Welcome to lowrestextures' second series, called Open Your Ears, where FallingStickman and Yours Truly will try to introduce you to a beautiful and rich world of game soundtracks. The painful truth is, no too many people actually care about game music, because "hey, it's just music, right?" No fancy graphics, no Source engine, no antialiasing, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? That's exactly the point. You push play, suddenly the part of your brain which remembers the game turns itself on, and boom! You're there. Only this time there are no problems with too little RAM onboard, the skipping animations or even the stress at having to do things quickly or you'll loose and be forced to start over from your last save. The images are yours to control. You relive the game from your own perspective. At your own pace. And sometimes, when you allow your mind to travel further, some beautiful things might happen. You might experience things which are completely new and astonishing. So let's do just that, shall we? We close our eyes and open our ears. And we push play.
At first there's Silent Hill, which sets us in the right mood and tells us what we are actually about to experience. It works like a title logo at the beginning of a movie. You know it, you've heard it a million times before, as the game starts. But then the strings fall silent and the ride begins.
What comes after, beginning with All, is a constant flow of sensations occasionally broken by simple, yet unnerving melodies like Clawfinger or Fear of the Dark. I've never met a single person who, having listened to the soundtrack, haven't visualized their own dark and fascinating worlds and travelled through them. Whether it was Silent Hill or not, we all touched the rusty fences, moved our fingers along the cold asphalt, smelled the warm copper blood on dirty walls, smelled the dust in the dark corridors. The sounds are mostly metallic - the whole rainbow of them, accompanied by more indefinite ones, sometimes close to blowing wind or obstructed breathing. Yamaoka-san orchestrates this kingdom ever so skillfully, some of the noises sound even a little organic like in Killed by Death which I sometimes call "belching of the metal god".
They grab you and never let go. Some are so incredibly vicious, they almost seem alive and sentient, with their mind set on only one thing - torturing you, tearing you up with their metallic fingers: Until Death, Don't Cry, Ain't Gonna Rain.
There are interludes, moments of catching your breath, moments of looking around and thinking, especially The Wait and Over, while some prepare us (Devil's Lyric 2) for a mad dash where every footstep you desperately make is violently pressed again and again upon your entire body (Dead End). And vice versa, violent songs which seem to rhythmically tear away part of your ears (Die) are followed by ones which allow your bleeding corpse to raise again and keep wandering (Never End, Never End, Never End).
There are also some songs which, like Only You, are honest and truthful, inferring real emotions and reminding us of the more casual soundtracks. But then comes Not Tomorrow and the real fun begins.
Not Tomorrow 1 is a soundtrack to Lisa's death scene - easily the saddest and deepest scene in Silent Hill. Too bad it got cut down - the game features a little longer version of the tune, but still it manages to capture all the essence. The crying body of a woman falling apart and begging for help from behind the door you shut in her face. Its brevity however is a virtue in some sense. It allows for smooth transition to Not Tomorrow 2 which introduces us to something darker and angrier. All the pieces are there; bad, sentient things are waking up and the tension is built for the great finale:
My Heaven is a 3 minutes' worth of pure nightmare. The endless, furious lament together with sharp banging sounds, crushing your temples, dragging you through hell over and over again. There's no ending, the song just gets its throat cut and there's silence which seems to last for centuries, until Tears Of... begins.
All the ending songs are there to wrap the ride up in a nice envelope. The credits roll, we catch our breaths, eat up our popcorn and stand up from the seats. But wait, it's not over yet. There's one last message you need to hear, called Esperandote. The little, gentle song caresses your ears for a while, and if you're still around after the lights go out, there's a bit of a bonus, Silent Hill (Otherside).
At this point I could write something trivial like "I recommend this soundtrack only to people who like heavy industrial sounds and not take the music all too seriously" or that I simply really enjoyed the music and think it's great, but that wouldn't do justice. The truth is Silent Hill OST is not a soundtrack, it's an experience. A profound experience. If you haven't listened to the CD yet, I dare you to go ahead and play it back to back. You'll never be quite the same again.
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