Konami Enlists Korn for Silent Hill Theme Song

[Logan Westbrook]

Konami Enlists Korn for Silent Hill Theme Song

Dreadlocks and downtuned guitars: That says "Silent Hill," right?

Konami has hired heavy metal band Korn, one of the progenitors of the nu-metal genre, to perform the theme song for the latest edition of the Silent Hill series, Silent Hill: Downpour. Korn's previous work in videogames is limited, although the band did write a song [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/78174-Korn-Records-Haze-Single] based on the PS3 exclusive Haze in 2008.

The earlier games in the Silent Hill series have all had music composed by Akira Yamaoka, but he elected not to return for Downpour. Instead, Konami hired [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107242-New-Silent-Hill-Composer-Wants-to-Honor-the-Series-UPDATED] Dexter composer Daniel Licht to provide music for the game. It seemed reasonable to assume that Licht was composing all of the music but clearly that isn't the case, and Konami has decided to go add a little "star power" with the multiplatinum-selling band.

Korn seems a strange choice to work on a Silent Hill game. Regardless of whether you like their music or not, they're not on obvious fit for a tense, psychological survival horror game. That's not to say that Korn couldn't produce something appropriate - lead singer Jonathan Davis composed all of the original songs for the Queen of the Damned, which had a much more creepy tone to them - but even so, that's hardly representative of Korn's music. Of course, an odd choice of musician for the theme song doesn't mean that the game will be bad. Unfortunately, as you can read in our E3 preview of Downpour [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110839-E3-Silent-Hill-Downpour], it doesn't seem to be the only thing that isn't quite right about the game.

Silent Hill: Downpour comes out for Xbox 360 and PS3 later this year.

Source: Joystiq [http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/09/silent-hill-downpour-now-with-three-dimensions-and-one-korn-son/]



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[Latinidiot]

That's.....strange.

If they wanted horror, why didnt they hire Opeth, or Unexpect? they're far more qualified than frikking Korn.

 

[Durananrananrananran]

Korn. I love the sound of the bass and drums, but the lyrics? If its an instrumental track it could be awesome.

Trent Reznor would have been better. The Quake soundtrack is still some of the spookiest music, to this day

 

[Gaiseric]

This just reminds me of Haze.

 

[ZombieGenesis]

While Korn =/= Silent Hill,
I still like Korn enough to find this news quite awesome. Besides, who's to say it won't work out? The guy who does the original games music has really been phoning it in for the last few installments anyway.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

It won't work, but then again, the decline of Silent Hill has been continuing since 2, so eh.

Must be a pretty long decline cause people are still buying and playing the games.

 

[SamElliot'sMustache]

I hate to already be ragging on this game, but between this news and that awful trailer ("Hey, you know what says scary? Panning the camera around a guy five times, then showing a table disappear! Woooooooo scaaaaaaary!"), this already looks bad. Seriously, Korn? I had hoped they stopped making their gibber-scream they call music didn't know they were still active. Silent Hill doesn't need a theme song loaned from a crappy, sell-out 'rock' band that should have been forgotten long ago, it just needs to be a good horror game with a composer who can do it justice. Guess that's too much to ask for.

 

[RA92]

Let's just hope Downpour doesn't end up being...

*puts on sunglasses*

... korny.

Sorry, it's so obvious, it had to be done.

 

[Treblaine]

I thought after homecoming the Silent Hill franchise could not get any more dead.

It seems Konami wants to prove me wrong.

(seriously, why are they beating this dead horse when they have so many under-utilised franchises)

 

[RoyalWelsh]

Even though KoRn are my favourite band, I really don't see how thier type of music is going fit into a game like Silent Hill. Still, you never know, they might suprise us all.

\m/

 

[Shio]

That's.....strange.

If they wanted horror, why didnt they hire Opeth, or Unexpect? they're far more qualified than frikking Korn.

Opeth? I can't see them doing anything creepy.

 

[LGC Pominator]

well after seeing the display of Silent hill downpour during Machinima's E3 coverage and absolutely loving it (the guy they were interviewing explicitly stated a desire to return to the brilliant days of SH2) combined with the helplessness of being chased down extending corridors etc, seeing KoRN attatched to this has a confirmed buyer out of me!

I just hope it is more instrumental, not that I dislike the singing ability of Mr John Davis, but its a silent hill game, and KoRN do musical stings and such perfectly, a voiceover on top of that may dull the experience some.

captcha: illistimi 173.

 

[Saltyk]

Korn? That seems... odd. Don't get me wrong, I love Korn's old music, but the newer stuff has been pretty hit and miss (largely miss). They're claiming that they are trying to recapture that old feeling with their current album -that may or may not be out yet; I don't know- but I'm withholding judgment on that.

Wait, why is everyone saying that it should have been Trent Reznor? Where's the love for Rob Zombie? Doesn't a horror game kind of scream out for the Zombie? Forever Zombie, baby!

 

[Latinidiot]

That's.....strange.

If they wanted horror, why didnt they hire Opeth, or Unexpect? they're far more qualified than frikking Korn.

Opeth? I can't see them doing anything creepy.

Woops, that had to say OSI. Still, opeth made that song for God Of War that was pretty out there.


maaaaan

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I could swear I heard a loud stream of profanity and invective from the general direction of Australia.

Completely unrelated- anyone know what Yahtzee thinks of this?

 

[Sudenak]

...I look forward to weeping next to Yahtzee.

Seriously, I like Korn, but they are not fit for this series. Nor is any heavy metal, really. You need pianos, you need something classical with a bit of a distortion to it. Guitars and drums? Even if they cut out the lyrics, guitars and drums are built for pumping you up. This isn't FEAR. We're not some living man-God with absurd amounts of ammo. We need atmosphere.

All that Korn makes me wanna do is headbang and the like. Not. Scary. Trent Reznor would've been a better choice, but it still makes me cringe that they would move away from the last tiny shred of scary that the game had to offer.

"Well, we diced apart the story, wrecked the monsters, made the nurses and Pyramid Head into fan service, and now we're using calming colors to try and scare people. What's left to ruin, you say? Well, we did still sorta have the music right. Let's get rid of that, too."