Interviews
[Interview] ‘Devil May Cry 5’ Composer Casey Edwards On His Love of Horror, Writing Music, and More
As we may have mentioned before, Devil May Cry 5 has an absolute corker of a soundtrack (not the only one in this series!), and the most prominent and popular example of that is Nero’s stonking theme Devil Trigger by composer Casey Edwards featuring vocals from Ali Edwards. The track has been listened to tens of millions of times since it was first heard alongside the Devil May Cry 5 reveal trailer at last year’s E3. Edwards contributed plenty more to that soundtrack too, and Bloody Disgusting got the chance to talk to him about his inspiration, influences, working methods, and of course, horror.
Bloody Disgusting: How much of the game had you seen before you started composing Devil Trigger?
Casey Edwards: I didn’t see much of the game at all during my entire process of writing Devil Trigger, The Duel, or Silver Bullet. When I first started Devil Trigger I was sent a few clips of Nero fighting in a confined apocalyptic urban setting to see how the game moved and looked, but that was about it. Later on, I had the pleasure of meeting Itsuno and a few other Capcom guys at a V/O session with Johnny Yong Bosch, who voices Nero. While I was there they showed me some brief early looks at how the final fight was going to look as well. Also, I don’t want to glaze over that last part so quickly. Not only was I already a DMC fan, but I’ve been a fan of Johnny’s work on MMPR since the early 90’s when I was a kid. That was a huge geek-out day for me!
Did the soundtracks for any previous Devil May Cry games inspire your musical choices?
Yeah, for sure! But only in the sense of genre-mashing, and not a direct song or theme referencing. My goal from the beginning was to represent Nero with EDM + pop. But at the same time, I didn’t want to abandon that hard edge that DMC music has had since the beginning. So I did my best to combine all those worlds together in one song.
Devil Trigger blew up well before the game actually released. Did it please you that the song resonated as it did beyond just being a soundtrack song?
It still blows my mind! I was both excited and terrified when they told me they were using my track as the announcement music for DMC5 at e3 in 2018. After the trailer dropped, the track was immediately put onto all major music platforms for purchase or stream and we also dropped a music video edit. Currently, on Spotify, the song has 7.2 million streams. At one point on YouTube, if you counted the multitude of uploads that were made by fans, we had over 30 million views. To me, that is INSANE!
You often see musicians agonize over the end result no matter what the reception is. Do you find it tough to accept praise for your music?
This is always a weird one. If someone showers me with praise I get skeptic as to why they like this regular thing I did that’s probably not even all that great. If someone dislikes something I did it’s kind of even more complicated because I’ll simultaneously think, “yeah you’re probably right…. ” and then “but it’s not that bad… is it?” With that said, feeling admired for making someone else have a joyful moment on some level never gets old to me. I’m moved by music pretty much every day of my life. I’m happy that in some small way I can give that to others.
While Devil Trigger gets most of the attention on the DMC 5 soundtrack, there’s plenty of other cracking tracks on there from you and others. So beyond Devil Trigger, what track are you most proud of?
I think that’d have to be Silver Bullet. Don’t get me wrong, writing The Duel was super fun and a total homage to teenager-me that played DMC back in the early 2000s, but Silver Bullet was a total risk experiment for me. Silver Bullet is first and foremost, a Devil Trigger remix that brings back a lot of musical themes and vocals from the original in a more hyped up musical context. Not only did Capcom double-down on the potential of Devil Trigger before anyone outside of Capcom had ever heard it by asking me to do a remix, but they let me get away with doing a full on 90’s inspired dance track. I thought for sure I’d be asked to rewrite it after my first demo. Yet, here we are. Fighting demons in DMC5 to dance music.
You collaborated with your wife Ali Edwards, who is a fellow musician, on the DMC5 soundtrack. Do you enjoy collaborating and hope to do more? Or do you prefer to work alone generally?
I do both week in and week out. I’m constantly genre-hopping, whether it be for work or personal projects. I song-write and produce tracks quite often. Either alone, with Ali, or other artists and friends. Getting together with other songwriters is like a therapy session wherein the process of catching up or discussing ideas, you find lyrical gems just floating around in conversations. Just in the songwriting world alone, in the past few months, I’ve written pop, rock, r&b, and even a bit of new jack swing. Most of these with collaborators, including Ali. Then there’s plenty of time where I get to crawl into my “composer cave” and create or really chisel out the details alone. Lately, I’ve been getting to explore animated TV orchestral and jazz styles akin to something like Richard Stone did back on Animaniacs. I can never stay in one musical space for too long.
You finished DMC 5 recently for the first time. Was it surreal to hear your work in the game? For many, it’s synonymous with the action now, but I can imagine for you it could be a bit strange and exciting to see it alongside the end product.
I’d be lying, and I think even doing a disservice to all those who work hard on these games if I said it wasn’t incredibly exciting to hear my music in a video game that is played by millions around the world!! It’s an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction and reward every time I hear Devil Trigger start playing during the action. Even if I get tired of hearing the song outside of the game, it’s always important for me to step away and remind myself what an incredible opportunity I’ve been given.
You’ve done a bit of composing for horror games, is horror a genre you’re particularly into? If so, any favorites in games/film?
I LOVE HORROR! Ever since I was young Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. I grew up watching stuff like “Goosebumps” and “Are You Afraid of The Dark” when I was a kid. And occasionally caught shows like “Tales from the Crypt” on TV as well. Eventually, I started watching slashers classics and then our generation got a pair of our own iconic slasher films with the SCREAM series. Today we have incredible films like “The Conjuring” that really deliver the spooks!
Musically it’s hard to not take a massive nod to both classical composer Penderecki and horror legend John Carpenter. Aside from those massive titans, I really enjoy Christopher Young, Joseph Bishara, and Disasterpeace’s work. All of them masters in their own way.
Game wise, I could play Dead Space 1 and 2 over and over until the day I die!!!
Is there another popular game series you’d love to compose for?
It’s always tricky to answer this without some sense of guilt because essentially I’m being asked to replace titans in the industry who have inspired me today to even do what I do! But, c’mon…there are plenty I’d love to be a part of. I’m a big fan of long-form thematic games that allow you to really have a relationship with the music and its ties to the story. The Last Of Us comes to mind. Halo was a big part of my college experience. Writing for games like that would be incredible. I’m also a massive Spider-Man fan, and being a part of Insomniac’s Spider-Man universe would have been incredible. And speaking of Insomniac, if there’s ever a follow up to Sunset Overdrive SIGN ME UP! Trashy punk rock vs drum’n’bass in a world that’s so insanely over-the-top is definitely a place I could call home.
Devil May Cry 5 is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
You can find the Devil May Cry 5 soundtrack on Spotify.
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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