Featuring the Slaughter Family and their Victims, the trailer showcases the familiar frights and sights of the original film along with a host of grisly surprises.

Gun Interactive has shared more details from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, including a Behind-the-Scenes video focused on the motion-capture animation process and a new single from Remains, the companion album to the game’s official soundtrack.

First, check out the video above for an exclusive look at how Gun Interactive uses motion capture to replicate and build upon the infamous performances from the 1974 film.

Shot on-location at The House of Moves in Los Angeles and shared just this week, the video diary gives horror fans a fascinating window into the method of mo-cap, illustrating some of the key choreography and physical performance that goes into animating character movements. Featuring insight and commentary from the Gun Team and their roster of talent—including industry veteran and horror icon Kane Hodder—this video is the first installment in a series of behind-the-scenes features focused on the craft and experience of making the Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Meanwhile, last week saw the arrival of “Tragic”, the latest track from the Remains companion album, written and performed by Wes Keltner & Jim Bonney. The heavy, looming song conjures images of industrial stagnation and rhythmic horror, and was very much inspired by the themes evoked by Kim Henkel’s original screenplay for the 1974 film.

Head of Brand Strategy Matt Szep writes that “track over track, Remains tells a story, creatively, of a move forced by modernization, into a place much darker and desperate.” Utilizing everything from guitar and drums to the Apprehension Engine—the singular musical instrument capable of producing inimitable horror soundscapes—Remains weaves a tale of dark abstraction and the unstoppable march of time, one that forms the perfect complement to the world and characters of TCSM.

Remains, The Companion Album to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game

Back when Kim Henkel penned the original Texas Chain Saw, the world was changing, adjusting, and evolving. This turbulence, as some of the far reaches and quiet corners of the country experienced their own unique growing pains, became part of the thematic foundation of the original screenplay.

“This album is a direct reflection of what Kim Henkel wrote, influenced by the events that led up to that moment and why the Slaughter family did the things they did and it’s about that town that they grew up in and around. For generations, what that town did was process meat, from cattle to pigs, entire slaughterhouses really, and just like Henkel’s commentary on modernity overall, from automation to gas price and supply issues, he applied that to this small town. The modernization of the slaughterhouse caused the shortage of work, causing the town to dry up, their chief moneymaker in that town gone. And so some of them moved away and some of them remained. So it was latching on to that story as that’s actually the kickoff, the spark that led to this was that town falling.”

–Wes Keltner, CEO, Audio and Art Director, Gun Interactive

“Wes called and asked if I would be interested in writing music about what happened before the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie. The story of a town before their only source of income dried up. The story of a family, before they were left behind by friends or co-workers, with no job prospects, alone on their family homestead to fend for themselves the best they knew how. My mom is from a tiny town in the rust belt of central Ohio, that suffered a similar fate, and while my relatives fared a whole lot better than the Family in this story, how could I turn down an opportunity like that?”

–Jim Bonney, Composer

Inspired, Keltner and Bonney sought to create an audio tale that took that shift into the abstract of sound. Track over track, Remains tells a story, creatively, of a move forced by modernization, into a place much darker and desperate. The famous phrase “Who will survive and what will be left of them?” doesn’t just apply to the Victims in this sense, as the Family has also been forced to survive in their own right, losing some of their prior selves in the process.

“The overall goal was to create music that was inherently evil, but not cartoonish. Heavy, without lacking sensitivity, slow and menacing, but never without soul. I really enjoyed collaborating with Wes. He offered me a clear, driven direction, and throughout the process he pushed me to create better music, but he also left space for me to experiment and to leave my own mark within the music. The challenge was always to create memorable hooks and riffs, while keeping the music really simple and minimal. It was always about mood and vibe, never about cleverness or virtuosity.”

–Jim Bonney, Composer

“So if track one is basically the beginning of the story, everyone getting their pink slip at the slaughterhouse, the town hall meetings, the flyers where people are ‘looking for work’ it’s that moment, progressing towards the maddening of that situation and what did you have to do or how extreme did you have to go, the far other end of that scale. The album follows that thread from jobs lost at the slaughterhouse to killing their first victim.”

–Wes Keltner, CEO, Audio and Art Director, Gun Interactive

While The Texas Chain Saw Massacre official game soundtrack is a whole and separate entity from Remains, both will be available in their entirety on streaming services on the road to launch, each serving their own unique place in the overall experience. If you’re looking for the tracks you hear in the menus and in game, the official soundtrack is for you. But for the listener that wants to dive deeper, that wants to hear something dark and abstract, thematic and inspired, Remains might be what you’re looking for.

And that’s no accident. Wes and Jim approached this project with a very specific intent, born out of the inspiration detailed above.

“Jim Bonney played a great role as composer in this, where I come in with a more thematic and inspirational role, and of course the use of the Apprehension Engine. Every track on Remains, you can hear the Apprehension Engine buried within it, teasing a lot of sounds out of it that maybe didn’t work for the game, but work well here in the more melodic environment. You’ll hear a lot more percussive use of the Engine that you didn’t necessarily hear in the game soundtrack.

We also felt strongly that we needed to have real instruments on this album because when you use synthesizers or digital audio workstations, the sound you get is perfect, and we didn’t want perfect moments. We wanted those moments where you’re a fraction off in the beat, that humanization of music, to me, sounds more natural than the absolute perfection that you get through something that’s more synthesized. Jim and I both wanted that feeling of human people behind this sound.”

–Wes Keltner, CEO, Audio and Art Director, Gun Interactive

“The whole process started when Wes sent me elements he generated from the Apprehension Engine. I used these ingredients to start each composition, and those sounds generated ideas which I could develop further, into a rare, orchestral variety of colors and textures. The sounds from the Apprehension Engine also inspired me to make my own aural weirdness. Before this collaborative process was over I’d used lawnmowers, wood and barbed wire, a factory whistle, Aztec death whistles, a cigar box and rubber ball, a variety of insect noises, as well as sounds I could squeeze from electric and acoustic guitars. And of course, I had to sneak a chainsaw into the mix at one point.

I don’t feel the sound of this music belongs to any specific time period. It could have been recorded in 1974 or it could’ve been recorded yesterday and I think that’s because we kept it simple, not going crazy with the latest bizarre effects. Part of what gives this music a timeless quality is the guitar tones, and I am so grateful to Dave Runyan and Ronan Chris Murphy for helping me capture those sounds. It’s becoming a dying art to record the true grit of a real vintage tube amplifier and not to rely on effects or amp simulators to get a guitar tone.”

–Jim Bonney, Composer

A sonic tale told across ten tracks about a time of change, the resistance to the future, and the lengths you might go to in order to desperately hold on to life as you know it. Enjoy the first track, “Bitter” from the companion album to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game, Remains.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2023.