Sea shanties are a fairly bizarre musical trend to see in the year 2021, but there’s no denying their popularity even if it is mostly a meme. According to The Cut, sea shanties originally got started in the 1400s as a means of ensuring that sailors all either pushed or pulled at the same time. That’s not really necessary on modern ocean vessels, so the sea shanty now lives on as a TikTok meme.
Not that it’s a bad thing--there are some pretty great sea shanties floating around out there. And Warframe’s new sea shanty is easily top tier.
Warframe recently released its 30.0 update, Call of the Tempestarii. It brings with it a huge overhaul of the Railjack system, Warframe’s space-based combat mode, so having a sea shanty as the update’s theme music is hardly inappropriate. It’s also really, really good.
But it’s not just a great song. Call of the Tempestarii is a Corpus-themed update, and Digital Extremes has made it a habit of using old-timey work music to emphasize the Corpus’s horribly oppressive capitalist society. When Warframe released its Fortuna update back in 2018, which added open-world elements to Venus, Digital Extremes released “We All Lift Together” in the trailer, a song that was heavily inspired by chain gang/slave music.
Fast forward to 2021 and Digital Extremes has nailed Warframe’s musical tone once again with a sea shanty for an update that overhauls ship-based combat. And just like the last song, “Sleeping In The Cold Below” has shot to the top of the Warframe music charts.
Warframe typically defines itself humorously as the “space ninjas” game, but with this song, they’ve definitely crossed over to being “space pirates.”
Call of the Tempestarii is out now on all platforms Warframe is played, bringing with it the Railjack rework from PC as well as the Zephyr rework and a whole new storyline. You’ll need to have completed the Deadlock Protocol to access it, so make sure you get caught up on Protea’s questline if you haven’t completed it.