We love summer time music festivals, so right here at Wargaming, our staff at World of Tanks Modern Armor has made it a mission to convey you a hard-rockin’ annual music occasion that actually shakes the battlefield: Metal Fest.
New tanks, new 3D Commanders, new Challenges and occasions: they’re all half of what Metal Fest presents every summer time. However that is our third yr of the occasion, coming to you on PS4 and PS5 beginning August 26. We knew we needed to go greater and louder than ever.
To borrow some lyrics you may know, we needed the greatest—and we received the greatest.
This yr, our featured act is none aside from the legendary band Kiss! Not solely that; we’ve received the precise voices of core members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley in the recreation.
That is the way it all shook out.
Shout It Out Loud
Ever since the band’s reveals at The Daisy in March 1973, after they debuted the character designs they’d turn out to be identified for, Kiss has been greater than a bunch of expert musicians. They’ve been icons and personas.
So although Metal Fest 2025 options 4 new Kiss-inspired Premium tanks, we knew particularly that the 3D Commanders representing the 4 basic Kiss personas (The Demon, The Starchild, The Spaceman, and The Catman) needed to be completely proper and bigger than life.
Luckily, as World of Tanks’ senior producer JJ Bakken explains, the band was all in. “Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] had been gracious sufficient to offer us some of their time for the recreation, as they signify the highest profile characters in Kiss … Each Gene and Paul noticed all our ideas as we created them for characters and tanks. [They] introduced the concept to us to actually lean into the fantastical parts of every character.”
Our artwork staff labored to get these fantastical parts down, whether or not we’re speaking the feline claws and nimble animations given to The Catman 3D Commander or the monumental pair of bat-like wings that Tanks’ artwork director Andy Dorizas advised for The Demon 3D Commander.
However as any tanker is aware of, on the subject of our 3D Commanders, it’s not nearly the look. Our gamers’ favourite Commanders communicate with custom-written voiceover strains, so of course that’s the case for all 4 of our Kiss Commanders.
“Kiss themselves made the resolution to have Paul and Gene featured as voices in the recreation,” says the recreation’s audio director, Brendan Blewett. “They had been very specific in that the Kiss ‘characters’ are simply that—characters, not real-life people. Every of them has traits and people are portrayed, in the occasion of The Starchild and The Demon, by Paul and Gene.”
So what was it like, working with legendary musicians to convey the voices of their world-famous characters to our console battlefield?
“Working with Paul and Gene was an absolute blast,” says Blewett. “These guys are clearly seasoned studio vets and actually made the periods enjoyable and fascinating.”
He provides, “Gene lived as much as his popularity as a grasp of trivia and saved us entertained between takes regaling us with tales from the highway and factoids. Paul was completely a gracious, pleasant particular person and belted out an extremely intense vocal efficiency and saved it going for the complete session. We even quipped that it was ‘like six months of reveals in two hours.’ Spectacular!”
As for the voiceover for The Starman and The Catman, tankers and Kiss followers ought to relaxation rock out assured that these Commanders have obtained the identical consideration to element. In line with Blewett, “We labored with Kiss to grasp the character profiles of The Catman and The Spaceman and got here up with casting pointers from there. For example, The Catman is a smaller man, witty and agile, whereas The Spaceman is older and wiser. The phrase ‘sagacious’ was used in session to explain the character of The Spaceman.”
Warfare Machine(s)
In the event you assume the Kiss 3D Commanders sound spectacular (and sure, I’m biased, however they’re), remember to recruit them throughout Metal Fest, and pair them up with our 4 Premium Kiss tanks, additionally impressed and named after the characters: The Demon, The Starchild, The Spaceman, and The Catman.
Every of these tanks not solely takes visible inspiration from Kiss; it additionally has talents impressed by a particular band member’s persona. You’d higher imagine that The Demon is a tank that mounts a flamethrower!
All of that is in addition to the Challenges, particular occasion battles, each day login rewards, and extra that Metal Fest presents. Rock out whilst you can, and don’t miss any of it—Metal Fest takes place in World of Tanks Fashionable Armor from August 26 by means of September 15 on PS4 and PS5!