Gaming soundtracks have conquered streaming charts, won Grammy nominations, and spawned whole orchestral concert series — but one of the most celebrated scores in modern gaming has never been performed live, in full, in front of a real crowd. Until now.
Mick Gordon, the Australian composer behind the ferocious industrial-metal soundtrack to Doom 2016 and its 2020 sequel Doom Eternal, has been announced as a headliner for the RADAR 2027 music festival in Manchester. The performance will mark the very first time the Doom soundtrack has been played as a full-length, live concert — bringing Gordon himself, a complete live band, and a full orchestra to the stage.
The announcement came via RADAR’s official Instagram in late July, with early bird tickets going on sale on 7 August at radarfestival.co.uk.
What the Doom Live Show Will Bring to RADAR 2027
This is not a tribute act or a DJ set. According to RADAR’s announcement, Gordon will be performing the actual Doom score himself — the composer, on stage, playing the music he built from scratch for one of gaming’s most viscerally satisfying experiences.
The show will feature a full live band and a full orchestra performing alongside Gordon, making it the most ambitious live staging of any video game soundtrack in recent memory. Gordon also confirmed that the infamous Doom Machine — a custom instrument he built specifically to produce the sounds of Hell — will be making its live concert debut alongside him.
“This isn’t a DJ set, and it isn’t a tribute act. It’s the actual composer, the actual score — the riffs played properly loud in a room that can withstand all the ripping and tearing.” — RADAR Festival press release
Gordon previously performed a short medley of Doom tracks at The Game Awards in 2016, joined by drummer Matt Halpern of Periphery. That performance, while celebrated, was only a few minutes long. RADAR 2027 will be the first full concert.
The Doom Machine — Gordon’s Custom-Built Instrument
The Doom Machine is one of the more unusual artefacts in contemporary game audio. Gordon built the instrument himself while composing the Doom 2016 score — a contraption designed to generate the kind of grinding, textural metallic noise that gives the game’s combat its distinctive sonic identity.
In interviews since the game’s release, Gordon has described the Doom Machine as integral to the score rather than a novelty — its specific tones are woven throughout both the 2016 game and Doom Eternal. Hearing it played live, in a full concert context, is something fans have requested for years.
Since finishing his work on the Doom franchise, Gordon has gone on to collaborate with bands including Bring Me the Horizon, Motionless in White, and industrial group 3Teeth — building a reputation as one of the more versatile and creatively adventurous figures in heavy music production. His approach — treating a video game soundtrack as a serious compositional work rather than background noise — helped shift how the industry thinks about game audio.
The Doom 2016 score itself went on to win multiple awards and is frequently cited by players as inseparable from the game’s identity. Where many game soundtracks work as mood-setters, Gordon’s music is essentially a third gameplay mechanic — the relentless BFM syncs and aggressive tempo shifts responding dynamically to combat state.
RADAR 2027 — Dates, Location and How to Get Tickets
RADAR Festival is an annual UK event focused on contemporary metal, tech-metal, and progressive rock. The 2027 edition is scheduled for 30 July to 1 August in Manchester, with Gordon confirmed as one of its headline acts.
The festival describes its genre as “genre-busting” — and booking a gaming composer performing a video game soundtrack with a full orchestra certainly fits that framing. Early bird tickets went on sale on 7 August; standard tickets and further lineup announcements are expected in the coming months.
For gaming fans in the UK, RADAR 2027 is shaping up as one of the more genuinely unusual live music events on the calendar — a chance to hear a decade of ripping, tearing, and relentless momentum finally land the way it was always meant to.
