Netflix’s adaptation of the world of Castlevania expands with Castlevania: Nocturne, set hundreds of years after the events of the mainline series. Castlevania: Nocturne introduces new members of the Belmont family and expands beyond Europe to the Caribbean while still centering its story in the midst of the French Revolution. Castlevania: Nocturne will debut to high fan expectations after Castlevania became regarded as one of the best video game adaptations to date, but with key members of the Castlevania creative team involved, signs point to a promising follow-up.
Some of the key players returning for Castlevania: Nocturne are composing duo Trey Toy and Trevor Morris, who scored the entirety of Castlevania. Together, Toy and Morris have created a new direction for the music of Castlevania: Nocturne, while still preserving the best aspects of their work on the first series. The duo also brought iconic pieces of the Castlevania franchise’s musical past to life, such as the beloved “Divine Bloodlines.”
Trey Toy spoke with Screen Rant about bringing new musical stylings to the Castlevania universe, “Divine Bloodlines”, and more. Note: This interview was conducted during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and the show covered here would not exist without the labor of the writers and actors in both unions. This interview has also been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Trey Toy On Castlevania: Nocturne
Screen Rant: I know you did this with Trevor Morris, who you have done so much with over the years. At this point, how does your collaboration work?
Trey Toy: Trevor was one of my first mentors when I got into this business, and I’ve been working with him in the Castlevania cinematic universe since 2017, so it’s been a long time. His philosophy on storytelling [and] his approach to composing, production, mixing, all of it, is very much in everything that I do. Originally, when I started working with him, it was co-producing pieces of music and writing additional music for him, and, like I said, it was kind of a mentor-mentee role. But over the years, we’ve become partners and collaborators, and we’ve started co-composing soundtracks together, which has been a lot of fun. I loved being a part of the original Castlevania so much, so when he asked me to co-score this with him, it was probably the easiest “Yes” of my career.
I saw that you had been on that, and I imagine it’s like an emotional experience when any show comes to an end. Did you know this was happening as the last one was ending?
Trey Toy: No. No, I didn’t. I played the games as a kid and I knew the depth of the Castlevania universe and franchise, so I always thought it was a ripe and fertile ground to do further explorations and evolutions, but I didn’t know that this was coming at all. So again, when Trevor told me about it, it was a huge surprise and I was really, really, really excited. [It is] now almost two years to the day since we got involved, which is cool. It’s rare that we get to be a part of something so ahead of time.
Since you had spent so much time in this universe, what did you want to keep from what you had done before in terms of palette and stuff like that, and where did you want to kind of branch out?
Trey Toy: Netflix and the production team were very, very direct that they wanted this to feel like a new evolution of the story. They didn’t want it to necessarily just feel like Castlevania original 2.0. They wanted Nocturne to be its own story, its own universe, [and] its own cast of characters. So with the score, we tried to do something new and different, and I think the palette is very different from the original. The original [had] a lot of epic orchestra percussion [and] huge synths. It was a very heavy and high-octane score, and there is still plenty of that, and there are a lot of amazing action sequences–you have your classic orchestra, organ, choir, [and] everything turned up to 11–but at the same time, one of the things I love about Nocturne is [that] at the same time that it’s big and epic and huge and has amazing action sequences, it’s also very grounded and organic and character-driven, and the characters have amazing and very intricate arcs.
We wanted this score to be even more thematic than the original was, and we wanted each character to have their own very unique sound world. So, we did something that we didn’t do in the original: we recorded a lot of soloists playing instruments that range from viola da gamba, which is something you don’t hear very often in scores these days, electric cello, [and] even conch shell. There’s a musician, his name’s Don Shelton. He plays tuned conch shells, and it is the most beautiful and haunting sound. It’s really, really special, and it also just looks so cool watching him play.
So, we definitely took a more experimental approach than the original, which I love. I grew up with experimental music, and that’s kind of the world that I came from, so any chance I get to work with cool instruments or make weird sounds and create something new is always an exciting opportunity for me. When Netflix came to us and said, “We want it to be experimental, we want the score to be front and center, and we want it to sound like something people haven’t heard before,” I was very, very excited. You don’t always necessarily get that direction.
And it’s set during the French Revolution. Did you lean into the French-ness of it all?
Trey Toy: Yes and no. On the one hand, the show definitely inhabits the revolutionary zeitgeist of the time. Even the storylines that aren’t directly connected to the French Revolution are tinged with the spirit of revolution, which is really cool. I would say the spirit of revolution inhabits the score and the score feels like it comes out of that zeitgeist. For instance, the theme for one of the main characters, Maria Renard, who’s a playable character in the games… She’s young, she’s idealistic, she has the revolutionary spirit, and her theme is kind of a rousing call to arms for the disaffected youth of the French Revolution.
At the same time, the theme for Annette, who’s another one of the main characters, shares the spirit but sounds like it comes from another world because she comes out of the slave plantations of the Caribbean. It’s not necessarily directly connected to the French Revolution, but it shares the same spirit.
More specifically, without giving anything away, with one of the primary villains of the series, we definitely wanted this character to feel both aristocratic and of the period, but at the same time, ancient and evil, because they’re a vampire. We balanced that with a very French-sounding harpsichord, which is kind of mangled, and we use weird effects on it to make it sound otherworldly, and then more ancient-sounding vocals and low horns and more esoteric sounding instruments.
