The “Quake II Guy” returns: Sonic Mayhem’s rule-breaking Metal Eden game soundtrack

Long before social media, viral videos, or streaming playlists, one Berlin-born composer was already rewriting the rules of video game music. Sascha Dikiciyan, better known as Sonic Mayhem, first made waves in 1997 with his industrial-electronic score for Quake II, a soundtrack that earned him a cult following and cemented his reputation as “the Quake II guy.”

Over two decades later, he’s still challenging the industry’s penchant for playing it safe, blending futuristic synths, cinematic textures, and punk-infused rhythms into scores that refuse to conform. 

Now based in Los Angeles, Dikiciyan has scored blockbuster franchises like Deus Ex, Mass Effect, Tron, and The Division, while continuing to push boundaries as a solo artist. His new gaming project, Metal Eden, exemplifies his fearless, rule-breaking approach: a high-intensity sci-fi FPS with a score that rejects safe, traditional compositions, fusing distorted techno, bass-heavy breaks, and cyberpunk atmospheres designed to exist both inside and outside the game.

Sonic Mayhem remains committed to one principle: music should surprise, challenge, and ignite emotion. He shares the story behind his Quake II breakthrough, the philosophy of rebellion driving Metal Eden, and the tools and techniques that keep him at the cutting edge of game music composition.

You moved from Berlin to Los Angeles in 1993 to study music. At what point did your love of video games and music converge into a career path?

It’s a funny story. After ’89, when the Wall came down, I was living in West Berlin, and things got really crazy here. The weather didn’t help either. In winter, it gets dark so early, and I was just thinking, “I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got to do something”. At the same time, I’d always been curious about studying music in L.A., and America was a big thing back then. 

So in ’92, I went out looking for a university or school and found something in Hollywood. Then in ’93 I moved there, planning to stay for a year or two, and I ended up staying for 30 years. The ‘90s were an amazing time, especially for music technology and all the emerging computer stuff that was coming out. 

I just rolled along with all of that. And, you know, when you’ve got sunny weather pretty much all year round, it’s hard to even think about coming back to Europe!

The video game thing… I mean, you’re talking to someone who was about 12 in the ‘80s. I had a Commodore 64 – one of the first home computers. I annoyed my parents because I had to hook it up to the TV, of course. My love for games has always been there since I was a kid.

When I moved to L.A. after finishing school, I played Quake – this was ’96 – which was scored by Nine Inch Nails, and it was one of the first games to stream the soundtrack straight off the CD. So while you were playing, you had real music, not some MIDI thing like Mario Brothers. It was proper. 

I just had this light-bulb moment and thought, “This is going to be huge”. As irony would have it, I ended up scoring Quake II, the sequel to Quake, which became my big break.

Where did the Sonic Mayhem name come from?

Back in the ‘90s, it was common to use a band name. In 1997, though, it was just two of us, and we just wanted a cool name. Usually, when I score games with more traditional music, I use my real name, like a film composer. 

But for something more artistic, like Metal Eden, it feels cooler to release it under Sonic Mayhem. That’s where the confusion comes from: some people don’t realise Sonic Mayhem is just me, and vice versa.

The Grammys introduced a specific award category for game music in 2023. Was it nice to finally see it recognised in its own category?

Yes. Back in the ‘90s, people didn’t think much of video-game composers. You’d get these suspicious looks, but over the decades, it’s grown into a massive industry. 

We fought for this [Grammys category] for quite a while. I think it was about 10 or 12 years of going to the Academy and saying, “We need our own category, so we’re not competing with the film guys”. Luckily, it finally happened, and next year will be the third year of it. It means some of our people in the industry can actually get recognised. Scoring music for a video game is a lot of work, and the quality is on the same level as TV shows and films.

How did you get brought on for Quake II?

People have to understand that back then, around ’96, the internet barely existed. There was no Google or anything like that. We used this chat programme called mIRC, which was a really primitive version of what Discord is today – super basic. 

There was an IT channel for the company that developed Quake and Doom, and I joined it. By pure chance, someone from the company was in there. You could just double-click their name and send a message. The whole thing looked like MS-DOS, really rough.

I asked if they had any music plans for Quake II. They said not yet. I asked if I could send them something, and they said sure. There were no MP3s then, so I had to send an actual CD. Two weeks later, I suddenly got a phone call: “Hey, this is id Software, we’re really interested in you maybe doing Quake II.” I remember feeling this wave of heat come over me. I was so young, and I was scared. 

’96 was basically peak Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails; The Downward Spiral had just come out, and he was at the top of everything. My first thought was, ‘It doesn’t matter what I do, it’s never going to be accepted, because it’s not Nine Inch Nails’.

Luckily, they wanted something completely different – industrial rock – the opposite of the first Quake, which was more ambient and droney. There was some chatter from the community at the time. Some people didn’t like it because it wasn’t Nine Inch Nails, and others loved it. 

