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Elena Siegman is known for providing the unforgettable vocals for Call of Duty Zombies. Her new solo material, however, shows just how versatile she really is as an artist. She recently dropped “The Source” through her own label, Dollbreath Records. I had the chance to chat with Elena about the amazing fan reaction to her return, the emotion behind her gaming anthems, her take on AI in the industry, and her advice on dealing with gatekeepers.
Reuel
Hello Elena! I’m very happy to chat with you. How are you doing?
Elena Siegman
Hi Reuel! I’m – very busy pouring all of my heart and soul into a bunch of projects all at once, and very excited to talk to you! I’m so grateful for your questions – I am a big fan of your outlet. 🙂
Reuel
Oh I’m humbled!
‘The Source’ has been out for a month now. A quick look at the music video’s YouTube comments shows people saying things like “the Queen is back” and, overall, a lot of excitement for your new solo material. How does it feel to have such an enthusiastic fanbase behind you?
Elena Siegman
Honestly it’s like a fever dream. I’ve been wanting to release my own music like “The Source” for a very long time, but it’s not been an easy journey to get there. I was extremely nervous about it and wasn’t sure it would land with anyone, but it has been received incredibly well.
For a very long time, the songs I sang in Call of Duty Zombies, which garnered a huge number of fans, was like a weird alternate universe that part of my personality got to live in. It’s always lived that way in my psyche, this idea that people liked those songs (and of course my performance on them) but not necessarily me and my music. The super supportive reaction to my solo music has blown me away.
Reuel
While your longtime fans are used to the heavy metal music you’ve made in the past, your newer material blends elements from a variety of genres. What inspired this move toward a more fluid musical style?
Elena Siegman
I am a huge metalhead and fan of nearly every sub-genre of metal music – but in my bedroom, it’s not music I make by myself very easily. It’s not bedroom rock. It’s loud and it’s complicated and it requires many collaborators. But it is my true love and now it’s finally a tool in my toolbox.
When operating completely solo, I play the guitar, but I’m more comfortable on the piano. I also listen to so many different kinds of music and I always have. I have genres that I gravitate towards, metal and punk probably being the primary ones, but I also love R&B, soul music, alt country, classical music…
It has always been a major challenge for me to focus on a single genre, although I do think I have a “style”, or at least, I think I’m figuring that out. It makes it hard to explain what kind of music I make to people, but I could easily tell you when in the studio if something sounds like “me” or not. When I write it’s more about mood, picking the right sounds and tones that really convey a feeling. Those can come from anywhere!
What’s emerging now is a really interesting mix of heavy metal, synthwave, dark pop, industrial… and more.
Reuel
This sounds exciting! Many people know you through the Call of Duty Zombies soundtrack. Not every song fits the atmosphere a game is trying to create, yet your music became a defining part of that experience. What do you think it is about your vocals and performances that connected so well with the gaming world?
Elena Siegman
I’m a game developer by trade, so I could probably write an entire PhD thesis on this. Primarily, I think it’s because I sang the original songs for zombie mode in the recording studio AT the game studio, with the development going on all around us. I worked at Treyarch at the time, so I was making the song with my coworkers. I’m a gamer and a game developer, and I was regularly playing the game we were making music for – so I had a vivid and clear picture of the context the song would be heard in. I really think that makes a difference.
The songs were written specifically to pay the themes of the maps and the game mode off – so all I really had to do was submit to the song and perform it in the way the music made me feel (and the way that Kevin directed me to sing it!). The songs are written not just to elevate the tone of the experience, but to give you some inspiration to last a little longer against the relentless waves of zombies. It’s a battle cry!
When it comes to music, especially for games, you have to commit to the story the song is trying to tell and the emotions it wants to evoke. I think some people perform to lean into the tones and the sounds, which, of course is important, but nothing is more important than the emotion. You can make very ugly sounds and nail the emotion and it is perceived as beautiful.
Reuel
Wow! Thank you for sharing this wonderful experience. Going back to your new single and the excitement around it, what can fans expect next? Is there a bigger release on the horizon that you can share with us?
Elena Siegman
I’ve been holed up in my own head and home secretly writing and recording music all by myself for a long time. I’ve slowly been building the relationships with other artists and musicians and the infrastructure to get that music out there, to my quality standard, and now I’m finally releasing it. I am over the moon. In terms of what’s coming right up:
You may have heard that I’ll be in the next Call of Duty’s zombie map (Rex Infernus) coming out on Sept 20 – so folks will get to hear a new collab with me & Kevin Sherwood, which is pretty much the pinnacle of music making joy for me.
Personally – I am releasing music all year – and I’ll be releasing a new cover (of Faith No More’s “From Out of Nowhere”) on September 18. I also have some new originals in the pipe that will be coming out soon, I am VERY excited to release them – I have a fun, creepy song for spooky season in October, and some really exciting originals and covers coming up as well.
Ever since “Remember Us” in 2024, I’ve been working with Pete Adams, the producer Activision hired to record and produce my vocals for it – and we have been cooking up so much good stuff. I really am bursting at the seams for people to hear it all.
Reuel
Wow that’s a lot of things to look forward to!
Besides the shift in musical styles, you’re also releasing music now through your own label, Dollbreath Records. Having your own label gives you more control over your music, but it also comes with more responsibility. How has that balance been for you?
