Warframe Teams Up With Lucky Super Fan: The Frontman Of Progressive Metal Band Erra

Warframe is community oriented to a degree that most games can’t touch, such that many have experienced births, graduations, weddings, and funerals within its digital bounds. JT Cavey, who’s been playing since Warframe first came out 13 years ago and has 1,700 hours in the game, is one of those fans. But there’s a difference between him and other diehards who’ve spent over a decade dipping in and out: He’s the frontman of a progressive metal band with millions of listeners.

Formed in 2009, Erra has been a metalcore scene favorite for longer than Warframe has existed. Cavey joined the band in 2016, which is somehow a decade ago, and has made no secret about his love of games over the years. So when Warframe creative director Rebb Ford and community director Megan Everett approached Erra about contributing a song to an anime-style Warframe video they were working on, Cavey was thrilled.

"[When Rebb and Megan talked about the band on Twitter], I was like 'Oh my god, that's so cool. I can't believe they know who I am or know who we are,'” Cavey told Aftermath. “And then at some point, [one of us] reached out when [Erra] came to Toronto a couple years ago, and I was like 'Oh my god, we should get coffee.’ So I met up with Rebb and Megan, got them into the show, and we all had a great time. I think a year later, Rebb inboxes me, and she's like 'Hey, I have a wild idea: How about we borrow one of your songs to release some more Warframe content?' I was like 'Say less. Let's go.'"

The song, “Crawl Backwards Out Of Heaven,” is off Erra’s 2024 album Cure and accompanies an anime-style video of two versions of a character the player was able to pick the name of during a previous quest, Jade Shadows, duking it out in a style that evokes classic Gainax works like Gurren Lagann. As a result of divergent in-game timelines and the character's two possible futures, Sirius and Orion, fighting for supremacy, there are actually two versions of the video:

The whole thing, animated by London-based studio The Line, gives early-2000s AMV, something about which you will not hear Cavey complaining.

"I grew up watching tons of anime music videos back in the day,” said Cavey. “The first ones were always Linkin Park or Breaking Benjamin or Disturbed or whatever. And recently, we've seen peers in our space, like Bad Omens and Spiritbox, doing animated videos [the latter in conjunction with Riot Games]. There's been more presence of anime and drawings and kind of making an extended universe outside of just the music with art. So that's reminiscent of the AMV days. For us to do our own version and get an animated music video was perfect."

In Cavey’s eyes, the Warframe video harks back to a specific all-time great anime rivalry.

"Yin and Yang, good meets evil, light versus dark, Goku versus Frieza—I think the song was representative of that for [the Warframe team], and the animation of the video reflects that as well," he said.

Ford feels similarly, though she took a longer and more specific road to get there.

"My mom is also the reason for Erra," she told Aftermath. "She lives far away from me, so it’s just under a two-hour drive to see her on the weekends. On a long highway stretch, I was listening to ‘Crawl Backwards Out Of Heaven’ on repeat, and I started seeing things in my mind for Warframe. JT’s voice and Jesse’s voice in contrast, the musicality, then the lyrics: 'Asleep beneath the surface.' It made me think of my days making AMVs from Dragon Ball Z, and I started seeing characters doing things, but I didn’t recognize them. Then they slowly focused, and I realized I was looking at Sirius and Orion battling it out to Erra's song. I wrote everything down as soon as I got home: the full quest, the characters, the arc, the song. It was that isolated highway drive that created this update, and it's all because of the song."

The video—and the in-game narrative chapter set to tie into it this summer—joins a long lineage of Warframe music projects, many with lyrics and accompanying cutscenes. The game’s discography has grown so sizable, in fact, that the game’s dev team and numerous other musicians—including Ford on bass—were able to perform a full concert at last year’s TennoCon. Many of Warframe’s songs are somber or heavy, with a few entering metal territory. Others, born of the game’s slightly more lighthearted 1999 expansion, are boy band parodies. But if you ask Cavey which is his favorite, he can’t resist citing a classic.

"The iconic Fortuna song, ['We All Lift Together'],” he said. “That one for sure."

Music, Ford said, often shapes the game.

"Every update we do, there is a moment where Erich from the sound team and Matthew Chalmers, our composer, sort of say, 'Well, we read the update briefs, and what if…' and then we end up with the wildest scoring ideas to complement whatever it is we’re doing," she said. "We all trust in the ideas we bring to the table, and I’m glad we take risks every time. Music is such an important part of the mood and expression of Warframe."

Erra’s music, Cavey admitted, actually references Warframe, albeit slyly.

"[Our song “Eidolon”] doesn't have anything to do with the Eidolon creatures of Warframe,” he said, “but [guitarist Jesse Cash] gave me a list of song titles to pick, and that was one of them. He doesn't know that's the reason I chose that one."

On Erra’s most recent tour, Cavey got the band’s drummer and media guy to play Warframe as well, and while the other members might take additional persuading, he wouldn’t be surprised if they come around. Games, after all, are a great way to pass the time on the tour bus, but more than that, they share a long history and a sort of spiritual bond with heavy music.

"There's always the cliche of [how] dorks can sometimes feel like outsiders or nerds, and I think any alternative underground metal music or anything of that caliber resonates with a similar type of mindset," he said. "You look at the success of Doom in the '90s and how that got translated into the 2000s version, and that soundtrack is so good. ... It's very interesting how that does seem to be an always existing connection."

Cavey thinks that extends to how fans of games and heavy music share the things they’re passionate about as well.

"When people love a game, they want to introduce people to the game. And most of the time, when you're excited about the game, you're usually overly generous, because you want to share your love of that game and excitement with somebody else to make them feel the same,” he said. “Metal communities are the exact same way. People are very friendly at metal shows. They love finding new circles of people like 'Oh, you like the same band.' It's very likely that I'm gonna go somewhere and find someone who also likes The Beatles. But it's more fun to find somebody that likes a more obscure, hard-to-find artist, because then it's like those two people know a secret that nobody else knows."

Cavey has been playing games since the Game Boy days—longer than he’s been a musician. If he has his way, he’ll do more games-related work in the future. That could include writing a song from start to finish with a specific game in mind, or perhaps even more.

"Nah dude, I want to be in a game. Make me a final boss," he said. "I mean, I'm down to do anything, whether [developers] want us to co-write stuff. Shit, I'll do voice lines for a character. If I see the Erra logo buried behind a crate in a little secret room, I'll take that. I'll take whatever they want to do. I'm just happy to be part of it."

Given the opportunity to collaborate with any band, dead or alive, Ford would rope in Supertramp. But what actually happens next remains, like so many psionically-controlled space ninjas, up in the air.

"We kind of do things in weird ways," she said. "Very much a game developed in the garage with friends mindset. ... It becomes very overwhelming to me when I think of how many people I’d love to work with. But maybe next time I drive to my mom's, I’ll have my answer."