[RIFFS] Goreframe, aka: Big Mumma Hildryn’s Tech-Tunes For Killin’ Techrot To - Part I.
Words: Brady Irwin
“Hi Brady, I’m [Your Name Here]. What the actual frig is this headline, and what planet are you on?”
I’ll answer the latter first.
Honestly? With how insanely fragmented, surreal, AI-addled, late-stage-capitalist-collapse-y things are going off the screen you’re perusing this from? I’m not even sure, dude. You tell me. It’s a strange time to be alive when the weird sci-fi/horror/fantasy worlds your neurodivergent ass concocts for tabletop roleplaying games has a lot more lucidity and believability than oh, I don’t know - the news cycle right now?
Now, for the first question. Thank you for your curiosity! That’s a trait we one hundred percent stan here at ISC.
‘Goreframe’ = Warframe.*
It’s a video game (there we go, that cleared out a good portion of the normies already), and it’s insanely addictive. Just don’t, it’s too good. Seriously. Send help.
The ‘Gore’ aspect of the title that will become slightly more relevant to extreme metal, later. We’re not there yet. And kinda relevant to the game itself, there’s a lot of dismemberment of hunchbacked goons enemy mobs in that game.
‘Big Mumma Hildryn’?
Haha. I’ll leave that til’ later.
TL:DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read): a ‘Frame’ (think character/class) from Warframe. In this case, Hildryn represents the Viking dommy-mum beefcake queen of shield-tanking.
She is literally big though. Absolute unit. You’ll see.
And no; it’s mum on this blog. Not mom. I’m Australian. We speak English, not American. M-U-M. Can’t disrespect me mum by that grammatical goose-step, mate - it’s her love of reading and writing that’s a huge part of the reason ISC exists.
Freud might have a field-day with the above, but he’s all good. Rest easy in your tomb, sweet psychoanalysis-lich. Honestly I’ve got no thirst for not-real characters; I’ll save that for the geeks farming ducats for a new Wisp Prime skin to bus- farm to.
You get a lot of tangents here at ISC, especially in Riffs (our moniker for articles) completed by Yours Truly - #hornyposting is not one of them. Warframe community, you can relax a bit. Also, stick around if you’d like some cool new tunes!
‘Tech-Tunes’?
Okay, this one actually deserves to start with an apology to my/our longer-term audience, all 0.5 of you who may have had interest in the Tech Tuesdays serial-idea from 2024, and wondered where it went.
TL:DR - a pastiche (much like this article) of both tech/gaming-related content and ‘cause it’s in the name, primarily sharing some new finds/old faves of mine/ours with a particular penchant for technical flair, proficiency, etc. Often that translates readily enough into technical death-metal, but isn’t always the case.
But yeah, speaking of mums, to quote my own for a sec - “wh’oppened?”. We like to shorten and abbreviate words in Australia. More time for drinking.
Tech Tuesdays is/?was a series well-intended as an ongoing, regular feature here at ISC.
However, my own personal circumstances (are pretty fucked, not gunna lie), the complete collapse of our website of 4+ years bang on NYE (like, 6pm) 2024, and other extraneous variables have impacted and continue to impact many best-laid plans of mice and men. Thus, the idea was kind of… swept away in the unceasing torrent that has been myself trying to right the ship since.
I’d like to think today, we’re bringing it back both for our music-friends, gamer-friends, and mutants similar to myself who appreciate both relatively-niche sub-genres of interest.
Speaking ‘Of Mice And Men’ - no, I’m not adding that band in. Here’s an underrated ditty from a Megadeth album I feel gets less attention than it deserves in the late Megadave-canon.
‘Yeah, okay, okay. I’m… not really following, but I’m intrigued. Have at it I guess. And the Techrot…?’
Oh god. Okay, Christ.
My Tenno in Grinding, I’m going to have to stop us there and just put a boundary on this Riff before it gets out of hand:
[* - this is a good time to add in my asterisk-disclaimer. Okay, so a good problem to have, but - there is FAR too much complexity, depth and sheer content to the title Warframe than I could possibly hope to shoehorn into one single article.
Heck, my early draft of a review of Warframe was stopped when my playtime was 200hrs in (a month ago, it’s now 530hrs - HELP ME) and 6,000+ words’ worth of research-notes wasn’t even covering the very, very menial basics.
What I’d like to hear from any of you who are familiar/intrigued, is whether you would like for me to push on and try completing a review. Caveat, that’ll be months away, with one or more dedicated podcast episodes minimum. If there’s interest, I’ll do it! Try me! ]
Cool Beans? Cool Beans.
TL:DR - The Techrot are a bunch of mutant-appliance hybrid people-things, who like the aforementioned Grineer are also there to be mercilessly slaughtered in endless throngs by space-ninjas with fancy suits.
