‘Silent Hill’s unsettling soundtrack was always meant to give you nightmares
The master of macabre video game music, composer Akira Yamaoka, reveals the clever techniques he uses to create unbearable "psychological unease” within every player
by Ali Shutler · NMESilent Hill’s revolutionary soundtrack changed video game music forever. Released in 1999, the psychological horror romp charged you with guiding main protagonist Harry Mason through the haunted, cult-ridden town of Silent Hill in an attempt to track down his missing adopted daughter.
While the music of Resident Evil 2, Dino Crisis and other scary ‘90s PlayStation titles focused on high-energy getaway anthems and booming jump scares to get under your skin, Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka wanted to do things a little differently. “What I was trying to evoke wasn’t simple fear. It was a sense of psychological unease – the feeling that something is wrong, even if you can’t explain exactly what it is,” he tells NME.
Taking influence from industrial rock, ambient music and film sound design, his creeping, subtle compositions were peppered with radio interference, unexplained mechanical noises and delicate textures that sometimes barely sounded like music at all. “I didn’t really feel like I was taking a risk,” he says. “But looking back now, maybe I was.”
Yamaoka had been working at Silent Hill developers Konami for a few years, contributing to the music of 2D shooter Contra: Hard Corps, side-scrolling platformer Sparkster and Hideo Kojima’s cyberpunk adventure and Metal Gear follow-up Snatcher, when he volunteered to compose for Silent Hill. It was a big deal because bosses wanted a game that would break America, but Yamaoka was unphased. He believed he was the only one who could do justice to the game’s unsettling evolved horror. “What interested me was the psychological side of fear. The anxiety, loneliness, and uncertainty that stay with you long after the game is over,” he explains. “I felt that fear wasn’t something you simply show; it’s something you make people feel.”
The forward-thinking soundtrack to the original Silent Hill flickers between ominous, beautiful and brutal. It’s closely tied to how the story unfolds – the mood changing in sync with how the player is progressing through their living nightmare. That same approach can be heard in celebrated modern video game music – the wonky pop of Death Stranding 2 is filtered through a procedural generator to react in real-time to what’s happening on screen while Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s pretty, orchestral score amplifies the emotional extremes of the plot.
“I wasn’t trying to be different for the sake of being different. I simply felt that this was the right approach for Silent Hill,” says Yamaoka. “I was searching for sounds that could express emotions I couldn’t find in conventional music.” Of course, there was no guarantee that players would accept this radical new approach to horror but he knew that if the game was going to be truly unique, the music had to be just as unconventional and challenging as the narrative. “Looking back, I think that willingness to trust an unusual idea helped define the identity of the series.”
Recommended
And what a series it is. The original Silent Hill went on to sell more than two million copies, spawning a franchise that defined noughties gaming and remains at the cutting edge of interactive horror. Yamaoka has been behind the music of nearly all those games, as well as a trio of less well-received live-action movie adaptations.
Between the unforgettable thrill of playing early Silent Hill titles and the bone-chilling fear conjured by Doom’s pulversing themes, industrial music has become a mainstay of modern horror games. Yamaoka doesn’t seem worried about that becoming boring, though. “I don’t think originality comes from a particular genre. What makes something unique is the perspective behind it.” If a piece of music can express loneliness, fear, vulnerability, longing or psychological conflict, then it can work in the game’s twisted universe, he says. “In fact, some of the most memorable Silent Hill pieces are not particularly dark or aggressive at all.”
For both the 2024 remake and this year’s Return To Silent Hill film, Yamaoka revisited his music for Silent Hill 2 after 20 years and reworked it. Out of all the games in the long-running series, 2001’s sequel to the original is perhaps the most beloved. “I knew there would be expectations,” he says, but that didn’t stop him completely retooling fan-favourite tracks and upending influential moments. “If I had simply recreated everything exactly as it was, the result would have felt lifeless. For me, being faithful doesn’t mean preserving every sound. It means preserving the soul of the work.”
Scoring a movie is about “guiding the audience on an emotional journey” while video game music should “create a space for the player to inhabit,” says Yamaoka. “The methods are very different, but the goal is ultimately the same. Whether someone is holding a controller or sitting in a movie theatre, I want to create a genuine emotional experience.”
For Return To Silent Hill, he honed in on how the original game explored the distance between memory and what actually happened. “I tried to create a musical language that felt like fragmented memories emerging from somewhere deep within the subconscious,” says Yamaoka. “In many ways, the score is less about fear and more about the emotional weight carried by the characters.”
The most recent game, Silent Hill f, was an opportunity to prove there are still plenty of horrible new places to take the franchise. Writers ditched the decaying noughties American town for an otherworldly trip to 1960s Japan that came alongside an equally mind-boggling soundtrack. “The longer I work within the world of Silent Hill, the more possibilities I discover. It feels larger to me now than it did when I first started,” says Yamaoka, who isn’t surprised the franchise has connected with a new generation.
“Silent Hill isn’t about horror, it’s about fear, guilt, loneliness, grief, love, obsession, and the contradictions that exist within all of us. When people experience Silent Hill, they’re not simply confronting a fictional world – they’re confronting parts of themselves,” he explains. More recently, he’s been inspired by the fraught nature of the modern world. “People are more connected than ever, yet many feel isolated. We have access to limitless information, yet it often becomes harder to understand ourselves. Those contradictions fascinate me.”
The core principle of emotional horror is why the series has been able to evolve. “Every generation faces different circumstances, but the human heart remains endlessly complex,” says Yamaoka. “As long as there are new ways to explore that complexity, there will always be new stories to tell in Silent Hill.”
Akira Yamaoka’s soundtrack for ‘Return To Silent Hill’ is coming to vinyl – pre-order the 2LP collection here