Elena Siegman
I honestly kind of love responsibility… with great responsibility comes great power? Does it work backwards? I guess we’ll find out.
I have a lot of crazy ideas. It is hard for me to explain them to people. It’s easier for me to just get started on them and see if I can get anybody else involved in my wild schemes. Having a label makes that a LOT easier. I’ve been sketching and making things for so long, and releasing things for other people for so long. I finally figured out to cross the streams – make my own record label!
It’s been a dream of mine for a long time. I grew up in the era of Kill Rock Stars and Righteous Babe Records – DIY record labels created to showcase music that didn’t get released on major labels but had a very serious and devoted audience. I want that! I hope to expand the label in the next year or two. There are a lot of artists like me – they’ve been introduced to an audience who is dying for more music from them, but it’s a real brain buster to figure out how to connect. That was me for ages. I think I’m finally figuring it out!
Reuel
Brilliant! While you’re heading towards a more indie music ground, people are using AI to say hello to each other. What dangers does AI pose to musicians in particular, and what do you think needs to be done to counter it?
Elena Siegman
When I think about dangers posed by AI, I don’t actually fear the tool. I think there is something really amazing about a technology that you can interface with using human language. That’s really cool, in fact. The problem arises in using it as a way to “measure” value of actual human output and experience. Who gets to decide? There is so much danger in assigning “financial value” to human expression – and we’ve all lived our entire lives under that paradigm, and now it’s changing faster than we can adjust to. Of course that introduces more difficulty in being a creative human trying to make a living with their talents. It’s a profound change.
There was a huge earthquake in the music business in the late 90s/early 2000s, when Napster threatened to make music “free”. The reason it got to that point in the first place is that the entire industry that connected music to people was exploiting the only two pillars of the whole thing: the fans and the artists.
Personally, I just think we’re there again. The technology is one thing, but the inputs, the training, they aren’t being appropriately accounted for. If we were actually interested in creating a system that didn’t exploit the most important people in the system, we could create a new way to use this technology that benefits the artists and the consumers today. I believe that people make and listen to music to connect to other people. Nobody is using generative AI to connect to other people in the same way. It might be good to get your ideas out, to find someone to collaborate with, but it shouldn’t be the end product.
Elena Siegman
`When I write a song, and I perform it, and I record it, and I do all of the work to get it on the internet, I have paid a fair price for every tool I used to do that. I have paid the people I collaborated with to make the music. And if someone uses that song in their commercial work, they have to compensate me for it. If we had a system where generative AI fairly compensated for what it learned from something you made or created or was trained on your voice, for example, things might be different.
There’s also a huge problem in conflating the tool with the output. The process is important to most art, but at the end of the day, if you’re trying to share your point of view with someone, the process of creating it is not as important as the impact. The impact of creating artwork with AI is now mixed up with the economic, environmental and moral impact of it. We haven’t got a map! We really need one. As consumers, I think people do need to be more thoughtful than they have in the past. As artists, I think we need to be more principled.
Reuel
Thank you, again, for sharing your great insight!
We have readers from all around the world, including women who still face barriers, and even persecution, in the music industry. As an inspiration to many aspiring musicians, what message would you like to share with those who dream of pursuing a music career?
Elena Siegman
I think the typical advice is “don’t listen to the gatekeepers.” I heard that when I was younger and I took the wrong message away. Because the gatekeepers were extremely powerful. When your safety is in question, “don’t let the bastards get you down” is actually terrible advice. If they’re tearing powerful icons like Madonna and Beyonce down, if Ke$ha and Halsey find themselves in label purgatory, if Pussy Riot and Mai Khôi can be targeted by the state for expressing themselves… “don’t get discouraged” is incredibly unhelpful for a vulnerable person with a marginalized identity and absolutely zero power.
Instead, I think it’s better to remember that if there’s a gatekeeper, that implies there’s a gate. Who built it and why? And is it actually blocking anything? What do you want to do? And who is stopping you? Can you get around them? I confused fearing for my safety (actually smart) with believing I wasn’t supposed to be making music (incorrect).
These are questions I only started asking myself once I stopped believing that anybody had a right to tell me if I was entitled to make music or not. I had internalized the idea that I was interloping on territory that wasn’t meant for me because of the treatment I experienced, or saw other women experience. I took exactly the wrong message away from that.
You only get the one life. You only get the one belly and the one fire in it! Nobody gets to tell you what to do with it. It may scare some people. It may upset some people. You might actually have to worry about that if it does. But you can do hard things! And people being upset is not evidence that it’s not your right to express yourself, and to follow in the footsteps of others that have inspired you. It is really, really important not to get that twisted.
Reuel
That was quite inspirational! Thank you for your time, Elena! It was genuinely educational getting to chat with you! Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Elena Siegman
Just that I have many originals and many covers in the pipe that I’ll be releasing for the rest of this year and well into 2027. I don’t want people to miss out! I have an email list at elenasiegman.com where I give people early access to the songs before they release, and also release demos and b sides and things they can’t get any where else.
And that if you’re a musician reading this that has a fan base from a game or a soundtrack and no idea how to reach them, that’s a problem that I’m building Dollbreath to solve and I am very interested in hearing from you.
Well, that, and! That it is very meaningful to be interviewed by y’all at FemMetal. You are right at the intersection of things that matter a lot to me and being recognized by you and your readers is a big deal for me! <3
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