Over the years, it’s grown into its own little cult thing. You’ve got kids on YouTube playing the riffs, and I guess I’ll always be known as that Quake guy. The budget was tiny; we didn’t have a big studio or anything like that. We just did the best we could with what we had. The vinyl came out again a couple of years ago, and I think it still stands the test of time, considering it’s from ’97.

Gamers are very passionate about soundtracks; what do you get asked about the most from gaming and music fans?

I get a lot of fan emails, both about old games and new ones. People ask stuff like, “What guitars did you use for Quake?” or “What synth was that?” and it’s always fun to answer those.

Quake II launched at a time when there was no social media. I often wonder what would have happened if it had come out in today’s social media world. People are still discovering it, though, for example, my good friend Mick Gordon, who scored Doom in 2016. He told me that he started playing guitar because of the Quake II soundtrack. The fact that a lot of people got into metal, rock, or industrial metal because of that little score we did still blows my mind.

That game was such a small project – it was like imagining Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak building the first Apple computer in a garage. We had speaker amps in my bedroom, covered with carpets because we thought, “We don’t want to annoy the neighbours.” 

Of course, it didn’t help; they hated us anyway, all that metal stuff blasting out [laughs]. Even though it’s been over two decades now, I still enjoy getting these kinds of questions. 

I’m just happy that such a small thing has had such a huge impact on some people’s lives. At the time, we were just thinking, did we do a good job? It’s hard to tell after working on something for three or four months. You lose objectivity and end up thinking, “Is any of this any good?” At some point, you feel like it’s all crap. I’m just glad it’s endured.

You’ve said the industry favours safe, traditional scores, and that you saw Metal Eden as an opportunity to deliver rebellion in audio format. What did rebellion sound like to you on this project?

I grew up in Germany. My mum was a ballet dancer, so I grew up with classical music all my life – Wagner, Tchaikovsky, all that – plus learning piano and everything. I might get in hot water for saying this, but I’m personally not really entertained by orchestral scores, mainly because I feel like I’ve heard them all before. A lot of modern work is derivative of music from a hundred years ago, or even less.

My thing has always been wanting to create sounds you haven’t really heard before. That’s not to say I won’t use an orchestra. I prefer to use orchestra as a texture, rather than just doing another RPG score with big strings and all that. I’m aware I’m in a bit of a niche, because most games want to play it safe. Safe meaning: let’s just use orchestra. Electronic music still feels “too risky” for a lot of people. 

You even see it reflected in the last two Grammys. I’m not knocking any of the winners – they all deserved it – but there wasn’t a single game score nominated that was purely electronic. And if you remember, The Social Network was the last film to win an Oscar for an original score, and that was in 2010.

I feel like a lot of the industry has slipped into what I call the Marvel trap: very generic music that sounds nice, but you’ve heard it all before. I want to do something that goes against that trend. I want to do my own thing. And if people don’t like it, that’s fine, but I need to make my own ears happy, and they’re happiest when I’m creating something I haven’t already heard.

That’s really my whole approach, especially with Metal Eden and the new record. It was more like making an album with songs than doing a traditional score. A bit like Tron or Nine Inch Nails, where they approached it as, “How would Nine Inch Nails score this film?” That’s basically how I worked: how would I, as Sonic Mayhem, write tracks inspired by the game that can also live outside the game world?

Metal Eden’s soundtrack ranges from bass-heavy, futuristic and a noisy cinematic techno punk experience to more melodic, human moments. How did you strike that balance in a world built by machines?

Most of the tracks are pretty electronic-punk. There’s one track called Data Dreams where the melody really comes through. And that’s something a lot of people don’t actually know about me. On a lot of the games I’ve worked on, especially The Long Dark, every track has a melody. It took me years to accept that I can do that.

A lot of people struggle with melody. People are scared to write one. It took me a long time to feel comfortable with it. My rule now is: if I write something, leave it, then come back the next day, and if it sticks in my ear, then I know it’s good, even if it’s just four notes. The number of notes doesn’t matter; simplicity is often what works best.

That was the same approach I took for Metal Eden. Most of the tracks are techno-punk; they get your blood going, have some interesting breakdowns and plenty of melody. And there’s that one track with a slightly dreamier melody and a bit of drama. 

It’s something I love doing. I just wish more people realised I can actually write that kind of stuff. But I really do love writing melodic material. Even the bass-heavy tracks on Metal Eden have a lot of melody. It’s always important to me to have some sort of hook, especially when it’s instrumental.

You have a new full album planned, which will be out soon. What can you reveal about its direction, mood, or sonic world?

This is the Metal Eden soundtrack, which I’m calling the Corrupted Memory Edition. There’s also going to be an official soundtrack with the full score of the game, but this release only includes my tracks, plus a new track I wrote for this release. I also have three remixers who helped reshape or reconstruct some of the tracks.

One is Gunship, a band based in the UK. Another is Power Glove, from Australia, who do retro-inspired music fused with heavy modern electronics, which is really cool, and I’ve been a fan for a long time. They were also on my Doomsday release from 2016. 

The third is a good friend of mine from Los Angeles, Benjamin Howe, who’s doing a lot of TV and film work. It’s a really nice package, and the sound reflects how I’m feeling at the moment.

