Now this is something I never have seen talked about before and felt like I had to bring it to light. Just quick story time, back when I first started zombies on WaW heading into Bo1 a couple years later and moving on to Bo2 and so on. I started to notice something about the songs. They all tell a story you just have to listen. I have a list here that shows who I definitely think is singing which maps song. I listen to all of these daily and love them even more then the zombies mode itself. I’m curious to see if anyone has different thoughts on it or want to talk about my reasonings why I believe so and who thought about this before
4 Comments
Lost-Samantha Maxis lol
I’d argue most songs are about wider perspective rather than a single characters point of view and some of your choices are interesting. Like Pareidolia and Coming Home. I would definitely switch those two around if you needed to name someone.
And Shepherd of Fire is not a Zombies song. It wasn’t made for it like Not Ready to Die, Carry On and Mad Hatter were.
Archangel has Dr. Monty and I’m going to go full meta here and say Dr. Monty wasn’t even a concept of a character by the time of Origins so Kevin thinking of him when writing is impossible.
Dead Again being about Ultimis Dempsey is a weird choice. Dead Again has references for the events that happen in DE EE and again, if someone needs to be chosen, I’d choose Primis Dempsey but I still think the songs are more about the overall subject than a persons perspective.
Dead Flowers is a difficult song to interpret. It’s filled with metaphors and the best one I can get out of it are flowers being doubts that grow in Takeo (hence the EE is also called Seeds of Doubt) so both Takeo’s work here.
Dead Ended definitely has nothing to do with Ultimis Nikolai. It mentions their ending getting read and through that knowing where they are going. Some would say this foreshadows Nikolai getting the Kronorium in BotD but I have a hard time believing that theory for various reasons.
And The Gift being Shadowman. Why? Sure it mentions pain and death but I doubt those are meant to be taken literally and it also mentions a little room made “just for me.” And this doesn’t fit Shadowman at all.
And wouldn’t I Am The Well be more fitting for Primis Nikolai? At that point he has read the Kronorium. He knows what’s going to happen and he mentions something similar in the AO opening.
I think it makes a lot more sense for Not Ready To Die to be in the perspective of Richtofen. It sums up his motivations, journey and thoughts better then any song really could, and it’s really fun to interpret the lyrics from his view.
I also view Carrion through the perspective of the Zombies, personally. They’re trying to cling on to their humanity, but they can’t stop feasting on people, no matter how hard they try. It makes the “Carry On/Carrion” section hit a lot more harder, at least for me.
Also, like another comment said, on a meta level, Dr. Monty wasn’t a concept until BO3, so I dunno if that’s it. Though then again, if not Monty, I’m not sure who it would be, especially considering the three singers.
Cool interpretations, though! Good post
Im pretty sure coming home is samantha and nightmare is rictofen edit: same for not ready to die