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The Damned collaboration: How Shadows of the Damned found its closing act
It takes a lot of people a lot of time to license a track for a video game. Among other things, that's what The Damned drummer Andrew "Pinch" Pinching learned in the fall of 2010 when he worked with Grasshopper Manufacture composer Akira Yamaoka on the title track from this year's grindhouse-inspired third-person shooter, Shadows of the Damned. According to Pinch, it took "about a hundred emails" before an agreement was even reached regarding the collaboration. "I kid you not, they are VERY thorough," Pinch explained to me via email earlier this summer. He was speaking to the GhM side of the partnership, which he described as "treading a different path in the games industry" from other dev studios. "I did a bit of research and found out about Suda51 and No More Heroes," Pinch added. "[He] was regarded as a bit of an edgy rebel, which appealed to me immensely. It didn't hurt that his games looked great as well." The end product of the collaboration was, as we now know, the excellent (and if I may say so myself, rockin') final track from Shadows of the Damned. But that wasn't always the plan, as Pinch told me. "Initially, they [GhM] wanted what everyone wants -- an old Damned track. In this instance, a track called 'Love Song,' which in hindsight would have fitted the theme of the game rather nicely." But "Love Song" wasn't meant to be, and The Damned pushed to create an original track for the game.
