4e Battle Music! My Dilemma.

[HeavenShallBurn]

Adding to what has already been said. Various power and viking metal bands make for a great soundtrack too

Tyr is a good band check out the youtube videos of some songs here
Regin Smidur
Ormurin Langi
The Edge

Ensiferum is good too
Into Battle

This song by Dream Evil is practically the universal anthem of paladins, funny since they're a parody of heavy metal bands.
The Chosen Ones

If you just search youtube you'll find a lot of great stuff that can be stripped via a Stream interceptor and converted to mp3 format.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Man-O-War "Crown and the RIng", Defender". Play before playing D&D, get into the mood!

Iron Maiden "Number of the Beast", for fighting evil cults.

"007", battle tune from james bond film "Thunderball", yeah, gets me going for the big finale fights!

long instrumental part in middle of the full version of "in-agadda-da-vidda" by Iron Butterfly.

John Carpenter's, NOT other artists', "Assault on Precinct 13", ooh yeah!

"Stop the Rock " Apollo 440, fun for those mad city chases, lol

Amon Hen, Bridge of Khazadum, Minas Morgul, and Ride of the Rohirrim from LOTR soundtracks.

"Krull" soundtrack (one of my ALL time favourite pieces of music! Pure D&D)

"Scorpio's Theme" from Dirty Harry.

"Ruckzug" form "Das Boot" soundtrack..good attack/chase stuff, from the Uboat convoy attack scene.

Bunch of tracks from Pete Namlook, Klauz Schultz are cool/ambient background stuff.

"Hellraiser", "Ace of Spades", and "Org*smatron", by Motorhead, good to listen to before actual play to give you OOOMPH, lots of

john Carpenter, "Big Trouble in Little CHina" soundtrack, some good pieces, like "Great Arcade". perfect for kung fu martial arts eastern specials

John Carpenter "The Fog", track 12 on the CD, is very long damn it's creepy as hell, great ravenloft stuff. Always watch lot of other folk do covers of Carpenter's work, make sure you get his ACTUAL work.

Vangelis, ok lot of different pieces by him, "1492", big bombastic..."Creation du monde" very tranquil (nice elven stuff), etc etc.

"Montagues and Capuletes" by Rimsky Korsakov, that's got OOMPH!!

"Baba Yaga's Hut" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwiU6P16xU0
and "Night on Bald Mountain" by Mussogrsky, yeah that's goot oomph,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhZxTS4UElA


Wagner, apart from the oh so well known Ride of the Valykries, "Siegfried's Funeral march", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20RldhK9354 oh yeah, that's great.

Watch "Conan the Destroyer" the battle in the crypt scene, pure D&D, lol!! Musics perfect for it.

"O Fortuna" by Karl Orff, hey, it's the D&D music ain't it?

half-Life, computer game, the music has great bits, Nuclear Mission Jam, Adrenaline Horror etc.

"Minsk", from battlefield 2142 game, awesome orchestral war music, got it free with pre-order special

"Mars, bringer of War", by Holst http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NeQ1h6lzLI

want more suggestions?

 

[Emory]

Shadow of the Colossus had good music - http://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/shadow-of-the-colossus-ost

That same site has tons of video game music which you can sample, and I'm pretty sure it's legal because the tracks haven't been licensed in the US yet.

I also recommend the God of War soundtrack (also on the site). And find the Conan soundtrack on iTunes or Amazon.

 

[Victoly]

Personally I'm against using the battle theme music from RPG videogames. The battles in most such games are really short, and D&D battles can take quite a while to sort out - sure, the tracks are designed to be looped, but a half hour of the Final Fantasy battle music is going to get on anyone's nerves. Some video games have great soundtracks that are worthy of sampling - the Quake soundtrack is one of my favourites for creepy underground exploration, and the Shadow of the Colossus score makes for some dramatic moments - but a lot of it becomes too obvious when taken out of context.

Also, if your gaming group is anything like mine, we've all heard those songs far too many times already while growing our materia or drawing more magics from enemies or whatever it was at the time.

I'll second the suggestion of viking/black metal. The stuff is sinister, it keeps consistently chugging along, and the lyrics are usually impossible to decipher (so that players won't get distracted by the words being spoken). I use a few tracks from Kampfar's album "Fra Underverdenen" on a fairly regular basis and I think they're a great match for desperate, violent situations. I'm also thinking about using some Meshuggah in the future.

