Metal collective Bring Me the Horizon (BMTH) has released their latest single for the soundtrack of the new PlayStation 4 game ‘Death Stranding.’ The game is developed by Kojima Productions and the company’s logo and mascot are called ‘Ludens.’
Although “Ludens” is a single by BMTH, the band confesses that it might never make it into an album. Oliver Skyes of Bring Me the Horizon spoke with NME magazine about their future plans; “‘Ludens’ will be the first song you hear from the new record. We’re not going to do an album again, maybe ever. We’re thinking about doing shorter records. I don’t want to say we’re going to do something and not live up to it, but the plan is to release multiple records next year.”
The motto of Kojima Productions company is ‘From Sapiens to Ludens.’ In Latin, the word ‘Ludens’ means to play. Hence, there is a clever wordplay here involving the evolution of humans. HomƟ Sapiens is the Latin name for the current evolution stage of humankind, meaning ‘knowing humans.’ The tagline of the gaming company suggests the next stage of evolution into ‘playing (gaming) humans.’
Listen to the audio by BMTH below.
Oliver Skyes spoke about the meaning of the song in the interview with NME; “It uses quotes from the game and stuff, but I’m talking about the bigger picture. We need to be our own heroes. We need a new way of looking at things. Greta Thunberg has shown us that—it’s crazy, but this kid has proven that we can be our own leaders. We don’t need to wait for these other people. It goes through the motions of what’s wrong with the world and what we can do to fix it.”
“Ludens” song touches heavily on the aspect of losing the human connection. What used to be one of the greatest strengths of the humankind, is now frailing away. The wires and cables and wireless has replaced the real human touch and this is not sustainable.
The most basic form of making a connection is through a handshake greeting. The song quotes a line by the main protagonist of the game, Higgs, “It’s so hard to form connections when you can’t shake hands…” When the human touch subsides other toxic traits begin to surface.
The chorus of the song depicts a much more political stance pleading for new leadership. The change he asks for is a new Luden–a new generation of human beings capable of empathy, love, kindness and sustenance. The game, Death Stranding, itself is a struggle to overthrow corrupt and rise to new leadership. Hence. the lyrics of the song matches the in-game content perfectly.
Let us hear what you think about “Ludens” by Bring Me the Horizon in the comments below. Does the world need a change?
Update:
Bring Me The Horizon premiered a brand new music video for “Ludens” on November 11, 2019. The video features the band performing the metal track in a dimly lit basement. We also get sneak peeks of in-game footage throughout the video. If you believed that you cannot dance to metal music, this is a must-watch video.