Fthagn- Nagh is the soundtrack of the Quake level with the same name. You can download the map here:
quaketastic.com/files/single_player/maps/ion03.zip
In order to run the map, download the latest Copper update:
lunaran.com/copper/download/
"While I’ve been a music connoisseur for some time, writing my own has long been outside my grasp. Perhaps with enough time and effort I could probably make headwinds, but at this point in my life, the former shows no sign of presenting itself.
When Kostas (the primary musician behind doom metal band Pantheist) offered to one day create a custom piece of music for one of my Quake maps, it was if a djinn had appeared with a wish in hand. It didn’t take my long to decide which project I’d put his talents behind; when you’ve a veteran in the Doom Metal scene offering you the chance to curate music, how could one say no the opportunity to meld his talents with Lovecraftian atmospheres?
The level I had been slowly chipping away at for three years, ‘Fthagn-Nagh’, was an attempt to approximate the nightmare city of R’lyeh. Described as a sunken city with immense architecture comprised of impossible, which housed Cthulhu within its green vaults. The geometry mentioned would have been difficult to pull off in any game, let alone one as Quake based primarily around simple shapes, but large-scale structures was something very doable. As if built for creatures dwarfed humans in scale. Something gigantic, which slithered with slow deliberation. What better a musical genre to convey such feelings than Funeral Doom Metal?
Funeral Doom emerged from Finland in the early nineties, with bands Thergothon and Skepticism at the vanguard. Building upon the foundations lain by Black Sabbath and Candlemass (to name a few), Funeral Doom slowed the pace to a near-crawl, to let the low-tuned riffs expand to their breaking point, to create an almost suffocating, depressive atmosphere. Thergothon in particular was very clear on their strong Lovecraft influence, as evidenced by their first demo, ‘Fhtagn-Nagh Yog-Soggoth’.
The last track on that particular demo, ‘The Twilight Fade’, is a short, two minute epilogue (especially compared to the trio of eight-minute monoliths that precede it), but it stands out from the rest of the album. The oppressive atmospheres part for just a moment, as the riffs are played slightly higher, and the guttural growls are replaced by clean, mournful elegies.
It is this atmosphere that I thought would best fit into the level. However, transporting it to Quake would require certain changes.
Sound is a vital piece of most games, but few more so than the FPS / shooter genre. With a limited viewpoint, danger can come from any direction. The growl of a fiend before it strikes can be the difference between lift and death. Any music has to be rather minimalistic in nature, as to not overwhelm the necessary gameplay cues. As much as I enjoy Black Metal, crashing, furious drum work was not going to work in Quake. Even played at a funeral-dirge pace, crashing symbols and snares were still going to be distracting.
The percussive style that probably would work, however, would be something low, almost tribal in nature. Like a distant heartbeat thudding beneath, the pulse of the track.
I didn’t think words or actual vocals would be appropriate, as the music is intended to be part of the ambience, but low sub-vocalizations seemed appropriate. Like the choir of the cults of night, summoning forth deities from the spaces between. The foundation that the track would be built upon.
As the level is a large one, it felt appropriate for the soundtrack song to be as well. I envisioned a fade-in of the sub-vocalizations, and then other pieces would slowly seep in and drop out as the song progressed.
With such a talented composer at the ready, it seemed appropriate that the keyboards would be the lead instrument (as if oft the case in Pantheist songs). The work he had done with organs on the ‘Seeking Infinity’ album almost perfectly captured my ideal sense of them, while also evoking the early-Skepticism sounds I thought would work well here.
For all my good intentions, not being a musician, my guidance could have just been word salad. To my surprise, Kostas seemed to have a pretty good idea of what I wanted to achieve. He did suggest taking the track in a ‘Warhammer 40k’ direction, by having the song structure be circular in nature.
When a track completes in Quake, it just starts over again. With the beginning and end of the song ending in similar manners, with respective fade-in and fade-out, a player might not be able to discern where the song began or ended, potentially creating the sense the music was just a single, continuous experience. Especially with it pushing past the seventeen minute-mark, one might only hear the track three or four times during a playthrough.
Needless to say, Kostas and his fellow cohorts within Pantheist more than delivered. I couldn’t have asked for a better soundtrack to traverse this giant, green-tinged wasteland. I most likely will never develop the musical skill to write my own material but being given the opportunity to curate such a thing was a dream realized." (Noel 'Ionous' Lacaillade, Quake level designer)
"I am not the biggest gamer in the world, but I have always been obsessed with the shooter game Quake. In the same way some people prefer the primitive Neanderthal riffs of dISEMBOWELMENT over the intricate complexity of Mournful Congregation, I am one of those people who prefer the primitive shooter games above cerebral, complicated strategy games.
ID1's Quake game in particular, offers me everything I seek from an activity which is meant to thrill and relax: obscure, menacing Lovecraftian atmospheres harbouring dark secrets and mindless, yet meditative entertainment as I shoot shamblers to death, axe ogres to pieces and explode obnoxious zombies.
About 1,5 years ago I decided to embrace the medium of Twitter with a Pantheist account. I quickly discovered that it is not necessarily just a medium to waste one's time and resources with by attacking other people's political views and discussing the mundane insignificance of human existence (aka shitposting). It can also be a great platform for networking among artists, game developers, scientists and professionals.
This is how I got in touch with Noel 'Ionous' Lacaillade, a gifted and hard working game level designer, and crucially fan of funeral doom metal. We hit it off quickly with our common interests in experiencing the grandeur of architectural game design and the bliss of extreme obscure music, and decided to combine these interests in a new level Noel had been working on for ages.
Game design -so I learned- is a complicated and laborious process, but having played test versions of the map Noel was working on, it became clear to me that every effort put into it would be worthwhile. I felt honoured when Noel trusted a collaboration with a funeral doom metal band (not exactly the type of music you are used to hear during gameplay), and I worked with my closest Pantheist colleagues -Jeremy Lewis and Matthew Strangis at the time- to develop a soundtrack that will do justice to the map.
Luckily there were no restrictions on length, and so the track quickly became a 17 minute ambient colossus. This track, called ‘Fthagn-Nagh' after the Quake map with the same name it belongs to, is now ready for you to listen to and I recommend you also download and play the Quake map it belongs to, even if you have never played the game before. It is a gigantic and spectacular architectural wonder with countless enemies and dark secrets lurking round the corner. Watch the video of my partial playthrough I uploaded here on this Bandcamp link, and you will get a good sense of its atmosphere and pace. But I'm sure you can do much better than me in eliminating evil monsters, inspired by the Lovecraftian soundtrack and the unworldly dimensions of the nightmare city of R’lyeh"
Kostas
Lyrics selected from Simon's Necronomicon. DISCLAIMER: Neither the composer of the track or the Quake level designer are responsible for any strange experiences or unexplained phenomena that may occur while listening to the track, or playing the Quake level with the same name.
released December 9, 2022
Composition and arrangements by Kostas Panagiotou
Engineering, mixing and mastering by Jeremy Lewis
Jeremy Lewis- Guitar and additional keys
Kostas Panagiotou- Vocals, keyboards, percussion, samples
Matt Strangis- Bass
Quake Level Design by Noel 'Ionous' Lacaillade
Cover art manipulaton by Crueldad Universal
