Players of The Lord of the Rings Online waited years to be able to explore Mordor in the digital world of Middle-earth and now have the chance with the game’s latest expansion! We’ve imagined Mordor while reading Tolkien’s books and have seen it in the film adaptations by Ralph Bakshi and Peter Jackson, but LOTRO gives fans a unique and more immersive way to see that land.
“The Mordor expansion allows players the ability to explore the shadowy lands beyond the Black Gate. It is filled with lost stories, unfamiliar enemies and the opportunity to fight through the lands around Mount Doom and beyond. Visit the game world at www.lotro.com
The music that plays throughout the game gives it an extra sense of magic. In addition to the 10th Anniversary Soundtrack, fans will soon be able to add more LOTRO music by composer Chance Thomas in their lives with the Mordor Soundtrack.
“Mordor is a terrifying place,” says Thomas. “This score is definitely darker and more martial than my previous LOTRO music. But it’s still Tolkien. There is a sense of reaching for light beneath the oppressiveness, threads of beauty and strength, even in the midst of overwhelming shadow.”
The Mordor original score was performed by the Utah Film Orchestra and Choir, the same groups that performed Chance’s original scores for LOTRO’s Riders of RohanTM, Mines of MoriaTM and Shadows of AngmarTM releases. Additional featured performers on the Mordor soundtrack include David Osmond on vocals, Aaron Ashton on the fiddle, Jeannine Goeckeritz on flutes, Daron Bradford on penny whistle, Nicole Pinnell on cello, and Rich Dixon on guitars. The score was recorded at HUGEsound Post Production in Salt Lake City, Utah. Michael James Greene engineered and mixed the recordings.
Strings recording session
There are areas in the game where the music is so creepy (I say that in the most positive way I assure you) that I actually feel scared for my avatar. The clearest memory I have of this is in my early LOTRO days when I was terrified every time I had to go into the Old Forest, I can only imagine how magnified that feeling will be in Mordor. I’m only at level 76 so it’ll be a while until I’m able to quest there, but in the meantime I can listen to the music to give me motivation to level up!
I was fortunate enough to receive the soundtrack a little early and wasn’t able to resist listening to it multiple times. There are a total of 16 songs, and since we are in the Halloween season a Mordor Soundtrack seems incredibly fitting! The soundtrack immediately starts out in a haunting tone with the first track, “Barad-dûr”, and that same quality carries throughout the majority of the songs. One of the moments that sticks out to me is in “Lhaereth of Seregost”, at the 1:10 mark there’s a swell of string instruments (my music terminology is very minimal so hopefully you can still understand what I’m trying to say, haha) that made me sit back and think, “Wow that’s pretty!”–you hear that same tune a little bit again in “Fate of Ayorzen”.
One of the my favorite tracks is “Coronation of Aragorn”, it stands out from the others because it doesn’t have that same haunting quality, instead it sounds hopeful and heroic and contains some familiar themes from the game. It truly is a song worthy of the King of Gondor, and what I love the most about it is that it has a hint of Shire music (but that’s probably just the wannabe-hobbit in me talking). Another one of my favorites is “Chant for Sauron”, and it’s exactly that, this eerie, deep song for the Dark Lord.
The final track, “Ever On”, took me completely by surprise! I was so immersed in the music that when I heard this track I stopped what I was doing because like the name suggests, it features lyrics from the song Bilbo sings and part of me wanted to sing-along even if I didn’t know the melody yet. It feels like such a fitting end to the album and I’ve already caught myself humming it more than once.
So, what’s my final verdict on the Mordor soundtrack? It’s amazing and I recommend any LOTRO player/Tolkien fan to buy it! It will be released on November 1 so you won’t have to wait long, but if you don’t want to wait until then, you can listen to this highlight reel.
