Steel Hunters Original Music by Artur Tokhtash
Genres: Post-Industrial Ambient, Ritual Electronics, Hauntology, Adaptive Game Music
Tags: #GameSoundtrack #ArturTokhtash #RitualMusic #Psychoacoustics #MMO #PostIndustrialAmbient #Vargan #SomaSynths #AdaptiveMusic #HauntologicalSound #ExperimentalSoundtrack

Enter the auditory core of a once-ambitious AAA game — a post-industrial soundtrack shaped by memory, machine, and myth.

This is not background music. This is a sonic intelligence, embedded into what was meant to be a living world — an adaptive echo chamber that anticipated action, remembered each death, and reshaped every battle as an acoustic ritual.

Created in real time with Soma Lyra-8, Enner, Pipe, Terra, and the jaw harp (vargan), the score fused analog synthesis, throat singing, and decayed cassette ghosts into a brutal, sacred texture.

The vargan pulsed like a distress beacon from extinct civilizations. Soma synths cried like ruptured comms. My own childhood voice, salvaged from a 33-year-old tape, became a haunted choir inside collapsing arenas.

Rather than looping cues, the soundtrack unfolded as gesture-based composition: friction, breath, broken resonance. Trills became glyphs. Lamentations became weapons. It wasn’t accompaniment — it was the game’s only surviving memory.

Rooted in ritual sound, psychoacoustics, and microspectral dissonance, this score held together a world already doomed by other hands. Think Ligeti’s micropolyphony meeting Scott Walker’s industrial opera — if both were abandoned on a rusted server rack.


The servers are cold now.
No battles load, no players spawn, no clan wars burn at midnight.

What remains is sound.
Fragments of ritual electronics, post-industrial laments, vargan pulses beating like a black box from a drowned world.

No one will storm those arenas again.
But the music remembers.
It always will.



Ligeti in the ruins.
Scott Walker under rusted steel.
Radigue, if she scored ghost towns.

A battlefield erased —
but the sound refuses to die with it.

Only here lies the true soundtrack — the one written not because of, but in spite of.
What you see on the “official” page is an echo of an old, incorrect version — a fossilized placeholder that has nothing to do with the real music carved into the game’s last moments.

Keywords (for search engines and platforms):
Artur Tokhtash, video game soundtrack, post-industrial ambient, MMO soundtrack, psychoacoustics, ritual music, hauntological audio, vargan music, throat singing in games, Soma synthesizers, experimental OST, adaptive game audio, sound art, gesture-based composition, vocal lamentation, analog synth score.


It’s an epitaph carved in feedback and tape hiss.
The game is gone.
The music remains.



Disclaimer:

This soundtrack was composed and produced during my tenure as Audio Director and Composer within the Wargaming group. It is presented here solely for archival, non-commercial, and portfolio purposes, and does not assert ownership over any associated trademarks, brands, or game intellectual property.

All music was originally written, performed, and recorded by me, and reflects my creative authorship.
No affiliation or endorsement by the current holders of the Steel Hunters IP is implied.

If you have any concerns regarding rights or usage, please contact me directly for clarification.

© Artur Tokhtash, 2025. All moral rights asserted.

Steel Hunters: OST Archive

Portfolio: Game Audio Director, Composer & Sound Designer | Adaptive Music & AAA Game Soundtracks
This portfolio is a selection of my composer works, created both as part of large-scale AAA game audio systems and as independent conceptual projects. It features adaptive game scores, motif-driven orchestral writing, experimental sound worlds, and hybrid music/sound design pieces — where music is not only accompaniment but also a core structural element of gameplay and narrative.

Core Expertise
	•	AAA Game Scores & Interactive Music — large-scale compositions integrated into gameplay and story
	•	Adaptive Audio Systems — Wwise, FMOD, Unreal Engine, Unity
	•	Sound Design & Audio Identity — hybrid score/sound environments, audio branding, bespoke effects
	•	Experimental & Conceptual Works — modular synthesis, field recording, electroacoustic processing

Each piece reflects both artistic vision and technical execution — from adaptive pipelines (Wwise/FMOD) and bespoke field recording sessions to modular synthesis and handcrafted processing chains.

