The Music of Space Marine: Track by Track

1. Prologue
Music for the intro video. Dark and only hints at the Titus theme before it begins to build tension until we reveal the main credits with some lighter orchestralestral elements. Heavy use of synths. That bass build up is the sub bass from the minimoog!

2. Titus' Theme
This one definitely took us the longest to write. We went through lots of variations to finally come up with "The Theme". Even though Titus and the other Space Marines are walking war machines, the guys at Relic wanted the theme to also reflect a solitary and personal nature. That's how the solo strings found their way into the score.

3. Prelude To War
We originally wrote this track for one of the big battle set pieces where Titus is blasting hundreds of orks with a huge gun. However, the Relic guys played it over the opening cinematic and liked it there instead!

4. Against All Odds
This is the first time we hear Mira's theme. She's a very strong character and we didn't want to make her theme too feminine. It still needed to be very melodic though. Beautiful, strong, melancholic. These were some of the qualities we tried to instill into her theme.

5. Valkyrie Run
This track was a lot of fun to write! It really has nothing to do with the rest of the score. But seeing that scene with orks flying around on jetpacks, it just felt like the music could take a brief departure from the style we had developed. There's a certain...homage to one of our favorite composers in here too :)

6. Battlements
One of the first battle tracks which plays early in the game. It has this very militaristic, marching vibe to it. It was supposed to really make the player feel powerful. It plays the Titus motif towards the end with a real sense of drama. Much more of an emotional cue than your typical action piece.

7. Whispers of the Dead
One of the few ambient cues in the score. We love writing those. Plenty of room to breathe, perfect for gameplay. Wish we could have written more of these. The main theme is played by a patch we programmed on the Camel Alchemy synth. It's used in various other spots throughout the score as well.

8. The Blood Ravens
Starts out with a simple yet new bold statement. Most of this track is percussion with some sound design elements and synths layered in the background.

9. Reunion with Mira
A more militaristic version of the Mira Theme. Her character has more determination in her now and her theme needed to ramp up accordingly too.

10. The Weirdboy
Boss Battle. This cue was actually constructed by cutting the live orchestra recording up and treating it like samples. We wanted this cue to really to feel ‘weird' and out there. The strings were edited to create this odd counter rhythm to the percussion. It seems really simple but was rather complicated to write.

11. No Man's Land
This is the track that replaces Prelude To War in the big set piece where Titus is obliterating orks by the hundreds. It's not really a typical action cue. We went for longer, broader phrases in a lot of the action material for this game. It just seemed to fit the Space Marines better than the more energetic and disjointed type action music that we might normally feel inclined to write.

12. The Inquisitor
This starts out with the cellos playing the Inquisitor Theme. It's immediately followed by the low brass playing the theme for the Power Source. Even though the Inquisitors' theme sounds quite dark and disturbing here, the theme was composed in a way where it can be played with major harmony supporting it as well. It became quite a versatile melody even though it's fairly chromatic as well.

13. The Meat Grinder
One of the first action cues we wrote. While we were trying to stay away from using too many synth sounds, at 1:53 you can hear a new melody played by a custom patch by some freeware synth. We just like the sound of it. Listen to this cue on a good sound system with a sub. It should ‘rumble' nicely!

17. Legions of Chaos
There are a lot more Chaos cues in the game. Chaos was supposed to sound completely different than the rest of the score. This is one of them however it was edited for the soundtrack release. Lots of distorted pads and crunchy percussion. The Taiko drums are actually live but most of the percussion is processed in the Kyma workstation.

18. Heresy
This music plays during the final cinematic of the game. Without giving away any spoilers, the music starts off a bit uncertain and emotional. It's been a long road for Titus and the music needed to add that additional weight to his every move. At the very end of this cue we used a full choir for the first (and only) time in the whole score. It just felt like the right way to end the journey and wrap up the score with one final emotional push.

19. A Hero's Legacy
This was written as an end credit suite and it's one of our favorite pieces on the soundtrack. We pretty much had free reign with this one since we weren't tied to any particular cut-scenes or gameplay. It's actually the first time we've been able to write something specifically for the credits and it was a lot of fun! At 5:00 in length it really allowed us to stretch our legs a bit. Something we rarely get to do due to the typical confines of writing music for games. This was the last piece we wrote before heading into the studio to record the whole thing. It was a great way to end the score for us!

You can download the 19-track soundtrack through Sumthing Else Music Works Amazon MP3, and iTunes.