I would also strongly recommend Apocalyptica, particularly their original tunes (not the covers - though some of the covers are also pretty good). Ninety percent of it is instrumental (I find vocals to be a distraction for game soundtrack music), it's all cello and drums (so it has some connections to "classical" music), and most importantly it kicks ass. Their self-titled album and the "Cult" album are great places to start for D&D battle music.

I ran an Iron Heroes game that was based heavily on reading the Berserk manga and listening to a bunch of Apocalyptica and black metal and it turned out exceptionally well.

Some links:
Apocalyptica: http://www.myspace.com/apocalyptica
Check out Grace, Worlds Collide, and Last Hope. The others have vocals, and thus aren't as good for scoring your games.

Meshuggah: http://www.myspace.com/meshuggah
Just for a general idea. Loud, relentless, and heavy - does your rampaging horde of orcs deserve anything less?

Kampfar: http://www.myspace.com/norsepagans
A little more atmospheric than Meshuggah, and also a little more dramatic. Cool stuff!

 

[Mouseferatu]

I actually have a CD I use specifically for D&D battles. I haven't updated it in a while, and I should; I want to add some pieces from some a good number of more recent movies. But the current track list is:

Duel of the Fates (from The Phantom Menace soundtrack)
The Fire Dragon (from the 13th Warrior soundtrack)
Let's Go Kill that Bastard (from the Ravenous soundtrack)
The Creation (from the Frankenstein [1994 version] soundtrack)
One of the pieces, forget which, from the Conan sountrack
Paul Kills Feyd (from the Dune soundtrack)
The Escape (from... Damn. I don't remember what soundtrack. It'll come to me.)
One of the pieces, forget which, from The Hunt for Red October soundtrack
Overture of the Rebel Angels (from Danzig's Black Aria)
Vampire Hunters (from the Dracula soundtrack)

I also have a separate list of D&D "mood music" that I use for non-combat scenarios.

I've found that if you want to set any sort of D&D mood, avoid music with lyrics in English (or any language you speak). I know some people will disagree with me, but I find it breaks the mood.

 

[That One Guy]

Why hasn't anyone said Dragon Force, Prodigy, or Rammstein, yet? Did I miss them?

Also, (In my group it's been done to death, but I love it for fight scenes) Powerman 5000 - When Worlds Collide (which used to be free for download on their myspace... but apparently isn't anymore. Le sigh). I dig the Devil May Cry 3 & 4 fight scene music, but I know some people who don't like it as much.

A fun experiment is plugging a bunch of things into Pandora and seeing what one gets (although sometimes this backfires terribly).

Edit: Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack is excellent for a Swashbuckling campaign.

 

[Yaezakura]

Why hasn't anyone said Dragon Force, Prodigy, or Rammstein, yet? Did I miss them?

I was actually thinking of coming back and suggesting DragonForce. ^_^ You can't really get more appropriate, but their music isn't for everyone.

And Victoly, we suggested music from Strategy RPGs, not Traditional RPGs. SRPG battles tend to last 20 minutes or more (much more in some cases). Their tracks are specifically designed to be listened to for long periods of time.

 

[KKDragonLord]

Victoly, not all final fantasy games are straight RPG games with 3min combat
one of the best for instance is Final Fantasy Tactics, which has two sequels.
Combat from Tactical Rpg Games range may usually from 5 to 30 minutes, and their soundtrack is certainly designed for that purpose.

 

[Victoly]

I didn't mean to overgeneralize all CRPGs - it was intentional hyperbole. Regardless, most of that stuff has a very specific MIDI sound, and when you take that stuff out of its "video game" context it often sounds a bit tacky. That's the way I feel, anyway. Some of the ocremix stuff is pretty brilliant though, especially some of the piano renditions and re-orchestrations of that stuff.

 

[Zelc]

Someone already mentioned music from tactical RPGs, but what about music from fantasy real time strategy games, perhaps Warcraft 3 or LotR: Battle for Middle Earth? I know a single game in Starcraft on average takes about 20 minutes, so RTS music is designed to be played for a long period of time without being obnoxious (just play it kind of soft).