Hey, I’m Atlas Sinclair and this is Atlas Is Bored, a blog about making stuff and going places. I haven’t taken you anywhere yet because I’m still working through this Half Life Fan Fiction Concept Rock Album Project. I promise, once we’re finished with it, I’ll take you on an adventure or two. We’re still making our way through the canals, but we’ll see the Highway soon.
Today, I’m going to portal you into City 17. You have chosen or been chosen to join Gordon as he arrives in the city. He arrives by train and I’m going to totally nerd out on some sound design here that I’ll show you when we jump into Logic Pro.
As Gordon arrives, the propaganda begins immediately. Welcome. Welcome to City 17. Dr. Breen’s welcome message streams on screens everywhere, playing through loudspeakers that you can’t turn off, echoing off concrete like a bad remix. The Combine are everywhere—masked, intimidating, armored up, ready to baton-crack you for looking at them wrong, ushering you along.
It’s all very overstimulating. You’ve got screens, scanners, soldiers, citizens shuffling past with their heads down, and somewhere in the distance, a Strider is thumping along, probably stepping on someone’s car. Gordon is just taking it all in—silently, because that’s his whole thing—and you can feel the weight of it. This is what the world became while he was in stasis.
That’s what the song is about. What City 17 really is.
Not the propaganda version. Not Breen’s “finest remaining urban centers” speech. The real City 17. The checkpoints. The ration distribution. Civil Protection beating people in alleyways. The feeling that you’re always being watched because you literally are—those scanners don’t even have the decency to be subtle about it. They just come right up and flash you.
It’s oppressive. It’s dystopian. It’s got a certain Eastern European brutalist architecture vibe that really says “abandon all hope.” And somehow, against all of this, Gordon’s supposed to be the guy who fixes everything. No pressure, Mr. Freeman. Just topple an interdimensional empire. You know, the right man in the wrong place and all that.
So musically, I wanted to capture that feeling of arrival—of stepping off the train into a nightmare and realizing there’s no return ticket. The chaos, the control, the propaganda, the knowledge that you’re not here by choice.
There’s going to be a really strong guitar riff in this song so this will be a good time introduce The Last Frequency’s guitar player. His name is Marren, but he goes by Crow. He plays a custom 7-string guitar that is shaped like a crowbar. During the Combine era he was a mechanic and worked mostly at the train depots, repairing train engines and railcar brake systems. At the peak of the rebellion, as Gordon Freeman led the charge on the Citadel, there was a massive train derailment in the City 17 train yard that jammed up incoming and outgoing trains for almost two days. This had led to a critical supply crunch to the Combine on battle lines and, some say, helped tip the momentum of the fight towards the rebels. There’s never been any confirming evidence but Marren was on duty at the time of the derailment but rumor has it that the pileup was caused by one of the lead rail cars brakes jamming up suddenly, causing it to stop as all the cars behind it kept pushing up against it, eventually causing the whole line to accordion off the tracks.
In this track, we’re opening with train sounds—that rhythmic clacking on the rails, a rising tension—then layering in Breen’s voice, Combine radio chatter, scanner beeps, boots on concrete, the whole dystopian orchestra. And then the band kicks in. The Last Frequency remembers what it was like to arrive in that city and they’re here to remind you: you survived it. I want to create some fast moving verses and a soaring chorus with this song.
Alright, let’s pick up that can and get to work.
Atlas Sinclair 