The collaboration between Nine Inch Nails and id Software occurred strictly due to a mutual admiration for each other's work; Reznor provided his services to Quake completely free of charge.[5][6]
A vinyl LP edition of the soundtrack was released in 2020.[7]
Aside from the first relatively driving track, Quake is a predominantly ambient soundtrack,[1] and was Reznor's first experimentation with the genre.[4] He would later go on to win an Academy Award for his ambient soundtrack work.[1] The music on Quake has been described as dark, immersive, and intended to accentuate the game's oppressive tone.[8] The music is often called "subtle", "disturbing", and "hair-raising".[9][10] About the soundtrack, Reznor said, "it is not music, it's textures and ambiences and whirling machine noises and stuff. We tried to make the most sinister, depressive, scary, frightening kind of thing [...] It's been fun."[11]
The Quake official soundtrack received positive reception, with many appreciating how the music builds upon the game's atmosphere. In his 1996 review of the game for GameSpot, Trent Ward wrote, "Simply put, this is the best soundtrack ever created for a computer game." Ward went on to write about how the eerie sounds and unsettling background noises heighten the game's already tense atmosphere.[12] Major Mike of GamePro said that "With harsh, rockin' guitar riffs, and creepy low-key synthesizers, the music goes perfectly with each level and thoroughly enhances the overall atmosphere."[13] Writing for Destructoid, Peter Glagowski said, "Not only did it show that the industry was moving beyond being targeted solely at children, but it pushed the action of its game into overdrive."[14]
Because the soundtrack is pressed onto the same disc as the game itself, track one is relegated to game data.[4]
Quake's original packaging provided no official song titles.[15] Some fans came up with unofficial titles, most of the time linking the song to the name of the level in which it first appears.[4] The titles seen above are taken from the 2020 vinyl re-issue, in which the official titles of the songs were finally revealed.[16] The fourth side has no grooves, instead being etched with some of Quake's source code; the part of the source code being what triggers the game to play the CD audio tracks.
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