There's something magical about that aggressive opening chord of Diablo. It's probably fair to say that no sound was more burned into the minds of late-90s PC gamers than those first few gothic guitar strums.

That music is evocative of late-night looting and hushed duping; of our old friends The Butcher, and his pal King Leoric; of Fallen Ones, and Godly Plates of the Whale, and a peg-legged jerk named Wirt.

But it's also evocative of an entire era, of a time when games were exceeding our expectations in leaps and bounds. A time when the art form was just becoming capable of wonders like online multiplayer and CD-quality sound, but still felt personal, hand-crafted, intimate.

Matt Uelmen is a product of that era. Rather than attempting to mimic a marketable Hollywood ideal, his music is trademarked by live recordings and eclectic instrumentation. He's a humble, multi-talented guy, who can both conjure sound effects out of thin digital air and compose symphonic scores by hand.

I originally set out to run a tribute to the Diablo scores in 2007, a little over a decade since the release of the first game. However, after contacting Blizzard that summer, they told me that Uelmen had recently left the company, and I feared that he'd permanently moved on to other endeavors.

But after a short break from game development, Uelmen and many of the key figures once involved in the Diablo franchise have come full circle. The team at Runic Games--a start-up founded by former Blizzard North icons Max and Erich Schaefer, Peter Hu, and Fate designer Travis Baldree--is currently readying to release a new action-RPG, Torchlight, on Tuesday.

A budget-priced game in the style of Diablo, Torchlight is the first step toward a full online effort for Runic; a bold new venture, and a perfect opportunity for an interview.

In this lengthy ten-page conversation, we cover Uelmen's entire career: the early days at Blizzard North--a company first known as Condor--to the tragic 2003 breakup of the studio; his years at Blizzard Irvine spent contributing to the music of World of Warcraft; and his exciting new gig at Runic Games.

Shack: Hey Matt. How are you?

Matt Uelmen: Good. I had some leftovers that were decent, so things are going alright... It's a little crazy. We're down the stretch to our final week. I mean, people are going to be playing [Torchlight] in two weeks. It's extremely nerve-wracking.

Shack: Well, if you have the time, I'd like to sort of span your career with this.

Matt Uelmen: Sure, as long as I don't torch my cell bill as much as I did when I was working with the actors last month. I managed to put 850 minutes on it because I was on conference calls for hours.

Shack: Oh god. [laughs]

Matt Uelmen: But yeah, I'd love to do a real interview. I don't do very many of them.

Shack: Great. I wanted to go over a little of your background before we get to Blizzard and Torchlight. Now, you grew up in the LA area, is that right?

Matt Uelmen: That's right. I grew up in a town called Lomita, which is sandwiched inbetween Palos Verdes and Torrance and San Pedro. And of course San Pedro--mispronounced Pee-dro by the locals--is technically in the city of Los Angeles. Some trivia. [laughs] I grew up very near the shoestring, which is a part of LA that was more or less claimed by the city really aggressively about a hundred years ago, to connect to the port from downtown.

Shack: Are you still there now?

Matt Uelmen: Sort of. I'm near downtown LA, but I'm actually in the San Gabriel valley.

Shack: When you were growing up, were either of your parents musicians?

Matt Uelmen: You know, neither of my parents are musicians, but all five members of my immediate family can play a piano keyboard, so it's a pretty musical family. I had an aunt that passed away a few years ago who had perfect pitch, and she played in church for a long, long time. So she was kind of a pro in her own way.

Shack: I read that you took piano lessons at age six. Was that something that you were made to do, or something that you wanted to do?

Matt Uelmen: No, it was just something that was there, because my sisters were both taking lessons by the time I was born. So it was just more or less in the water.

Shack: Did you enjoy it?

Matt Uelmen: You know, it's funny... I wasn't a good student. But I did enjoy them, and as I look back now, getting lessons in scales and basic theory and all that was really, really good for me in terms of making it feel natural. It's kind of depressing how true it is, but if you're going to be good at something, you really do have to start getting in the habit of working on it when you're just six or seven.

Shack: Especially in music.

Matt Uelmen: Well, really anything. [laughs] Music, language, sports. If you find someone that's really excellent in something, there's a good chance they were exposed to it at a young age. It's kind of sad, because we all like to think we can go back when we're older and relearn these things, but that's not always the case.

Shack: What was your relationship to gaming back then? Did you play a lot of games growing up?

Matt Uelmen: I was born the exact summer that Pong [became] the first big commercial video game, back in the early 70s. So I kind of always felt it was in the background. My first console was an Atari 2600 when I was about maybe ten years old. So that was definitely my first experience with that, and I got to see the... I was the target age of the golden age of coin-ops, because in a lot of ways the coin-up world had its peak in '83 and '84, much like the 2600 had its peak around the same time. And then Time Warner kind of crashed when Pac-Man was over-manufactured. It's funny how it's ancient history. [laughs] But that was certainly the backdrop of my childhood, and I love those games.

Shack: You're lucky to have been there for that. I just went to the big Bay Area coin-op convention, California Extreme...

Matt Uelmen: Oh yeah, yeah! I went to that five years ago myself.

Shack: Oh, great.

Matt Uelmen: I'm spacing on the name of the pinball... Steve Ritchie, I met Steve Ritchie there. I'm a big Steve Ritchie fan. Steve Ritchie had no idea what I was, or what Diablo was, or what Blizzard was, but I love his pinball designs. I played a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball in the good old days of Blizzard North.

Shack: [laughs] That's awesome.

Matt Uelmen: Yeah, yeah. It was a fun show. They had a lot of the old coin-ops and gimmicky arcade stuff. It's great that you can find it in working order.

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