Roadrunner Records continues its legacy of driving the collision of culture and heavy music with the release of the first original song, “The Last Ballad Of Damrod”, from the upcoming The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power (Season Two: Amazon Original Series Soundtrack). Composed by Emmy Award winner Bear McCreary and featuring vocals from Meshuggah frontman Jens Kidman, the song will appear in the highly anticipated second season of the Amazon Original series.
“The Last Ballad Of Damrod” (feat. Jens Kidman) will be released on August 8, 2024. The song is available to pre-order and pre-save now via Roadrunner Records here.
A song about a vicious Hill-troll, “The Last Ballad Of Damrod” is brought to terrifying, screaming life by Jens Kidman, the unforgettable lead singer of Grammy-nominated Swedish extreme-metal band Meshuggah.
Says McCreary: “When I first glimpsed Damrod, the murderous troll in The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Season Two, I knew immediately I had to call Jens Kidman. The aggressive frontman of Meshuggah, Jens put a searing brand on ‘The Last Ballad Of Damrod’ with his blistering vocal performance. I am exhilarated to team up with Roadrunner Records, home to some of my favorite bands of all time like Gojira and Slipknot, to bring our song to the world. My collaboration with Jens, alongside virtuoso drummer Gene Hoglan, on ‘The Last Ballad Of Damrod,’ offers an introduction to my exploration of the darker recesses of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium and sets the stage for the rest of the sweeping score to come.”
The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power (Season Two: Amazon Original Series Soundtrack) will be released worldwide on August 23rd, tied to the highly-anticipated return of the series later this month. Available across all music streaming services, the full episodic score for the second season of the Amazon Original series was composed by Emmy Award-winner Bear McCreary (Da Vinci’s Demons). Following each episode, Amazon Music will release a weekly soundtrack album containing the score for that episode, only available on Amazon Music.
For the epic first season of Prime Video’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, composer Bear McCreary wove a tapestry of symphonic orchestra, bombastic percussion, and folk instruments from across Europe and North Africa, combined with solo vocalists and choirs singing in the iconic languages of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. For the gripping second season, McCreary has built atop that foundation with dynamic new themes and colors, including Bulgarian women’s choir and gadulka for Rhûn, children’s choir for the pastoral city of Eregion, Hardanger fiddle for new character Estrid, and deathly whispers for the terrifying Barrow-wights.
Season Two of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power will debut on Prime Video on August 29, 2024, in more than 240 countries and territories around the world, and in multiple languages.
The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings books, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.
The first season of The Rings Of Power has been an unprecedented success, viewed by more than 100 million people worldwide, with more than 32 billion minutes streamed. The highly anticipated series attracted more than 25 million global viewers on its first day, marking the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video, and also debuted as the No. 1 show on Nielsen’s overall streaming chart in its opening weekend. The show has driven more Prime sign-ups worldwide during its launch window than any other previous content to date. The season finale also created a global cultural moment, with multiple series-themed hashtags, including #TheRingsofPower and others, trending in 27 countries across Twitter for over 426 cumulative hours throughout the weekend.