More specifically, and moving now into the merge between music and gaming now, they’re played within a time-jump section of Warframe’s impenetrably-vast archipelago of updates, this one called 1999. Can you guess the year it was set in, lol? Correct!
Now, here’s where we finally get to the (tubing and electrical-wiring/virus) infested end of the content, today.
Digital Extremes have put a lot of love and finesse into making 1999 as thoroughly millenial/Gen-X-bait as possible. An absolutely freaking fire OST abounds this area, with more tracks being unlocked through the time-honoured Warframe process of, well, grinding.
Speaking of grind - 1999 is intense, dude. You can feel the uptick in pace, with everything ranging from the soundtrack, enemy/level design, objectives and dialogue all ramped up to eleven. It’s so fast-paced, in fact, that even my please-inject-sensory-stimulus-into-my-eyeballs dopamine-starved ADHD brain has to tap out after a few missions.
And, whilst I’ve loved the ever-loving shit out of chopping, slicing, blasting, irradiating, electrifying, corroding and otherwise lethally dispatching walking person/object-junk to a nu-metal/alt-rock heavy - I can’t help but feel such mechanical and sensory intensity is just begging to be met with some stuff truly on that level. I crave it, crave the extreme-metal, Father.
So yeah - I’ll very briefly touch on who/what a Hildryn is, then we’ll see how my oddly-placed challenge (to create not one but TWO playlists relevant to Warframe’s 1999, and indeed the game more broadly) goes.
The challenge is two-fold:
Provide you, the audience, a list of bands from 1999 that are in alignment both with the sheer chaos of the urban-hellscape tileset, and pertain to ‘tech’. It is a Tech Tuesday, after all.
Provide you, the audience, a whole bunch of technical music I feel our based, crush-a-simp-with-her-bicep-without-issue Hildryn, would appreciate having on via Bluetooth or something. As she grinds materials and persons to dust across the solar system.
HILDRYN, EVERYONE. EVERYONE, HILDRYN.
Screenshot from yours truly, via the Warframe login page. [Not Pictured: Warframe players classically-conditioned and already humming “Throuuuuugh, the eyes, of my pee-eers”…]
The beauty about visual aesthetic is it’s all to taste, right?
Well, as an ardent metalhead and insufferable edgelord of time immemorial, I already had a metal-AF drip selected for the Hildryn Prime I’m currently running. See above.
As a massively-multiplayer instanced game, I don’t see too many goth HP’s around the joint. (That’s because they’re hovering metres above my head, raining destruction and carrying this 520hr noob through yet another encounter).
How ol’ HP looks without the goth-ifying from myself:
She won’t be winning any contests on /r/WarFrameRunway [brief pause of incredulous praise that this sub exists unironically, thanks] any time soon.
But she’ll be out there, Torid Incarnon turning masses into piles of flaming, viral goop, right before she drives a comically large sword through car-sized sci-fi people.
Quoting shamelessly from the Warframe Bible/Qurán/Torah/Rosetta Stone Fandom Wiki, via ‘The Other Character I’m Really Not Comfortable Questioning If She’s Been Rule34-ed’ (Lotus):
“Drawing from her shields like a battery, her defensive and offensive utility are unparalleled. This is Hildryn, the domina of armament.
In the sky or on the ground, Hildryn fills her victims full of dread.
”
Now, the actual lore on Hildryn is deliberately sparse, which adds a nice little layer of mystery as to why a community running often comparatively leaner, skinny, spry Frames were suddenly introduced to This Beefcake Woman circa late 2019.
Loki Mains: “Lean muscle mass can compete with bulk, bro! Crossfit me 1v1! … Mummy/Mommy?!”
Without spoilering too much (exceptionally hard, TBH), Hild was effectively employed by a demigod of sorts as a literal shieldmaiden. As much as she, the person was a little unsuccessful in the endeavour, her Warframe equivalent was wrenched from the hands of one very Eldar-coded narcissist, and under the protective eye of the typically eyes-covered Lotus.
In Warframe, you switch ‘Frames’ in a way vaguely complementary of what you might think to roles, classes and the like in other ARPGs, MMOs and the like. It’s a little bit more than that, but I can’t elaborate further without new-player-spoilers. Soz. Back to the grind, kids!
This brick-shithouse momma first graced the battlefields of the Warframe-solar-system during an event involving a gargantuan spidery robot wreaking chemical havoc on a Venusian surface that is now snowy and filled with coolant everywhere.
Very Japanese/anime-coded in its’ surrealism, confusing plotlines and hectic levels of retcon, Warframe. And we love ‘em for it.
Since then, she’s been a favoured recommendation for a lot of folks entering what’s known as ‘The Steel Path’. Which you could think of as new-game+, but again and without spoilering through further reveal, is a LOT more than that.
