To the surprise of absolutely no one, Battlefield 6 has been a major hit, with fans across all platforms rushing to game’s multiplayer mode for one purpose: break stuff. With a peak concurrent player count of over 747,000 users on Steam alone for the game’s Oct. 10 launch day, Battlefield 6 has been dominating the charts in its opening week.
Our own review of Battlefield 6 called the game a throwback military fantasy that operates on the same wavelength as 2000s-era multiplayer shooters, which totally aligns with the direction of the game’s soundtrack. An early leak of the in-game audio revealed licensed tracks from bands like Godsmack and Drowning Pool, but one collaboration has gone further — rap-rock maestros Limp Bizkit have partnered with EA Games to contribute not just one of their classic songs (“Break Stuff”) to the trailer, but to create entirely new music for the game.
The first is the wildly named “Making Love to Morgan Wallen,” which was released back in September. The second track, “Battlefield: The After-party,” is a full reimagining of the traditional Battlefield theme, produced in cooperation with the game’s composer, Henry Jackman.
Rolling Stone has an exclusive video interview featuring Jackman and Limp Bizkit frontman, Fred Durst, detailing how the collaboration came to be. You can watch the full video below.
In the video, Jackman details the development of the new game’s score, noting that one specific theme was paramount. “In a really early meeting, I just threw out, ‘Does anyone got like a sentence or key word?’ And I guess, it not being a romantic comedy — it being a video game — the word that came out straight away was ‘destruction,’” Jackman says.
Jackman, whose body of work encompasses films like Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Kong: Skull Island (2017), also has extensive credits on high-profile video games including PlayStation’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016). Going into designing the music for Battlefield 6, he knew exactly that kind of attitude he wanted to bring to the project. “There was a lot of aggression techniques in the engineering and [production]. It’s not polite.”
The dearth of politeness in the game’s score left Jackman and co. searching for the right partner to help put their mark on this new, more aggressive era of Battlefield. Enter Limp Bizkit.
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Durst, a well-known gamer himself, notes that the process began with questioning whether the composition would be all-new or building on the existing foundation. Speaking with Jackman, the singer says that the decision was to ultimately add to the work that had already been done. “It was more like, follow the yellow brick road — until we get to Henry,” Durst says.
Battlefield 6 is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The game’s soundtrack is now streaming.
From Rolling Stone US
