Resident Evil regular Nick Apostolides has revealed he listened to Metallica, Nirvana and Alice In Chains to get into character for Leon.
No-nonsense badass Leon S. Kennedy was first introduced in 1998’s Resident Evil 2 and quickly became a fan-favourite character. Since the release of the Resident Evil 2 Remake in 2019, the character has been voiced by Nick Apostolides.
Responding to a fan on Cameo, Apostolides has spoken about the music that helps him get into the headspace of Leon. “I really take a lot of deep inspiration from music to get into the right mindset because music puts me in an area of my life [and means I can] draw from real emotion,” he explained, with each game showing Leon at a different time in his life.
“I never really thought about it too much for Resident Evil 2 but I was listening to a lot of Nirvana at the time. I don’t have one song in particular but that grunge rock energy was good for young Leon,” said Apostolides. “When he got a little bit more grizzled in Resident Evil 4, I was getting into Alice In Chains. I let songs like ‘Would?’ and ‘Them Bones’ be a huge inspiration. Alice In Chains is considered borderline grunge rock but more like acid rock. Slow, dredging, heavy riffs. Love that music. [Their later albums] ‘Rainer Fog’ and ‘The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here’ are really dark.
“In Resident Evil 9 I used older metal [such as] 1980’s Metallica,” he continued. “It’s super heavy, fast with lockstep rhythms. Their song ‘Orion’ is my favourite song of all time. I had that in my head. It’s just such a heavy riff, and there’s so much behind that song about why they wrote it, how they wrote it. I just love it.”