I could get into the various mechanical attributes and advantages, disadvantages, etc, have a laugh at whatever thirst I’m sure is out there where this non-fictional buff lady is concerned but as per the * above? Perhaps saved for future content.
Sigh.
This is a LONG setup, isn’t it?
Look, dudes/dudettes/dudefolks. I’m setting the scene, orrite?
Effectively, as a Hildryn Prime main-by-accident, and major fan of Digital Extreme’s work on the product - there’s still something lacking, from my perspective.
And that something, is where we get into the musical side of things.
Heavy, complex, technical stuff. Maybe chaotic, maybe well-ordered in its’ structure. All relevant, ‘least to my personal tastes and WWHPD? canon.
HILDRYN’S GOREFRAME PICKS FROM 1999: (Tech)DEATH TO TECHROT.
Fan-art for a conceptual Warframe-Techrot hybrid, since I don’t wanna spoil baddies visually for any newer players out there. Credit: Reddit user /u/OKBad-2501, link to original thread here.
Technical death metal as a genre is often thought of as largely kicking off from the early-aughts onwards. Metalheads will know the usual suspects - Necrophagist, Obscura’s early work, Anata, Spawn of Possession, etc. All that jazz.
Those pilled on their death metal will be asking where the fuck Demilich’s seminal LP Nespithe is, right about now?
Well, it wasn’t released in 1999. We’ll get there, though. As if Hildryn wouldn’t be a fan of the frog-burp vocals.
Anyway.
Albums I would recommend from the year 1999 that’d go hard in Warframe’s OST, in no particularly ranked-order (MASTERY-RANKED more like, amirite fellas?!):
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity
Of course.
Of. Course.
Calculating Infinity has to be on the list. For enough reasons to warrant its’ own self-contained Riff, but alas I shall serve ye a mere few. You’re welcome to follow up on the album link above and draw your own conclusions and inferences.
Where Warframe: 1999 and this album are concerned:
Incredulous levels of overstimulation and gaming-violence?
Facing relentless hordes of an enemy comprised of the most horrendous (but also at times, comically funny) amalgamations of rotting organic flesh and corroded, worn electrical components?
Fast, furious and able to keep pace with the frantic tempo of your average Hollvania bounty?
Check, check, check.
What the heck else feels as directly relevant as slicing, shooting, dicing and generally braining those poor once-souls out of a post-mortem enslavement sentence (with a BIG hammer, Hildryn’s a Nordic name after all) as Calculating Infinity?
You’ve got a frenetic and spasmodic conglomeration of technical death metal, grindcore, hardcore, electronica, ‘math-metal’ (Warframe min-maxers ears pricking up at that term, yet) and much more.
You’ve got equally impenetrable thematic and lyrical themes/titles like ‘Clip The Apex… Accept Instruction’ and, who could forget, ‘*#..’?
You’ve got 1999-relevant themes. It’s a product of its’ time, lyrically. The pre-millenium what-are-we confusion through a recent Tech Bubble Burst, the looming spectre of Y2K, some of the many precursors to the broad and sweeping changes to mass-communication and daily life in a very nascent but unfamiliar, foreign form - many of these ‘99-specifics are here, and they’re woven into an intensely brutal, pointed and direct vocal delivery that feels consistently on the edge of panic - or berserker-rage.
Damn right our lady Hild would want to fire this one up! Something so musically savage and incoherent that the resulting cleverly-concocted din makes ironically, for some cognitive defusion, calm and inner peace. ‘least that’s the impact it has for me. Haven’t tested that whilst going against a biological-cyborg-hybrid Techrot… thing, though.
This might not be a ranked list overall, but there’s a reason this album is first. It’s the package. It’s the 1999 experience personified, and in fact next time I run some Techrot Exterminate bounties, I may even just mute the OST and see how this badboy plays out in action.
Choice Cuts:
I don’t like picking songs in particular out of albums I love almost unconditionally. Sigh. Balefire-Prime to head, I’ll say ‘Destro’s Secret’ and ‘43% Burnt’ are particularly useful Hild-slash-and-gun tunes.
If you couldn’t be arsed with the deep-dive and/or you’re not up to the content yet, I’ll say the jagged chords punctuating that STANK breakdown riff on the later tracks’ closing moments is a 1:1 chef’s-kiss representation of the Techrot in visual form. Much less slashing them to bits with damage-counter numbers filling the screen.
And that building refrain of “sun-dripped Devil, sun-dripped Devil, scratched out my eyes, SCRATCHED OUT MY EYES!” is essentially lore-appropriate to the poor schmucks who ended up as Tenno-bait 50% human/50% Walmart appliance-section.
Oh, and before the next one - whoever’s here to be like ‘nyahhhhhh senpai, it’s ACKSHUALLY mathcore not tech-death…’ - yes, I know. Fuck off, it’s called being creative.
