During a GDC talk about the creation of Doom’s excellent music, composer Mick Gordon filled in the audience on one particularly eerie Easter egg the general public had yet to find. As a cheeky ode to the uproar among fundamental Christians during the early days of metal in the 70s and 80s, Gordon hid a voiceover clip in one of the channels of a stereo drone track. It’s not exactly a message from Satan ordering the listener to kick a stranger in the face, though. If isolated in mono and played in reverse, you hear something surprising.
Listen to the clip, first played normally, and then in reverse:
“Jesus loves you” sounds as ominous as any demon wishing you a bad day, it turns out. “Do you know how many news websites wrote about that one?” said Gordon, “Friggin’ none!”
We got you, man.
Gordon also stated that only four out of five easter eggs had been found on the Doom soundtrack, the most obvious of which players discovered shortly after the game released. Using a program that generated audio patterns that mimicked image files, Gordon assembled the number of the beast (666) and tucked it away into one of the songs.
It’s only visible using a spectrograph to visualize the audiotrack, but the occult origins of the original Doom must have made it a big target for those seeking hidden messages. If you ask me, it’s still no Richard D. James. I find the subliminal demonic messaging of Doom comforting in a way. It’s nice to know that something our parents said would ruin us is still kicking around, not ruining us.