So, we did try to incorporate elements that sounded French, but we also had to nod to the fact that even though we’re set in the French Revolution, many of these characters are thousands of years old, and the battle they’re fighting–the Belmonts versus the forces of evil–is one that has been raging for hundreds of years.
I listened to [some versions of] Divine Bloodlines on YouTube because I saw your Instagram post. One comment from a year ago said, “Netflix better do this song justice,” and then right above it, a few months ago someone was like, “I can fairly say that Netflix did, in fact, do this song justice.”
Trey Toy: That’s so great. That’s awesome.
Clearly, it’s something people are very passionate about. When you were arranging this classic music, did you have a sense of pressure or, as a fan, were you just excited?
Trey Toy: [Laughing, sarcasm] Not at all. No, no pressure at all.
Like I said, I played the games as a kid. I love the games, but I had been far removed from them for years, so when we were working on the original series, I got to know just how passionate the fan base still is. It was cool; I got to go back and reconnect with some of the games, and I’m playing one of them now just to kind of get in the spirit. I learned in a very new way how much the music of the games means to the fans, so I’m always very aware of that.
Now, our number one priority is to be the best storytellers that we can, and our job is to support the story, support the production staff, and support the characters, and make it the best narrative that it can possibly be. But at the same time, both Trevor and I are very, very aware of the fan base, and so it’s definitely an added layer of pressure that I think ultimately takes the score to the next level, because we know that people are listening and people are paying attention. Netflix knows too, and that’s why they wanted us to take the score to a new level, and make it front and center.
When it comes to the original game music, those decisions are up to the lawyers in terms of what can be used and what can’t, because that’s owned by Konami; it’s not music that we can just use at will. As a result, it’s very, very exciting when we get the call and they say, “We get to use ‘Divine Bloodlines’,” or, in the case of the original series, “Bloody Tears.”
We take very, very special care with those pieces. We go through multiple versions, we get a lot of feedback, and we spend as much time on that single piece of music as we would on an entire episode. A lot of tender love and care goes into that.
Using “Divine Bloodlines” as an example, how much has it changed since you first started trying to arrange it? If you’re spending that much time on it…
Trey Toy: I learned this from going back to Trevor’s version of “Bloody Tears” for the original; I actually like to–because there have been many versions of these pieces throughout the years, either in the games or covers–go to the original version from the game, so the simple 16-bit chiptune, because that way I’m not influenced by what’s been done. [There are] amazing, amazing versions of these pieces out there, and it’s a lot of pressure to listen to those and then say, “Oh my gosh, now I have to do something that’s going to live up to that.” So I prefer to keep that out, kind of keep the blinders on, and focus on the original source material. The piece evolves in building blocks from there; we really start with the original melody, the original harmony, and [say], “Let’s just arrange this and make the melody fit the scene.”
Like I said, that’s our primary goal; we’re storytellers. When it comes to the trailer, [it’s about] making the melody really, really shine in the context of what you’re seeing on screen. Then beyond that, it’s adding production value. It’s deciding what instruments we’re going to use. In the case of this, we went through many, many iterations, from fully orchestral to fully rock band to somewhere in between, and we settled on guitar, electric cello, [and] some amazing vocals by Ari Mason, who’s featured throughout the series both on vocals and viola da gamba. I don’t think she’s playing viola da gamba on “Divine Bloodlines”, but she does throughout the series, and she’s amazing. So it’s hard to answer how many iterations we went through, but I would say there were many, many back-and-forths between me and Trevor and with the production team to get it where it is–building from that simple melody to the massive, massive piece that it is.
I know you can’t really speak in detail about things, but is there anything that you can talk about that you’re excited for people to see and/or hear when this comes out?
Trey Toy: Yeah, actually. I hesitate to say favorites, but I think the most exciting additions to the Castlevania cinematic universe–I think I may have just coined that phrase, by the way, I don’t know—[are] Annette and Edouard. The original Castlevania and the Castlevania games exist primarily in Europe, and as such, that’s the setting, [and] that’s the characters that we’re used to. The cool thing about Nocturne is [that] we expand the geography and the culture of the show to incorporate other areas of the world, which was exciting for us as composers. With both Annette and Edouard coming from the Caribbean, coming from the vampire-enforced slavery there, it gave us the chance to explore a new context, new instruments, and new sounds.
More specifically, with Edouard, the character is a world-renowned opera singer, and he is played by Sydney James Harcourt, who is an absolutely unbelievable vocalist. He’s been on Broadway; he was in the original cast of Hamilton. He’s an absolutely insanely talented individual, so we got a chance to work with him very early on, on these pieces of classical music that Edouard sings. That was a very special opportunity that I’ve never had before, and possibly never will again. And that’s one of the reasons Trevor and I were brought in so early. We were brought in before there was any animatic to even look at. It was just reading the scripts, talking with Kevin and Clive, the showrunners, talking with Sam and Adam, the directors, and working with Sydney on these pieces. He’s just an absolute joy to work with. He’s incredibly talented, and it was fun to go back and work with some classical pieces that I may have studied a long time ago, but had the chance to reacquaint myself with.
About Castlevania: Nocturne
In the midst of the French Revolution, Richter Belmont fights to preserve and defend the legacy of his family and thwart the imminent rise of an evil vampire ruler.
Castlevania: Nocturne will be released on Netflix on September 28th.
