Warframe and Erra Collaborate on Anime-Style Music Video for 'Crawl Backwards Out Of Heaven'

Warframe is renowned for its deeply engaged community, where players have celebrated milestones like births, graduations, weddings, and even funerals within the game’s digital universe. Among its most dedicated fans is JT Cavey, a player since Warframe’s launch 13 years ago with over 1,700 hours logged in the game. What sets Cavey apart from other long-time players is his role as the frontman of Erra, a progressive metal band with a massive global following.

Formed in 2009, Erra has been a staple in the metalcore scene for longer than Warframe has existed. Cavey joined the band in 2016 and has openly shared his passion for gaming over the years. When Warframe’s creative director Rebb Ford and community director Megan Everett reached out to Erra about contributing a song to an anime-style Warframe video, Cavey was ecstatic.

"When Rebb and Megan talked about the band on Twitter, I was like 'Oh my god, that's so cool. I can't believe they know who I am or know who we are,'" Cavey told Aftermath. "And then at some point, [one of us] reached out when [Erra] came to Toronto a couple years ago, and I was like 'Oh my god, we should get coffee.’ So I met up with Rebb and Megan, got them into the show, and we all had a great time. I think a year later, Rebb inboxes me, and she's like 'Hey, I have a wild idea: How about we borrow one of your songs to release some more Warframe content?' I was like 'Say less. Let's go.'"

The song, “Crawl Backwards Out Of Heaven,” from Erra’s 2024 album Cure, accompanies an anime-style video featuring two versions of the player-named character Jade Shadows. The video, animated by London-based studio The Line, draws inspiration from classic Gainax works like Gurren Lagann and presents a dual-timeline narrative where the character’s two possible futures, Sirius and Orion, battle for supremacy. As a result, there are two distinct versions of the video.

Cavey embraced the nostalgic aesthetic of the video, which he described as reminiscent of early-2000s anime music videos (AMVs).

"I grew up watching tons of anime music videos back in the day,” said Cavey. “The first ones were always Linkin Park or Breaking Benjamin or Disturbed or whatever. And recently, we've seen peers in our space, like Bad Omens and Spiritbox, doing animated videos [the latter in conjunction with Riot Games]. There's been more presence of anime and drawings and kind of making an extended universe outside of just the music with art. So that's reminiscent of the AMV days. For us to do our own version and get an animated music video was perfect."

For Cavey, the collaboration also evokes a classic anime rivalry dynamic.

"Yin and Yang, good meets evil, light versus dark, Goku versus Frieza—I think the song was representative of that."