For Game Studios & Creative Teams

If your project seeks immersive, emotionally charged, and narratively resonant audio — from fully interactive game scores to atmospheric sound worlds or signature sound identities — this playlist demonstrates what I can bring as a creative partner.

A.T.

Prepare for the raw intensity of “Ozelot II,” a track that unleashes unrelenting energy and defiance within the Hunters universe. Featuring crushing, hard-distorted guitars, my powerful throat singing, and a hidden subliminal message woven into its core, this track is as primal as it is provocative.

“Ozelot II” strikes a balance between chaos of the hardcore and control, creating a relentless auditory assault that mirrors the high-stakes tension of the battlefield. It’s not just music—it’s a challenge to listen deeply and uncover the secrets buried beneath the surface.

Ozelot II

Immerse yourself in the captivating soundscape of “Stellar Echelon,” the signature steel hunters lobby track. Designed to set the tone for intense strategy and unyielding determination, this piece balances atmospheric textures with pulsating rhythms, evoking the tension of impending conflict.

With its haunting melodies and cinematic undertones, “Stellar Echelon” invites players to reflect, plan, and prepare before diving into the relentless battles that define the universe. This track embodies the essence of the game: bold, futuristic, and deeply resonant.

“Stellar Echelon” sets the tone for command. A steel hunters lobby track carved from steel and silence, it hovers between restraint and readiness — a suspended state before the descent into battle. Built around vast harmonic planes and pulsing low-end energy, it evokes the disciplined might of elite pilots awaiting deployment. Echoes of ancient signals drift through the mix like forgotten warnings, while tonal clusters align like constellations in formation.

Stellar Echelon I

Step into the atmospheric embrace of “Celestial Concourse,” a steel hunters lobby track that bridges the raw essence of humanity with futuristic ingenuity. Featuring the evocative sounds of the jaw harp—reimagined as a primal synthesizer—it symbolizes the profound connection between human resilience and the enduring strength of steel.

The track’s hypnotic rhythms and organic tones merge seamlessly with ambient sci-fi textures, creating a space where ancient traditions meet advanced technology. “Celestial Concourse” sets the stage for players to gather their resolve and strategize, offering a moment of reflection before the battles ahead.

Celestial Concourse II

“Deirao II” – A battle anthem driven by fierce guitars and electrifying breakbeats. The track captures the chaos and intensity of combat, blending aggressive rhythms with futuristic grit. Prepare for adrenaline-pumping action.

Deirao II

“Deirao I” – A piano ambient track that immerses you in an unnerving, ethereal atmosphere. Delicate piano melodies weave through haunting textures, evoking a sense of solitude and foreboding amidst the battlegrounds. Best experienced with headphones for the full effect.
Check out the parent playlist https://on.soundcloud.com/kmZRSSy3n76LPAFh9

Deirao I

A sonic fortress of resilience and power. This track embodies the essence of unyielding strength, blending industrial tones, futuristic soundscapes, and cinematic depth. 
Perfect for fans of industrial ambient, microtonal dark synth, and epic dystopian soundtracks. Step into the shielded stronghold and experience the sound of invincible force.

Aegis

A battlefield drenched in failure, where broken war machines lie abandoned, their final efforts erased by time. Misfortunity is the sound of fate’s cruel indifference — where every step forward is met with collapse, and every victory is fleeting.

Mechanical drones wail in the distance, their distorted echoes swallowed by storm-churned skies. Glitching rhythms and decayed synth textures pulse like the last sparks of a dying engine, while haunting melodies rise and fall, whispering of warriors lost to the fog of war.

This is the march of the forsaken—the soundtrack of a future that was never meant to be won.

Misfortunity

OST World of Warships — No One Survives [Artur Tokhtash]

I am Artur Tokhtash, a composer and sound artist.
My music unfolds at the intersection of classical tradition and sonic art: preludes, improvisations, and electroacoustic structures are not genres, but forms of memory and breath.

For me, sound is ritual. Each piece is not merely a composition but a trace of presence, an echo of vanished spaces, a light from places that may no longer exist.
The piano, in my preludes, becomes a vessel — an instrument that carries not only melody but also the silence between notes.

My works do not function as background. They are spaces for listening, inviting the listener into a state where music becomes both signal and transformation.