When DOOM launched in 1993, it revolutionised games. PC gaming popularity exploded, the FPS genre was now mainstream, and user-made mods were now popular. As one of the biggest games around, and certainly the most metal one, Id Software’s pulse-pounding shooter also caught the attention of Shawn Crahan, better known as Clown from the band Slipknot.
Now working on his own Minecraft server called Vernearth, which we’ll have more to talk about in a future article, Crahan tells us that DOOM is more than just a video game to him. “DOOM changed my life,” Crahan tells us. “DOOM hit the world and it had the score that felt like my brain, you know? A little more minor, a little scarier, a little more imagination, and the aesthetic of the creatures.”
The last remaining original member of Slipknot explained that DOOM’s demons connected with him in a way unlike any other game. “What fascinated me was, you know, of course, the demons and just the idea of the aesthetic,” he continues.
“I don’t wanna live in Hell, but I like the horns more than I like the halos. And believe me, I like the halos too.”
Slipknot’s Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan on his love of DOOM
Crahan remembers the exploding popularity of the mod scene for DOOM and especially DOOM 2 with fans sharing their own WAD files both online and even with physical releases. “You could go into the mall, go into a game shop, and have a kiosk in the middle of the game shop, a big bin, and you go in there and there’d be a double disc of DOOM 2 with like a thousand and one levels.
“Some levels were just poorly done by somebody that didn’t know too much, but they put it on there, and some were extensive. So that opened my mind to this idea like, ‘WOW, normal people made this, but I didn’t quite understand it until Quake come out, and the reason why was they offered Quake and OpenGL to the public the same day the game came out.”
With Quake, Crahan leaned into the modding scene, learning how to make levels for the game, something that has continued to inspire him over the years with his extensive Minecraft rework Vernearth. However, even as gaming has continued to evolve, and as Crahan has grown as a person, DOOM still sits in a very special place in the musician’s heart.
Right now, even as the rocker works on Vernearth, it’s because the blocky graphics of Minecraft are, in their essence, similar to the limitations of DOOM and Quake. “The best graphics in the old day meant hidden things,” he says. “You were always walking around sort of a flat world, it kept you engaged, and then you’d catch something a little different and you’d be like, ‘what’s that?’ And then that’d be where the secret is.”
DOOM’s aesthetic has connected with a lot of people, but for Crahan it was more rebellious than most. “I spent 12 years in a Catholic school,” they say. “So I like to comprehend all religion at all times, and if you’re going to scare me as a little kid with Hell, which I don’t buy into, but if you’re gonna try and scare the absolute sh*t out of me when I’m a little kid and I don’t know better, you’re damn well I’m gonna flock to DOOM and pentagrams and fire and demons and horns.
“You know, that’s your world you threw on me. That’s your brainwashing. That’s all your crap. So, guess what? Bring it on. I want it. Give it to me. You made me see these visuals and, you know what? I don’t wanna live in Hell, but I like the horns more than I like the halos. And believe me, I like the halos too.”
More than 30 years after its 1993 release, DOOM still continues to inspire thousands of people all over the world, from games to art and even into music. Id Software’s brilliant shooter is still just as fun to play now as it always has been, and it always will be.
