Nephilim Noises

Creating kaiju sounds for Dawn of the Monsters

Creating kaiju roars is something I’ve been preparing to do all my life, although nobody asked me to. That is, until I was asked to work on Dawn of the Monsters—and let me say making the Nephilim’s voices is just as fun as it sounds! In this piece I’ll be breaking down how I created all the playable characters sounds, and a brief breakdown for all of the enemies in the game. And since I’ll be breaking down all of them, there will be SPOILERS ahead!

Megadon
I’ll start with the living volcano, Megadon! He was actually the first sound I created for the game. I knew I wanted a Zilla-esque sound, but I also didn’t want to just create a carbon copy. I researched and tested a few different metallic screeches, but I wasn’t getting any results I thought fit the bill.

Eventually I stumbled upon a video called “Sounds of the Nightmare Machine”. Amongst the gadgets that was on this “machine” was some metal strips that he would run a bow across. It made a very haunting yet heavenly sound. I immediately knew that was the direction I wanted to go, but a lot grittier. So I borrowed a production apple box, shoved a metal ruler into the handles and ran a cello bow against it. Funny enough, it didn’t work at first, but that’s because I lacked rosin. After realizing my somewhat dimwit mistake, I went back and it worked like a charm. I added some distortion to the recording, peppered in some guttural sounds from various animals, and the vocals for Megadon sprung to life.

Ganira
Next up we have Ganira, the terror of the seas! Ganira being a female kaiju, I wanted to take inspiration from the most iconic female kaiju there is, Mothra. I had always felt like Mothra’s roar sounded like a firework being launched. I knew that it wasn’t, but I figured I could use that similarity to my advantage. I used that as a main base for her roar and added in some clicks and screams from a dolphin.

On top of the roar, I wanted to give Ganira a unique sound to her movements since she is a crustacean/hard-shelled, but had rubbery elements like the extend-o-claw. The main contributor was twisting a rubber glove that had a bunch of frills on it that gave it a fun rubbery, but grungy sound.

Ganira’s not alone! She has her little baby crab that she can summon. This guy, I was told just to make hearts break when the crab is hurt. I ended up voicing the baby crab myself and thankfully the results were effective. It started out with something similar to the squirrel from Emperor’s New Groove and evolved into something a little more cutesy and helpless.

Tempest Galahad
Tempest’s sound was an idea that I had been bouncing around for a while. I knew I would be able to make something really cool if I used a bow on a guitar, but have it all go through a talk-box. For those that don’t know, a talk-box essentially plays the sound you’re creating through a tube and into your mouth. This allows you to manipulate the sound in a fun way that can sound like talking. For this character I had my wife use the talk box and give me some shouts, exerts, and sayings. The trick was finding a way that it would sound like talking, but not completely as Tempest is a robot and wouldn’t actually be capable of speech. After recording that and feeding it through a flange filter, you get Tempest’s vocals.

Aegis Prime
Lastly, of the playable characters, we have Aegis Prime. This is this franchise’s giant hero and it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t include those iconic shouting efforts. This was voiced by myself! I wanted to find a phrase much like Ultraman’s “SHUWATCH!”, so I came up with “JEEYAWT!”. This helped create a similar motif amongst his vocals that I could try to follow. After recording, I would then layer the efforts up to create a sense of scale, and voila! You’ve got Aegis Prime’s shouts! The shouts were actually delivered as a place-holder, but after some discussion we thought it felt right to leave them as-is. It was a nice throwback to how Ultraman’s efforts were voiced by someone other than the human host.

Since the list for Nephilim is quite long, I’ll keep these ones much more compact in explanation. My general rule with the enemies was to look at their design and pick an element for me to focus on when creating the sound.

Makairus
There are some elements of a bat in the face of this kaiju, so I started with a classic bat shriek like from Scooby-Doo. I built on top of that by trying to find high pitched sounds that would complement it. After pitching and speeding up a horse whinny, I found that to be the more interesting sound, so that became the meat of the roar.

Taurodon
Taurodon looked quite gross to me and I just imagined he had the worst IBS. I started with a gross gargle and added some pig sounds. I also threw in a bit of a monkey sound as I stumbled upon it, and felt it would complement the roar well.

Sumstro
The skull-like head made me think of raven skulls, not to mention raven’s synonymous relationship with death. I used crows and ravens as the main basis for this roar. Mixed in with some rattle snake and it gave him a fun scratchy sound that makes him a little more lovable to me. He’s one of my favourite Nephilim in the game.

