Condemned 2: Bloodshot

Condemned is a grim, grim game. So our only option was to make it even grimmer. Thankfully, we had the music to do the job horribly well.

Susumu Yokota - Tears Of A Poet

Japanese ambient artist Susumu Yokota makes an eclectic spread of music, but Tears Of A Poet from his Grinning Cat album may well be the limit of what the human ear can detect in terms of sinister. Dark humming, somewhere between a human voice and industrial machinery... Horrendously eery piano notes... And then that vocal sample kicks in, leering over you in the most disgustingly creepy way imaginable. And when it goes a bit jazzy towards the end, that just brings a whole new element of loungy sleaze to the affair. Like the elevator music on the way down to Hell.

Utterly foul. We love it.

Fabio Frizzi - Zombie Flesh Eaters Theme

Of course, if you want to go really grim, you have to look to the European horror movie soundtracks of the '70s. There was something nightmarishly oppressive and jarring about those scores, and few were better at that sound than Fabio Frizzi, composer on City Of The Living Dead and The Beyond, amongst others. His title theme for Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters is beyond ominous, with a slow, regular drum beat which fits the plodding pace of Condemned 2 flawlessly. When it does lighten up, it still maintains an air of creeping, inevitable tragedy, and immediately after that brief 'respite', it plunges you straight back down into the doomy stuff again. Brilliant.

Goblin - Strive After Dark

Goblin are also synonymous with horror, having composed music for the films of everyone from George Romero to Dario Argento. Strive After Dark, from Joe D'Amato's Buio Omega is a fine example of their work. Delicately sinister but increasingly intrusive, it's a brilliant piece for exploring dark and unknown places to. Particularly when those dark and unknown places are full of horrible, violent things that want you dead.