*Warning — this article contains spoilers for The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Season 2 Episode 7*
After months of hype and build-up, the Siege of Eregion finally arrived in The Rings Of Power Season 2 this week with the release of Episode 7, ‘Doomed To Die’. And with orcs and elves heading to war, the scales falling from Celebrimbor’s eyes as the true extent of Sauron’s manipulation is finally revealed, and fire scorching the night sky as the forces of darkness converge upon Middle-earth, it’s safe to say that things are getting pretty heavy for our heroes ahead of next week’s series finale. And not just heavy, but — thanks to the arrival of a certain Hill-troll — pretty heavy metal, too.
At the height of the episode’s breathtaking action, just as it seems the tide may be turning in Gil-galad and Elrond’s battle with Adar’s monstrous children, from amidst the trees emerges Damrod the Hill-troll (voiced, in an ironic twist, by Gil-galad actor Benjamin Walker), wreaking havoc while crushing elves and Uruk alike as death metal screams, crunching electric guitars, and thunderous drums let rip. It’s a sight — and a sound — unlike anything we’ve experienced in Middle-earth before. But, as composer Bear McCreary tells Empire, it’s a meeting of music and source that’s been a long time coming. “Extreme metal belongs in Middle Earth,” says McCreary, who took a break from scoring the likes of God Of War, The 4:30 Movie, and Rings Of Power to drop his own full-on prog-metal concept album The Singularity earlier this year. “And it belongs in Middle-earth because of Melkor (aka Sauron’s evil antecedent Morgoth), because of the Orcs, because of the musical and rhythmic tradition that's baked into the pages of Tolkien’s legendarium for that side of the moral spectrum.”
I thought, 'this is the most brutal thing I've ever heard in Lord Of The Rings.'
What’s more, as McCreary explains, ‘The Last Ballad Of Damrod’ — the track that finally brings metal’s storied relationship with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings full circle (google ‘Tolkien Metal’; it’s a whole thing) — was the only way to bring the sacking of Eregion, an epic conflict involving trebuchets, cavalry charges, and bloody close-quarters combat, to its musical peak. “I saw the moment Damrod walks out and starts brutalising everybody on this battlefield and I knew I’d written my way up to this point,” shares McCreary, “I used every trick in the book, man. I had a full orchestra. I have this arsenal of percussion. I have synths underneath, adding this deep menace the orchestra's just not capable of. I have a choir in Vienna, I have a scream choir — a choir of 40 men specialising in just screaming doing all those orc chants. And yet, I had to top it! Damrod was this new force that enters the field, and I thought, ‘there's only one thing left that I can draw from, and it's extreme metal.’ And I was confident that I would be able to make that fit in the world of Lord of the Rings.”
Now, you might imagine some studio pushback against the idea of dropping a track that sounds like the kind of thing Melkor himself would’ve rocked out to into a billion-dollar high fantasy series based on one of the most famous stories in literature, but McCreary met no such reservations. “The show runners loved the idea, Amazon loved the idea, everyone I spoke to just loved the idea,” recalls McCreary. And so, with studio approval, McCreary called up Jens Kidman, lead singer of Swedish extreme metal band Meshuggah and vocalist on The Singularity track ‘Roko’s Basilisk’. “When Jens said he was interested, I wrote ‘Damrod’ for him, imagining his voice,” reveals McCreary. “Extreme metal vocals are real specific, man. You've got to get someone who can bring expression into something that sonically, many people just hear as screaming, which, of course, it is not. That kind of vocal must be done by a master, and so when Jens said he would do it, that’s when I got really excited.”
And so now, having released ‘The Last Ballad Of Damrod’ as a single back in August to rave reviews from fans, how does McCreary — whose many-layered, wildly ambitious score has proven a consistent high point of The Rings Of Power thus far — feel about Tolkienites getting to hear the track in context as we see “Troll cracking spines / Beneath his feet” at last? “The way it works against picture, that whole sensory experience, I find so moving,” reflects the composer, who’s been meticulously chronicling his creative process on his personal blog ever since Rings Of Power Season 1 first dropped. “I saw the final mix of the ep just a few weeks after we tracked it, and Damrod just walks out and starts doing his thing. And I hear the realisation of this creative impulse that I had, and I hear Jens Kidman against drop-tuned guitars that sneak in there… and I honestly almost wept because I got chills all over my body. Because I thought, “this is the most brutal thing I've ever heard in Lord of the Rings. Nothing else is like it, but it works!’” We’ll say!
Though Damrod’s last ballad has duly been sung, with no reprise looking likely for our favourite bone-crunching Hill-troll, The Rings Of Power Season 2 isn’t over just yet. And if you’d like to be in with a shot of hearing more of Bear McCreary’s sonically spellbinding score and seeing the epic conclusion to the Lord Of The Rings prequel’s latest series on the big screen, then keep your eye on Empire’s Twitter/X account, where we’ll soon be sharing details on how you can nab yourself free (yes, FREE!) tickets to a very special, star-studded exclusive Empire screening of the season finale next week. Now how's that for something truly preciousss?
The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Season 2 is streaming now on Prime Video.