic worked as a character designer on both games and collaborated directly with Gordon on the metal choir featured in several DOOM Eternal tracks. According to Palalic, Gordon is one of the most talented musicians he has ever met. He remembers how Gordon would listen to nothing but drum the beat, somehow directing the crew.

Gordon said that one of his main goals for each project is to avoid overwhelming the project’s identity with his own style and characteristics. He is currently experimenting with two elements characteristic of Defect: “microtonal” sounds (i.e., intervals smaller than the 12 equal intervals of an octave) and deliberately dissonant, tempo-deviating beats that are not tied to the beat, yet are consciously arranged. Gordon hopes this fits well with Defect‘s theme of barely restrained chaos. It’s a celebration of deformity, almost a kind of rebellion. He always tries to push the boundaries further. How hard can they be? With this project, he explores the extremes of distortion. How much can you distort a piece of music before it loses its musicality, and then how do you bring it back? Due to the environment, he also incorporates cyberpunk characteristics and synthesizers. However, he uses these elements more deliberately than the muscle-memory clichés that are becoming increasingly common in the sci-fi subgenre.

“Setting that background theme against this dystopian, cyberpunk world gave me all sorts of ideas, especially regarding synthesizers and their resemblance to analog machinery. They should be palpable and tangible, and they must come alive within the grim cityscapes of the game. We’ve reached a point where synths don’t necessarily sound futuristic anymore. Synths have a past. I want to celebrate that past. They’re not vessels of escapism to a future that doesn’t yet exist. The feeling I’m trying to capture comes from the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. There’s a great scene where Shredder’s crew tries to recruit kids. They’re using video games, cigarettes, and skateboards to recruit kids into their organization. It feels very late ’80s, early ’90s. That’s where I feel something unique is happening with the music in Defect. It borrows from that world and wraps this sort of stuff into it,” Gordon said.

Defect does not yet have a release date, but it sounds exciting, not least because of Gordon.

Source: PCGamer