Darren Korb: a supergiant in video game music
A lone computer runs professional-grade production software, as a man with quite ludicrous facial hair absolutely shreds a lime green Les Paul knockoff. Over and over again, he pounds away on an evocative, manic riff, trying to get it just right. When he does, he turns around to the full electric drum kit set up barely a foot behind him and thunders away at it with just as much technical prowess. This is Darren Korb, one of the most exciting songwriters for video games.
In the age of the bedroom producer, the image of the cluttered home studio is common in hip-hop, pop and metal. After all, in the 21st century, those genres are often affairs that are solitary to the point of solipsism. So, which one does Korb belong to? Well, none of them. Yet, arguably, in his career, he’s turned his hand to each of them and more, including folk, trip-hop, and blues. This is because the music Korb makes is for video games in his work as the composer, songwriter and audio director of indie godheads Supergiant games.
The image that started off this article was taken from the documentary Developing Hell, a look into the creation of Hades. A masterpiece in a career of masterpieces and my first exposure to their work. I’ll let you in on a secret, dear reader: video game music has never, ever stayed with me. I know that’s heresy. The themes for The Last Of Us, Final Fantasy 7, and Super Mario are just as iconic as any of their characters or imagery. None of it stayed with me, though, until one moment when I was in my first playthrough of Hades.
Here’s a quick catch-up if you haven’t played the game. You play Zagreus, son of Hades and rogue prince of the underworld. Having got right royally sick of his dad’s lies and bullying, he decides to escape the underworld. In one of my many (many) travels through Tartarus, I encountered a room much more homey than the rest of this lava-encrusted wasteland. I hear a voice singing softly in the distance. The beauty of both voice and song makes me do something I’ve never done in my decades as a gamer. I put the controller down and listened.
How Darren Korb captured the spirit of Hades
The song is called Good Riddance, and it’s a song of spine-tingling beauty that made me seek out the soundtrack of a game for the first time in my life. While instrumental music has never sat well with me, although the speed metal guitar battle ‘The Unseen Ones’ is absolutely ludicrous fun, what set Korb’s work on Hades apart was the songwriting. There are a handful of songs sung in the game, and all of them are phenomenal pieces in their own right. ‘Lament of Orpheus’, ‘Hymn to Zagreus’, and the climactic credits song ‘In The Blood’ all help to cement Hades‘ place as pretty much my all-time favourite video game.
A game so good I went back and played through the entire Supergiant back catalogue. I found that in every one of those games, from Pyre to Transistor and especially debut effort Bastion, Korb had put together an absolute knock-out song or three. Most often with frequent collaborator and possessor of that incredible voice that hooked me back in Tartarus, Ashley Barrett. Korb’s soundtracks do so much to deepen each game’s atmosphere and immersion, but the songs are where the characters come to life.
Never as much as with the song that, and this is a hundred per cent true, has been number one on my Spotify Wrapped two years running, ‘Setting Sail/Coming Home’ from Bastion. A mix of trip-hop and dustbowl blues that Alabama 3 would kill for, …Coming Home plays over the credits of the game and speaks directly from the characters’ points of view. To elaborate would be to spoil a game that is required material if you have any interest in games at all. So, all I’ll say is that the moment I heard it, I basically knew it was one of my favourite songs of all time, and I don’t say that lightly.
Is a love of gaming necessary to appreciate Korb’s work? I can’t say; I’m a little bit too deep to say with any certainty. However, what I can say is that as a way of understanding how music can inform storytelling, there’s no better place to start. With the full release of Hades II fast approaching and yet more brilliant songs powering it, there’s never been a better time to discover the heart and soul of one of the great game studios of our time.