Aggrox
This big guy reminded me of Zetton from Ultraman the moment I saw him. I don’t quite know why, seeing as they don’t have much similarity. His roar started as a reference to Zetton to the point he even spoke his name. Later found out the name I used was just a placeholder. After changing that, we found his vocals too low/bassy to cut through the mix. I added in the sound of me shaking a large plastic pane and it delivered this spooky and noticeable laugh sound.

Sortugor/Indargor
I felt that these Nephilim needed to have something close to their own language. My thought being that they needed to cast spells to buff and summon. I provided the voice for these Nephilim and added some funky effects to make it sound other-worldly.

Gigarok
When first approaching Gigarok, it was presented as a Megadon variant. I felt this could be a fun chance to reference when a lot of Ultraman kaiju use the same roar effect, but apply different filters. In doing that I added some additional animals sounds to give it a dry throat kind of sound since he’s all rock. The main contributor in terms of animal sounds was a llama.

Escugon
I thought the gem in the centre of the creature was a fun aspect to focus on. As if the sound is coming from there instead of what would be that creature’s mouth. The main base for this kaiju was the sound of rubbing glass with my hands. Added a few filters and some additional effects, and that’s the roar you get.

Virecloss
This guy reminded me of one of my favourite kaiju, Gigan. With that in my mind I wanted to make him very screechy. The main thing used in this was the sound of my rice cooker scraping against the counter. I added some effects and some howling noises to complete the picture.

Inazudon
I was referencing Ultra kaiju yet again to create this voice. I wanted something metallic, but almost non-vocal whatsoever. I believe this monster is one of the few that doesn’t contain any animal sounds to help it sound a little more natural.

Bakudon
This guy looked like someone squished a fly and rolled him up into a ball. I used the fly as my basis and mixed in some filtered zipper sounds. Again, there were some animal sounds to help it have a guttural feeling.

King Molokor
This guy is the biggest fodder Nephilim ands I decided to use the largest land mammal as a base, an elephant. I also wanted to make reference to Jurassic Park, using some elements from their design for the T-Rex.

ATOMs
The atoms follow the same process as Tempest, as they’re both the same kind of tech. However, Tempest has a lot more sleek elements, where the ATOMs have a more rickety sound as they’re cheaply made in comparison. The other change made was that I was using the talk-box instead of my wife to give it a slightly different inflection.

Onto the Monarchs! I maintained my general rule of finding an aspect of their design and using that as a base, though some of them are just references to Kaiju sounds that stick out to me.

Torgahra
I knew from the beginning I wanted to make a roar similar to Prototype 13 from the 3rd Patlabor movie. It’s a very odd roar, but it sticks with me. I thought the first Monarch was a good outlet. This was mainly built from various human screams.

Sednagon
This monarch was going to be the embodiment of all ocean creatures. A dolphin was the main base for this monster, but a menagerie was added to the roar to create what you hear in-game. She probably has the most elements balled into one.

Gaiacras
She truly has the driest throat of all the Nephilim. I used the scraping of cinder blocks (breeze blocks) to create the base. I piled on various rock/sediment sound and wind howling as if her vocals is just wind through rock/buildings. I added a nice screechy element from a monkey to add some extra life.

Agnitor
A truly Tsuburaya-esque monster. I wanted to reflect that in the creature’s roar. A lot of Ultra-kaiju tend to have a multi section roar (take Zetton, for example). I recreated that by having a first guttural roar, which tapers into a throaty click. Which, by the way, the throaty click is a reference to a sound you can hear at the very beginning of the Ultra Q opening.

Azrael
The grand finale! This was the only monster that I was given a direction on before starting. I was told to reference “The Bloop”. The Bloop is a recording of a mysterious low frequency sound that came from the ocean. I had already intended to do some spooky whale sounds, but the bloop was going to help spice up that idea perfectly. Actually, whale sounds ended up only being used as a glue to marry all the elements together. The roar’s two main elements are a wooden drawer scraping open and closed, and a zebra call. Pitched and slowed both down significantly and you get the meat of Azrael’s roar.

We also teasingly placed the Azrael sounds in the title cards at the beginning of each of the 5 chapters!

Do you want to know how all these Nephilim got their names? Make sure to also check out our article about Nephilim Nomenclature!

Steve Roberts (@SRGR) worked as the creature and combat sound designer on Dawn of the Monsters, and is a freelance audio editor working in TV and film, as well as video games.

He is far too focused on kaiju media, and spends most of his time either watching or re-watching monster movies most people should never dare to watch.