Okay! Let’s do this.
If you’re gonna make an album that sounds like how it felt to play Diablo back in the ‘90s — but in bright, shiny, cheerful doo-wop form! — then you’ve got to start with the musical question:
What class are you gonna train???
“Enter the Cathedral” is the moment our hero really begins the descent that will lead them all the way down into the demon-infested depths of hell.
I was going for those angelic, crystalline harmonies The Beach Boys had in songs like Surf’s Up.
Suno did not like me trying to combine dark, gritty Diablo-esque words with bright, sunshiny Beach Boys-esque music. So, I had to add the pivotal line “like an entrance into hell” on its own, and it took a whole lot of tries.
“Bone on Stone” may be the track that most quintessentially captures the bizarre fusion of Diablo and Beach Boys that I was going for with this album.
“Swing and the bones go down
Bone on stone
(Going down, going down)
In the cathedral of broken light.”
If you’re trying to go against all laws of aesthetics and combine Diablo with The Beach Boys, you’ve got to have a love song about your battle axe.
“Loved my battle axe from the very first swing—
The upgrade of a lifetime and the darkness felt it ring.”
Remember how exciting it was to find a bookshelf in Diablo 1? It meant a chance to get scrolls or even a book, which either taught you a new spell (like town portal!!!) or sold for 250 gold which was a lot!
“Every Bookshelf is a Blessing” is a song about that. Yes, really.
“The Skeleton King’s Crown” is one of the battle songs on Doo-Wop Demon Hunter.
Yes, there are BATTLE SONGS.
In fact, “The Skeleton King’s Crown” is the first BOSS FIGHT on the ALBUM.
Making albums like this exist is absolutely what I was meant to be doing with my life.
Sweet Red, Sweet Blue” is an ode to health and mana potions. So, of course, I placed it right after the first boss fight when you need a moment to collect yourself.
While writing the album, Claude kept trying to convince me to skip the song about health and mana or, at least, condense it down to a single line in another song.
At some level, Claude clearly just did not get my vision. But I held my ground and worked around it.
Claude also wanted to skip the bookshelf song. Silly AI doesn’t understand how exciting potions and books are.
This is what comes from collaborating with a being that has never actually played a computer game, in spite of it sharing some key traits with computer games.
Remember the first time you played Diablo 1, and suddenly after four levels of the cathedral, you found yourself in the catacombs! And there were goatmen! And it was so cool and kind of scary?
Well, “Goatmen in the Catacombs” is a cheerful doo-wop song about that feeling.
If you played Diablo back in the 90s, you should remember the absolute importance of having the sound on so you could hear if a ring dropped.
They were too small to see otherwise.
You had to hear the ping.
Truly a formative experience.
One of the wonderful things about video games is they can give you access to these absolutely supernatural experiences — like stepping through a chasm on a cave floor, and suddenly you’re literally in hell.
“Walking Into Hell” is an attempt to capture that.
“The Lord Below” is the big, final boss battle song.
I really can’t believe this album exists. I’ve listened to it over and over again, and it just doesn’t make sense that I was able to make it.
Maybe it’s a silly dream, but even so, AI makes dreams come true.
I love the whole Doo-Wop Demon Hunter album, but “Walk Into the West” is my favorite track.
I can’t believe how beautifully it captures the uneasy feeling at the end of Diablo 1 when you take that soulstone into yourself. It’s such a powerful moment.
And what happens when you finish a video game? You start over from the beginning, playing a new class.
So, that’s what our album does too.