Go cry to mum in the basement while you jack it to your collection of stunning ripostes on Metal-Archives.com, or whatever it is patricians do these days.
I really don’t have time for elitist whinging these days. Put on some Aqua and chill out, bro.
Next up is, for metalheads at least, another resounding “of course, dude!” pick.
2. Necrophagist - Onset of Putrefaction
Warframe, even in the 1999 iteration of the setting, involves a LOT of technical complexity. And a lot of moribund themes, specifically around death.
We’re literally talking about an army of quadi-undead disfigured electro-people emerging from a growing miasma underneath the soil, yeah? Well damn, son, turns out Onset of Putrefaction is very relevant, then.
Taking the Carcass route of jargonistic, medicalised song titles and lyrics, Onset marries some literally reeking lyrical components, grafting them with what had become a new benchmark for technical proficiency at the time. Bordering on ridiculous but well-crafted, much like the over-the-top insanity that is playing in 1999’s Hollvania urban setting, this LP is an absolute masterwork in god-tier musicianship.
Seeing as the Warframes themselves personify the most efficient, flavourful and finely-tuned use of available technology, it’s protagonists/Frames represent a similar level of cutting-edge. Particularly with some very timey-wimey things that happen.
A masterclass in how to feel inspired to play your instrument relentlessly and throw it out the window in the exact same breath, Necrophagists’ playing isn’t just a rote wank in notes-played-per-minute. Like the folks online who are obsessive about their kills-per-minute statistic (I don’t even know what mine are - I just kill?), a focus on volume/frequency alone wouldn’t make this such a landmark album.
Nay, between the sweeping guitar/bass/drumming histrionics, five-dogs-trapped-in-a-coal-bunker barked vocal delivery and aloofly clinical descriptions of putrefaction, dissection and the like, the reason the ‘Phage are so popular is the dashing soar of tasteful leads, licks, riffs, breakdowns and many other precisely-executed but organically warm head-banger moments.
Handy for those literally operating a floating shielded mechanical suit wreaking absolute destruction on ??ex-humans?? [left intentionally vague cause spoilers] comprised of gunmetal, plastic, seared flesh and screams. Brutal.
Plus, the interplay between metal’s pseudo-intellectual bean-counting nerd side, and its’ thuggier anachronistic caveman hindbrain, is a fantastic musical addition to the existential crisis I’m sure Hildryn’s driver faces between death-beaming rotted robo-people in 1999.
MASTER-RANK-WORTHY ARBITERS OF 1999-DEATH:
Sadly, I’m as short on time as most of you right now.
For those playing Warframe as well, the game might even be a correlate as to why you’re short on seconds and minutes.
I’ll let you get back to cracking Void Fissure Relics in just a minute, swear!
Before I do, though, I want to shine a plasma-charged light of void-energy on a number of other worthy contenders from the year that was:
3. BURNING INSIDE - The EVE OF THE ENTITIES:
I mean, c’mon - the artist name and album title complete it already, without even factoring in how snugly this wonderful slice of progressive technical death-metal fits into a space-ninja-suit back in ‘99. Courtesy of Youtube user Plantadator:
4. DEEDS OF FLESH - THE WEAKENING
One of the few crusty folks still reading whoms’t’d’ve is into both Warframe and extreme metal? Feel like these have been heavy, but where’s the truly brutal tech?
There you go, guys. This album. For when the intensity-ante is notched to such a blistering degree that only the most slamming, rotten and gnar-gnar ‘99 tech-death is needed, choose:
5. MALIGNANCY - INTRAUTERINE CANNIBALISM
Remember how I mentioned being both a metalhead and an edgelord in around the same sentence, earlier?
Yeah, it’s a thing. And the 90’s were a wonderfully edgy time, free from the shackles of self-effacement at the hands of social media.
Blissfully uncaring as to whether you put this guttural, brutal, slamming technical death metal album under that banner, I’m posting this anyway. Underneath the churning, gurgling and grinding, this tour-de-force of slamming brutal death metal, grind and more is a comprehensively-tight musical exoskeleton.
Again - much the same can be said about a cybernetic/space-magicka hybrid floating above tech-zombie-things, wantonly frying arcs of laser-fire through the air and minding her own goddamn business as Hildryn. This one’s possibly the angriest on the menu for today, which makes it all the more therapeutic… and relevant.
I know it’s been a long ride, like your average hunt for a Prime blueprint.
If you recall, I delineated my thesis into components - one, picks from 1999 as a year itself, and two, picks from across the tech-spectrum.
Stay tuned for Part II, coming soon!
Shamelessly lifted from /r/MemeFrame, specifically this post by Redditor /u/yohanson1997.
Until then, and as always,
Peace, Love and Grindcore [AND Rending Electro-Human Zombies Into Space-Dust] xoxo - Brady.