Dead Rising 4: the Christmas album that accidentally spawned a zombie outbreak

Fire up Dead Rising 4 and at first it looks like just another mall full of zombies waiting to be mulched. Then the music kicks in, and suddenly it feels like someone mashed together a golden-age Christmas record and a horror score, hit “shuffle,” and walked away. Willamette’s shopping mall doesn’t just drown in blood, it drowns in Christmas music.

Composer Oleksa Lozowchuk and the team didn’t go small here. In interviews he mentions they created around 12 hours of music for the game, with the official soundtrack clocking in at almost 4.5 hours and over 110 tracks.vgmdb.net+1 It’s a ridiculous spread: atonal horror cues, big-band Christmas bangers, crooner ballads, Americana-style radio songs, even muzak versions of classics drifting through the mall. His own elevator pitch for the whole thing is basically “atonal zombie action meets classic Midwest Christmas”, and that is exactly what it sounds like.

The gateway drug into this world is “The Coldest Time of Year”, the game’s main theme and opening credits song. It started life as Lozowchuk’s idea for a haunting version of “O Christmas Tree”: a full string orchestra, plus a fragile, Björk-like vocal from Melissa Kaplan. The result is pure mood: part melancholy holiday ballad, part slow-burn horror overture. It anchors the whole soundtrack, pops up in trailers, and does exactly what it was meant to do: emotionally glue together “player + Christmas + Willamette” before the game lets the zombies off the leash.

Once you’re in, the album goes full alternate-universe Christmas compilation. “Oh Willamette” is a straight-faced golden-era crooner tune tailored to the setting and to Frank West’s swagger, sung by Douglas Roegiers, complete with brass, strings and a smoky lounge feel. Around it sit tracks that sound like they’ve escaped from some long-lost holiday LP:

• “Looking for Santa Claus” with full big band and pit-orchestra flair,

• jazz-club takes like “Jingle Jazz”, “Deck These Halls” and “Jingle Bell Swing” with the Braxton Cook Quartet,

• vocal features on “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, “Up on the Housetop”, “O Tannenbaum”, “12 Days of Christmas”, “Jingle Bells Ballad”,
  all newly arranged and recorded specifically for Dead Rising 4.

The best part is how this music actually lives inside the game. It’s not just shoved into menus: it pours out of Willamette’s radio stations and PA system. Lozowchuk talks about two main in-world stations: a classic Christmas AM channel and a more country-leaning one, loaded with dozens of holiday tracks plus over 150 fake commercials and PSAs recorded just for the game. Get into an SUV, turn on the radio and start ploughing through zombies while some syrupy crooner wishes you a merry Christmas; the contrast is so sharp it’s almost a joke in itself. He even snuck himself in as the voice of one DJ on WLD530 AM, pitched down, delivering deadpan ads to a world that’s already ended.

Then there’s the mall muzak. Dead Rising has always loved slightly disturbing elevator music, but Dead Rising 4 turns it into a full aesthetic. A lot of the classic carols have cheesy, piped-in arrangements that play in stores and corridors: synth strings, bland flutes, glossy reverb, exactly like the background noise in any real shopping center in December… except here the corridors are smeared with blood and broken glass. Even the pause menu leans into it with gentle holiday cues that pretend everything is fine while Frank West is, canonically, having the worst Christmas of his life.

Look at it from a “Jukebox” angle and Dead Rising 4 is basically an accidental Christmas album with zombies attached. The digital OST dropped on December 2, 2016 via Sumthing Else Music Works, and community sites catalogue it at over 4 hours 20 minutes of music across 100+ tracks. Buried in that mountain is a self-contained holiday playlist: “The Coldest Time of Year,” “Oh Willamette,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” “Jingle Jazz,” “Deck These Halls,” “12 Days of Christmas,” “Auld Lang Syne” and a full supporting cast of big-band, swing and crooner pieces. You could genuinely put a big chunk of it on at a Christmas party and half the room wouldn’t realise they’re vibing to the soundtrack of a mall massacre.

What makes the whole thing work so well is that Dead Rising 4 never really picks between horror and Christmas. It just smashes them together at full volume. One moment you get screeching, Penderecki-flavoured strings over an Evo zombie attack, the next you’re coasting through town to a warm, brassy “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” cover. That clash feels weirdly honest: most real-world holidays are a mix of cosy lights, forced cheer and underlying stress anyway. If there’s a game soundtrack that captures the feeling of “trying to survive Christmas”, it’s probably this one.

 

Sources

• Q&A with Dead Rising 4 composer Oleksa Lozowchuk

• Interview with Oleksa Lozowchuk – The Sound Architect

• Dead Rising 4 Original Soundtrack – tracklist & credits

• Dead Rising 4 OST details – VGMdb 

• Dead Rising 4 soundtrack info – Sumthing Else / Soundtrack.net