MIDI Week Singles: "The Partisan (feat. Tex Perkins)" - Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (PC)

"The Partisan (feat. Tex Perkins)" from Wolfenstein: The Old Blood on PC, PlayStation 4, & XBox One (2015)

Composer: Mick Gordon

Album: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood Soundtrack

Label: Soundcloud

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Developer: MachineGames

I just finished Wolfenstein: The Old Blood over the last weekend and it was a nazi-killing-fun-fest of a good time.  The music did not stand out to me as much as it did in Wolfenstein: The New Order or there were not any many instances or cut scenes to showcase Mick Gordon's music.  

And then the credits rolled and "The Partisan (feat. Tex Perkins)" started playing and everything changed.

Now, all of a sudden having a song with lyrics as credits music when the rest of the music in the media (film, video games, etc) can be a little jarring and in the case of Gangs of New York, seem grossly out of place or just rip you out of the immersion created from the last couple of hours of storytelling; yes, I have issues with this particular example.  While having "The Partisan (feat. Tex Perkins)" play as the credits rolled was a bit unexpected, it was wholly welcome.  The only change I might have made was to actually have the song start earlier, during the final cutscene with the planes flying off towards Deathshead's compound (the beginning of Wolfenstein: The New Order) and then the vocals come in when the title card pops up at the beginning of the credits.  But that is just me.

And while writing/researching this article, I found out that this song is actually a cover of an anti-fascist French Resistance song written in 1943 by Anna Marly and the lyrics by  Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie, called "La Complainte du partisan," or literally, "The Lament of the partisan."  That this song could have existed in the alternate timeline of W:TOB is pretty rad, and this cover being metal-ified by Mick Gordan music and Tex Perkins' vocals just add to the badassness of the song and the message of anti-fascism, which is something that is not out of place in our reality, 77 years later.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

Let The Blood Flow