MY STORY It was 2017. I was finally after four years deciding to make music again for what would later be called Apocalypso. I had lastly done Pixels, well half of it, in 2013. I would later add some in 2018. Anyways I had finally cut ties with the demented comic realm of both Will and Jerry and Cherry Rounders and decided I'd do what I'd rather do and that was soundtracks and serious music attempts. My vaults were loaded with more serious stuff and I wanted to grow on that, plus this was the last time I worked at the post office before coming back this time, and a postal day is 12 hours. I had actually stopped music altogether for my three years there, until my now wife urged me to pick it back up. I was asking around and making posts on Doomworld.com forums trying to find people who needed mp3 music for their doom mods. The 300-track album I was spreading at the time was called "Mega Synth Opus" and it consisted of everything synth up to Apocalypso then outtakes of everything as well. To date it has had over 100 unique listeners and was only available for a short while. On Doomworld I had met Iain Lockhart who founded Team Erebus which consisted of me him and another mapper. There were a few prototypes in progress but then he disappeared off the face of the planet though we weren't really communicating due to my absence again from doomworld and social media. On July 1st 2017, however, Iain found me again on Facebook after my now wife had urged me to not get rid of doom friends I didn't know or facebook in general. I needed my hobbies. Iain had asked if I wanted to make some music for a real game in the first person shooter genre. This would be my first, and I'm rather happy I said yes. I had already bought "Strafe," which was the first to my knowledge of the new boomer shooter genre. I had also tried and loved "Dusk," and even added Andrew Hulshult on Facebook who had actually responded to my questions here and there while working on the soundtrack and I had received good advice. Davce Oshry, also of New Blood, had even since paid top tier on our kickstarter for Project Warlock 2 to be one of the warlocks. I remember saying something along the lines of "I hope there's no competition in the boomer shooter genre" to Hulshult because he'd smoke me. I was kidding but he reassured me that in the indepejndant world of game companies we're all in it together and it's not like it is in the AAA gaming company world. After working up to Industrial I was urged to add more guitar. Not only was my guitar I had since I was 15 finally calling it quits, but so was my amplifier. I had tried the Quake parody track "Quack" and put a little guitar in a few things but must confess Gatherum IV was from 2006, and a lot of the other tracks i re-invented from earlier stuff I had made as well. I had already been talking a year here and a year there to Luke on Facetime and brought forth to him the fact I had been working on a soundtrack. He had already before been talking music with me each time we'd talk, and we had even shared the same guitar teacher way back in the 90's. So I figured, "Hey! Luke plays very well at guitar and does quite the heavy stuff they'd want!" so I presented the scenerio and he agreed it sounded pretty fun. Luke does have a history playing a lot of old games as well as Dungeons and Dragons, which came much to the suprise of a few established members of Buckshot Software, so we worked on the Hell theme together. For the theme we had a lot of different ideas and nothing was working, so much like doom reinvisioned a lot of other metal works, Megadeth inspiration had come into play. I never really listened to Megadeth, but now I have since gotten back into adding metal to my catalogue of car "flash drive" listens. This included Fear Factory, Sepultura, and the great late Peter Steele of Type O Negative. These were all bands I had listened to in high school but I had since left behind and went back to. I even brought more new ones into the mix. Anyways, he did such a good job that after the question arose if we were going to keep moving forward on Project Warlock 2 as a team, the answer was undoubtedly a yes. His guitar skills actually went pretty well with my synth skills, and his synth skills aren't really anywhere close to lesser either. Weirdly I went from being in a band in high school playing mostly grunge metal that later got a lot of genre makeovers in "The Noise Vaults" I'm on #8 of right now, I ended up doing the synth side. I do plan on mixing the two as I go, but I'm really starting to love the lack of limitations with synth that guitar had. I even started my early music playing at a very young age with keyboards. As everything was polished and complete, I simply waited on the game to eventually be released. There were a few drawbacks but all in all April came along and I got propositioned with another question. I had never been to a gaming convention in my entire life. Oddly when I was in college I hadn't even heard of a lot of the games they were into, nor did I ever watch any anime. I wasn't that kind of nerd I guess, just a music and doom nerd. There's a lot I don't keep up with under my rock I guess. But only having heard of a couple conventions, QuakeCon and E3, I had no idea there was this whole other convention split up into various cities and even one in Australia known as PAX. I was asked since no one could get a visa in time with such short notice if I'd present at this convention. I had gotten to a point where I was socially awkward as all hell and I was about to do something far unexpected and apparently rocked it well. It really was like a huge party of gamers I'd never met and after the conventioned each day we'd have a few drinks. I got to hang out with the publishers from "a gaming company" and see some of the New Blood members at their booth as well. Unfortunately Hulshult wasn't present at this one. It made me want to go to a convention myself later just to enjoy the atmosphere. PAX East was ran in Boston Massachusettes. I got a free plane ticket and hotel room as well as badges for exhibits to get in the door. I decided to also buy my wife a ticket on the same plane and get another hotel room seperate if I remember right. Our first meal was Uber'd, and all of our rides to the convention were also, as I had no car there. We didn't rent a car either, just took a Taxi to the hotel and after that thought well, now what. The hotel was a little out of the city and I took trips with the publishers there, just not back because they wanted to enjoy the city and I had a limited budget and wanted to get home to my wife. Anyways it was thanks to her I was there mostly, so when I caught her looking at engagement and wedding rings out of the corner of my eye I secretly ordered one that she seemed to really want. I waited three days since day one for this to arrive and Sunday was our approaching final day. The coolest part happened when I didn't know if the ring would show or not on Saturday night, because Sunday morning was my last time to check the mail before I was going to leave. I kept referring to this trip as the "second greatest thing that ever happened in my life." She hadn't gotten the hint until it happened and the publishers knew I was going to propose as I had talked about it already more than once. I had my giant $12 dice that I got from one of the booths and honestly forget this part... oh well, she may be able to refresh my memory later. I know I ended with "I know I kept saying this is the second most important day of my life and never said the first. If you roll a 6 I'll tell you" but forgot a lot of the predetails because I was occupied with the last. Needless to say I said how I felt and why I wanted to do it and she wasn't the only one crying that I was serious. Obviously, I've been calling her my now wife, so clearly she said YES! She is more than a gamer than I am, and her kids are more gamers than either of us ever will be combined, but I had my pretty nerd wife who was "helpful with all the pieces I was missing in life" and hilarious. Naturally I had to get her to the convention to see the "second most important thing," you know, that we were getting a free hotel and plane ticket to do. You know, "that one thing." She wasn't coming to the conventions because they didn't have any tickets anymore. We tried and eventually gave up. I was a little bummed on Saturday that it wouldn't be possible to bring her Sunday, for we thought they wouldn't sell out. I was given the idea by the publishers to just ask a scalper. There were scalpers outside the convention selling tickets for $70 for the last day. All I had left were hundreds, and the one I was about to buy one from started to get this look on his face like he wasn't going to make a sell or hadn't yet to have any change in the first place. Upon realizing neither of us had change I told him to keep it and the dude looked almost like he was going to cry when he thanked me. So the final day she got to go around taking pictures, checking things out, and we got to take a lot of breaks together and rotate people while showcasing the game and watching the booth while people tried to beat the levels for one of six-hundred stickers. At the end of the fourth day, we had like 15 left so they let me snag a few. I used them for a binder full of PAX East memorabilia and a library-style audio book cd holder full of Warlock music source data that is still proudly decorated and on display on my shelf, next to a shadow box and all sorts of other stuff that has been put together surrounding this game. Needless to say a lot has happened since these four days. The reviews were unanimously GREAT and I even got to watch them with a cheezy look on my face for days on youtube while we were camping out at my parents for a while before buying a house together. Gmanlives did a ten minute review and just to let you know I had binge watched his reviews for more than a few nights once just because this is my genre. Finally, John Romero, co-creator of DOOM, literally my number one idol whose classic game I played for literally years and years not only showed interest with a "cool game guys" during the making of it, he literally advertised the second game in progress and co-published the first in a big box edition. Much like the 90s, it comes loaded with cool stuff in a large cardboard box with the game. It comes on a shotgun shell-shaped USB. It includes the same stickers I remember but now four different faces in each box, a bag with our game's logo to carry everything (or other things), a poster, and three little enamel pins of three enemies from the game. It's been published physically on PS4 with the soundtrack as part of a seperate bundle, and in another bundle with classic Doom. The Nintendo Switch version came with trading cards, and is what I have in my shadow box. I have a sealed copy and an open copy with all its pieces displayed behind glass. They are also available in digital form on both consoles as well as XBox One. And chances are I'm nowhere near done with this new awesome series of experiences and news. Thank you to all of you who have been fans through the years of any of us or our work on my various websites and social media profiles. Thanks for all the shoutouts here and there and reviews. Even though I got my loot for game 1 already and don't make any sort of commission from here on out for that first one, I STILL wanted to just say its a damn fine game and that's coming from me as the player, not just the musician!