ReMix:Silent Hill 4: The Room "There Are No Angels Here Anymore" 6:13

Emunator's hurdles are our gain as we enjoy the horrific, holiday-appropriate fruits of his life lessons! Enjoy Emu's now-optimized \m/ expansion of Silent Hill 4's classic vocal theme "Room of Angel" with a murderer's row of co-conspirators:

• Emunator: Arrangement, programming, guitar/bass/percussion (programmed), mixing, mastering
• Psamathes: Vocals
• Pixels & Paradiddles: Rhythm guitars, lead guitar (e-bow), drums (kit)
• Ridley Snipes: Bass (live), vocal mixing
• Lucas Guimaraes: Guitar (clean)
• Chromatic Apparatus: Cello
• Theophany: Guitar (drone, lead), additional vocal editing
• (special thanks to Chimpazilla and SnappleMan for extra assistance with mixing and mastering advice)

In a truly fitting manifestation of trick or treat one year ago, Emunator originally made this as his first-ever DoD arrangement -- which was a treat -- but in his zeal to submit it at the LAST possible second, welp... ya boi accidentally borked the mixing -- life played a trick on him. But, hey, anyone who knows anything understands that making mistakes *is* required for future success! According to Emu, further collaboration and mentorship nurtured this one into the haunting creature you're about to hear:

"This was my entry for Dwelling of Duels, where it placed 7th out of 27th for October 2023's Horror Month. I love competitions like this, because it gives me an opportunity to branch out of my comfort zone and try new things while under a deadline, which means that I actually have a chance of finishing something. This piece, aside from being my first submission to Dwelling of Duels, marks a few other firsts for me - my first time working with a lead vocalist, and my first time producing metal. My catalog of previous ReMixes probably doesn't imply this but I'm actually a huge metalhead, so to actually be able to pull something like this off was a dream come true. The reference for this piece was Chelsea Wolfe (specifically "Twin Fawn"), whose dynamic arrangements mix clean and distorted vocals with industrial, gothic, and doom metal elements.

I actually had a fairly easy time with the initial arrangement, and quickly recruited a team of performers to help bring the vision to life. Psamathes was an obvious choice for lead vocalist - her entire vibe was PERFECT for the brand of gothic metal I was aiming for, and she was totally on board with the reference tracks I sent. Chromatic Apparatus and paradiddlesjosh were also no-brainer choices - total professionals who really elevated the arrangement beyond my capabilities. CA also shared some home-brewed horror SFX that he recorded himself, which you'll hear throughout the piece!

As far as guitars go, that's where we got a little more creative. I'll give a brief breakdown of how each person contributed - 5 different guitarists (if you count my programmed ones) contributed to the final product. It was truly a blast getting to mix and match everyone's contributions, and, thankfully, the arrangement was long enough that every part had room to breathe.

• Myself: Original part-writing for rhythm and e-bow lead, sequenced tremolo guitars (1:33-1:56, 4:55-5:55), and feedback effects during the outro
• pixelseph: Distorted rhythm guitars, e-bow lead throughout the song
• Ridley Snipes: Distorted bass (which was actually just a pitched-down electric guitar)
• Theophany: Distorted noise guitars throughout, tremolo lead guitar from 3:13-3:53
• Lucas: Clean guitar riffs from 1:23-3:13

If the impending DoD deadline lit a fire under me to get the arrangement completed, it also completely torched me on the back-end production. I was working non-stop up to the day of the deadline, and only received the drums and raw vocals 3 hours before submissions were due. (Through absolutely no fault of my collaborators, to be clear! The procrastination was all on me.) I barely left myself with time to mix anything - I literally slapped an Ozone preset on the master, exported the song and uploaded it 1 minute before the deadline, dredging up some horrible flashbacks to uploading my college homework at 11:59pm on the due date. Because of this, the submitted version contained some pretty unfortunate technical errors, namely me forgetting to disable a gain plugin AFTER my mastering chain, effectively clipping the entire track by +5dB. I'm honestly amazed I managed to pull out a 7th place finish with how rough it sounded. (It's still preserved in all its sausaged glory at DoD, if you're a masochist.)

After the competition, I enlisted some help to give this the proper level of shine that it desperately needed. I continued to polish the instrumental mix, Theophany helped me edit the vocals properly in Melodyne, and Ridley Snipes flexed his producer chops with some really creative vocal processing across the whole track. I then made several passes at the mix/master, working with Chimpazilla and SnappleMan over a long span of time while I tried to perfect everything. Finally, after 7 months, it's reached its final form! A million thanks to everyone for the brilliance you contributed to this, and patience while I got it across the finish line."

Sounds AWESOME! Short and sweet, Psamathes is LIFE; absolutely love how Psamathes' vocals were produced here, with lots of cool & varied effects on 'em throughout. The source tune's already pretty memorable, but this took the theme in even darker and more dynamic directions. The post-production is on point to maximize the glory that is this collective's treatment of the theme, so although the angels are nowhere to be found, this track's devilishly delicious. On the candy side, whether you prefer Hershey's, Kit Kats, Reese's or just enjoy the story of Emu's Butterfingers, our entire heaping helping of Silent Hill ear candy is for you! :-) Happy Halloween!