I’m also a big fan of visual art, so I wanted this to come out as a digipak. Let’s face it, streaming is great, but people just download something, and then it’s forgotten. There’s something special about holding a physical package in your hand, opening it, and looking at the artwork and liner notes like we used to. I even got some glitched artwork done by Rob Sheridan, who, ironically, was Nine Inch Nails’ art director in the 2000s.

I want to take it to another level – moving beyond just being “the composer” and exploring the record as a real art piece. I’ve worked on this for over a year. It takes that long because I’m obsessed with the process, creating unique sounds, not just using plugins anyone can grab. I want it to feel like something nobody’s done before, and that takes time.

And with the whole conformity thing and pushing back against it means doing something you don’t necessarily expect, fighting against the idea that everything should sound exactly as imagined. If someone says, “This doesn’t sound like I expected,” that’s actually a compliment to me; I always try to stay a bit of a rebel. I’m really excited to get this out, hopefully, in early December.

You’ve used Cubase across many of your major projects. What originally drew you to Cubase as your primary DAW all the way back in '89 with its first version?

In ’89, I read something about the sequencer on the Atari, which had a MIDI output built in, which was unheard of at the time. I stumbled across some sequencing software, and somehow found Cubase. Around 1990, I bought an Atari ST 1040. I hooked it up to a single synth, looked at the screen, and realised I could play something and record it visually into the computer. Another one of those “mind-blown” moments. For kids today, it’s hard to imagine. Back then, you had eight or 10 tracks at most, the screen was black and white, it was extremely simple, and there was no audio recording. That’s how I got into Cubase. I’ve used it ever since.

Which version are you using now?

Metal Eden was written on Cubase 14, which ended up being one of my favourite releases they’ve ever done. It had this brilliant new drum programmer that makes it unbelievably quick and easy to sketch out beats. For getting ideas down fast, nothing beats it.

I arrived in Berlin in late October and immediately downloaded Cubase 15. It’s another fantastic update, and now it’s got the melodic sequencer – which I absolutely love, because I’m really into melodic sequences, very much in that Tangerine Dream vein.

Steinberg has really been on a roll. Cubase 14 was probably my favourite so far. When I boot it up, it just feels like home. I’ve spent so many hours with that software; probably more time than with any actual person, when you really think about it!

Which Cubase features most shaped the sound of Metal Eden?

The drum sequencer was one of the biggest improvements. I’m also a drummer, so programming beats has always been something I did the old-school way – playing them on the keyboard and writing them out manually. 

Now, with this sequencer, I can hear the beat in my head and just input it. It’s kind of old-school in a way, but you can drop in samples and do so much more, so creating a beat now takes maybe a minute or two. That is huge for me.

Of course, there’s so much more. The modulators let you modulate all kinds of things, which is fantastic. Visually, they’ve updated the GUI too, and I really love the cleaner look. Overall, Cubase 14 has been incredibly stable for me, and I’m looking forward to trying 15 when I get back to L.A.

Metal Eden blends aggressive synths, cinematic textures, and complex rhythmic elements. How did Cubase help you manage such densely layered sessions?

When you start a score or a new project, you’re basically sitting in front of an empty screen, like a writer in front of a blank page, thinking, “Okay, what am I going to do?” For this one, I knew I wanted it really bass-heavy, with a crunchy, aggressive low end. 

Cubase feels like a playground to me. It’s open-ended, and I can do anything – which is crucial. You want to feel like you own the technology, not the other way around. Having used it for so long, I know it inside out, and the new features really helped. Making a beat now took minutes with that drum sequencer, so I could work fast. I think it really turned out great.

Cubase is known for being a lifesaver for spontaneous composers. Has it ever rescued a Sonic Mayhem idea that might have been lost forever?

Definitely. A lot of the time, when you write something, you don’t really know if it will work. You come back to it, tweak it, and then you’re not sure again. It’s hard to describe, but there’s what I call the magic, when it just clicks. When that happens, my movements are automatic: boom, boom, boom. It lets me do exactly what I need to get the track done, and to me, that’s the most important thing. 

I’ve gone through all the Cubase versions. They’ve really innovated, especially with 14 and 15. Honestly, I can’t imagine what else they could add! It has all the tools you need to write a track in a day or two.

What’s one thing you still want to try – musically or technologically – that you haven’t yet?

I’ve scored all sorts of games: first-person shooters, survival games, you name it. One thing I’d really love to do is score an adventure game, in the classic style of the old LucasArts titles like The Secret of Monkey Island – point-and-click adventures. 

I’d love to do a science-fiction noir with a bit of jazz woven in, some synth work… maybe something like Herbie Hancock meets Tangerine Dream. A proper detective story; that’s definitely a dream of mine. The other thing I want to figure out when I get back to L.A. is how to play this record live. 

Maybe I’ll put together a small group of other composers who want to perform in smaller venues and see if we can do something cool. I’m not sure exactly how yet, but it’s exciting to think about!