Recently we spoke with Peter McConnell, the Composer of Brutal Legends epic score, which weaves together a soundtrack of 106 tracks and works overtime to bring the World of Brutal Legend to life.

We wanted to sit down and talk with you today in order to elaborate on the interview we had with Emily Ridgeway, who gave us a great deal of insight into how she selected certain tracks to be a part of the game. Did you follow closely in her footsteps? Was it her that followed you? Or did you each bounce off each other to keep the direction the same.

Who came first is a hard question to answer simply, but I will say that Emily’s influence on the style and direction of the score was tremendous. First off, she kept the aesthetic right on target. She was quite a stickler about making sure that we kept a heavy element in each cue, so you'd be certain you were in a metal game, as opposed to any other game you might be in that had an epic score.  Part of this was also how and where she chose to place licensed music. That provided an important framework for the score. She also came up with the idea of doing classic guitar, which I thought was great, as it really brings out the quiet intimate side of the rock and roll sound, and at the same time harkens to a sense of agelessness that Metal taps into. I think those two things stick out to me as huge contributions that Emily made in shaping the score.

So how did you go about keeping these elements in your own score?

There are really three pillars of the sound of the score. One is really obvious; the metal band. The distorted guitars, the heavy drums, that’s obviously extremely important. The second pillar is the orchestra, because what we’re doing with the underscore is we’re trying to create a mood that isn’t necessarily something you can get across as just a rock band. You need that cinematic element to get the full range of emotion in the game. Finally, there is the classical guitar.  That is the intimate sound of characters talking, or of Eddie musing to himself, or of Lars speaking of the history of his people.  It's not orchestral or Metal per se, but it kind of ties the two together with that sense of something mythic, from long ago. It's a big instrumental voice throughout the game. Another unifying element was the fact that I used classic Metal themes as well as my own in the score.

Can you think of any specific parts of the game where you think this technique was used well?

Yeah, there’s this great campfire scene , when Eddie is having the lore of his new universe explained to him by Lars. It’s a got the classic guitar in the front, then the rock band in the middle, and an orchestra surrounding it. It's a sound that occurs in several big speeches in the game. There is also the grasslands music for when Eddie is wandering around near Bladehenge.  It has the classical guitar front and center, but uses all three elements to get across the feeling of being in an ancient world.

Emily described some of the songs that she chose to signify a major change in the atmosphere, or a major moment, and you elaborated on the fact that these orchestral aspects can express the emotions in certain moments. How do you feel the songs that you’re composing can change the way the player feels about Eddie, or how he feels about the changes the game?

The answer to your question basically revolves around “How does the orchestra work in the score?” What the orchestra is there for, is a feeling of bigness that goes beyond the sound of the band. It’s not just what you hear coming out of the speakers at a metal concert, it’s what the players feel and hear in their minds when they’re playing the music -- it’s larger than the actual concert sound. I call it “fantasy metal,” it’s heavy metal based, with that classic sound of 70’s and early 80's metal, but it has this orchestral, cinematic element around it, like an underscore to the score. Emotions have depth, they’re not just “I’m angry, I’m heroic, I’m worried,” there are reasons why you’re angry, heroic, or worried, and there are motivations for that. Being able to bring in cinematic elements allows you to play a theme with rock instruments, and underneath you’ll have a reference to the history behind what’s going on.

Regarding the player's experience, there are really two types of pieces that I wrote: fight music and dramatic music. The fight music is part of game play and basically meant to get you all pumped up and smite your foes. At their core, these pieces are straight-ahead Metal instrumentals, although two of them do have the orchestral component I mentioned earlier. The feeling here is "I'm kicking ass." Then there are the dramatic pieces which follow the moment-to-moment emotions of a cut scene. This is where you hear more orchestral elements and the classical guitar paying homage to the themes of the fight music, and also hinting at what's to come in the story through some central themes of mine. Take the "Sea of Tears" theme, for example. It's a simple 8-note figure that you hear in some form almost every time you meet Ophelia. It starts out very subtle, but as the game progresses, the theme gets more and more obvious as you learn more about her. This is just classic movie underscore stuff, but in a Metal context.

Going back to the way that the game ties into the metal community, how do you feel the metal community will react to your compositions? Are you making it to go along with the rest of the metal? Or did you make it exclusively for the game?

It is meant to be an homage, its’ not meant to be a new kind of metal, and it’s not meant to try to compete with the classic licensed tunes that we’re using in the game. What it’s meant to do is to really refer to them, call attention to them, and honor them in some sense, from a slightly different point of view, because you have this cinematic element going on. Obviously when you’re going into this sort of territory you don’t want to come off as a parody, you don’t want to come off as trying to imitate something. Humor’s good, there’s plenty of humor in the game as well as the music, but what I’m really trying to do here is create this sense of praise. It’s like singing hymns in the Metal church. 

For this reason the band elements in the score had to be solid to the core. I got some great help here from Y&T's drummer, Mike Vanderhule, and a huge boost from Bill Storkson, who played a number of the heavier rhythm guitar parts and shredding solos. Bill toured with a lot of these big bands in the early 80's, and has Metal Guitar in his blood. He also did the mixes on all the most epic material, and really did a masterful job of keeping all the elements in balance, with the focus on the Metal core.

So I think the way the Metal community will respond to this music is not, "this music is Metal" but, "this music understands and loves Metal." I want people to say “I hear that melody I know” or “I hear that sound that I know,” or “I just feel righteous now.” And it’s not something people should be too conscious of, it should be something that will make them feel good about the whole universe, and the other music that’s in it.

Is there any part of the game in particular that you really enjoyed composing?

If I had to hold up any part of the score as my favorite it would be the choral piece near the end that accompanies Doviculus' big speech to Eddie. That really put all the music elements together, with choir to boot. A very close second for me, though, is the opening cut scene, which sets up the whole sound of the score. The Ormagodden music in that scene was massively fun to do.

All in all, Brutal Legend is certainly one of my favorite projects ever. What I really liked about it was being able to marry these two elements, the orchestral world and the metal world, and make it work, and I think that’s a tough thing to do. I’m really happy with the way it came off, because I think that there’s always potential in this situation for one element to dilute the other. I think getting it right has to do with not getting too tricky with what you’re doing with the orchestra, but really making it just a nice, powerful, supporting element, and I’m really happy with the way that that came off. And I’m especially happy that we were able to do a really nice recording of the orchestral side at Skywalker, and get really great players to provide that support that the score needed.

Awesome, well I’m glad to hear you have some insight into the metal community, anything you’d like to say to them?

All I can say is that, and at the risk of saying how old I am, I was definitely around for ground zero of metal, and it’s really great to be able to hearken back into that young teenage experience, and put it out there in a way that’s really different. So I do hope that people appreciate that. I have some anecdotal evidence that it’s being well received, so we’ll see how people like it.