When I look back over my history with video games, there are only a few composer's whose music has impacted a game franchise for me as much as Akira Yamaoka's original score for the Silent Hill franchise. Silent Hill in general has always been an odd and fascinating thing to me. Even though I've only managed to play through Silent Hill 2 to completion, that franchise has had a profound impact on what I find scary and how horror should be done in a video game. So even though I only had the opportunity or the systems available to play only one of these games (that is, that wasn't broken in some awful way), I have continued read up on and dig around on the franchise, with the most notable example being listening to songs from the other game's soundtracks.
It's easy to describe something as "Unique" or "There's nothing quite like it" as a way to say how much you like something. But for me, it's still the best way to summarize how I feel about Yamaoka's original score for these games. There are songs based around a great guitar riff, but also songs that are nothing more than a melancholy piano. There are unsettling tracks filled with industrial music and noise that make me feel unclean, but there are also songs that manage to unsettle me with the perfect chord on a synthesizer. These soundtracks range from being subdued, to poking at you to make feel on edge, to making you bob your head to some left-field rock song. While some games feel like they only have one or two molds when it comes to music, these Silent Hill games feel like they have four or five. Later on with Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room, there are also a number of great vocal tracks featuring Mary Elizabeth McGlynn that feel like my favorite alt rock band that never existed.
For the record, when it comes to my knowledge for How Music Works, it isn't all that great. I'm sure somebody out there has talked about and analyzed all of the Akira Yamaoka Silent Hill soundtracks to death and can do so a lot better than I can, but I'm not really trying to do that. I just woke up this morning and randomly thought, "You know, Silent Hill has some kickass music!" and wanted to talk about it for a bit.
There are plenty more songs I could easily praise, but these are just a few highlights of what I'm talking about.
"Theme of Laura"--Silent Hill 2
For me, this is the Silent Hill song. This probably my favorite Yamaoka song I've listened to and it is my go-to track when I want to get that Silent Hill vibe. Honestly, I love just about everything in this song: the acoustic guitars in the beginning, the various layers throughout the song, the drums, and, of course, the main melody played by the electric guitar.
One of the things I thought about after listening to this song again this morning, is how on paper this shouldn't work. At the very least, it isn't what you would expect to be the theme song for this game. This song doesn't scream "Man is troubled by nightmares of his dead wife from beyond the grave and is tormented by an uncomfortably phallic guy carrying a big ass sword". There are some callbacks to the original Silent Hill theme and there's a sense of longing underneath it all, but this song gets me more pumped up than anything else.
That said, this song is still undoubtedly Silent Hill. These soundtracks definitely have a framework, but that never felt like it limited Yamaoka. If you were to only view him as a musician, Yamaoka is an artist who continued to keep things fresh and interesting throughout the Silent Hill franchise. No matter if a song was supposed to go along more with the environment or was intended to be more standalone, the music in these games always tried to make an impact and for me this is the best example of Yamaoka doing just that.
"White Noiz"--Silent Hill 2
So this isn't a super famous song from the franchise, but I like it as an example of some of the more interesting effects these songs have on me.
There's a ton of off-putting things in Silent Hill 2. The self persecuting elements scattered throughout the story. The sense of dread as you walk through the game's many enclosed and labyrinthine environments. God damn Pyramid Head. But something else that always got under my skin was the game's synthesizers. Even going through menus, saving the game, and standing alone with a song like this playing in the background can make me feel uneasy while playing this game. For the game's sound design, there are plenty of unique sound elements from the various music genres to how Yamaoka went out of his way to make the sound diverse and unusual. (Some of this is covered in the excellent Making of Silent Hill 2 feature, for those who haven't seen it and are interested in the design philosophies behind this game).
I think what gets me about the synthesizers and other sounds in this vein is how out of place they are in a world that is already filled with things that are out of place. You are playing a game that has monsters making weird, disgusting farting/vomiting noises as you kill them, you are trapped in a world that rusted over after the apocalypse, and then...you hear that those chords. Even things like the scratchy radio James has equipped can be found in our day-to-day world. Sure the fantastical elements and the sense of dread are still the main things that disturb me about this game, but that said there's still something not right with Yamaoka's use of those particular sound effects. Another good, super short example of this is the start menu music for Silent Hill 2.
It's both impressive that Yamaoka is able to have the music give off an uneasy vibe through less typical horror music tropes, while also being able to use some of those same sound effects with the rest of his music.
"I Want Love"--Silent Hill 3
With Silent Hill 3, we start to get into some of the vocal songs that feature Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. Their collaboration has lead to some pretty diverse songs even from this game alone. When you look at the soundtrack, one of the first songs is "You're Not Here", which always stood out to me for it's more peppy and energetic nature. (It was also one of the tracks picked for the credits sequence in the first Silent Hill film, if anybody saw that)
If I had to pick a favorite track from this game however, it would be "I Want Love", mainly because it is a more diverse and interesting track. There are actually two versions of this song. While the Studio Mix version posted above is a more rock focused track, the first version of "I Want Love" has a slower tempo and is more centered around the drum beats and the piano melody. I find both versions are great for their own reason. It's just a matter of what type of mood you are in.
"Room of Angel"--Silent Hill 4: The Room
If memory serves me correctly, this is the first vocal Silent Hill song I listened to years and years ago. This happened to be pretty good place to start, since this ended up being one of my favorite Silent Hill tracks. It is a good showcase of McGlynn's range as a singer, especially when compared to some of the more pop focused songs she recorded for Silent Hill 3. It also has a good mix of Yamaoka's sorrowful piano work and a more digestible form of the ambient noise music that you can find in tracks made for the Otherworld.
-----
I can go on and on about other random songs I like or even talk about songs I don't "like", but are still nevertheless incredibly effective of making Silent Hill creepy and unsettling. For now, I'm going to bring this post a close.
Depending on your views of the genre, fortunately/unfortunately survival horror isn't really a thing anymore. Despite the recent boom in horror games over the past few years thanks to Slender, Five Nights at Freddy's, or whatever else streamers like Markiplier play, nothing has quite spoken to me or piqued my interest like Silent Hill has. While there was sort of a perfect storm in terms of the type of scares, the story, the art, and the sound, the music is the main thing that has stayed with me over the past 10 or so years since I've first played Silent Hill 2.
Log in to comment