Ramin Djawadi – “Game Of Thrones (Music from the HBO® Series) Season 4”
Album Reviews | Jul 14th, 2014
Record Label: Watertower Music
Genre: Film Score
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Another excellent Game of Thrones season has passed and with that, we get another outstanding score from Ramin Djawadi. Each season has gotten better and better in terms of the score and Season 4 is the best yet!
The show itself has been fantastic, despite a few changes and omissions that book purists, like myself, will be upset over. Other than that, the show has been amazing and definitely my favorite show that’s currently airing. I just wish they would have more than 10 episodes per season and stuck a little bit closer to the books.
Like with the other seasons, Season 4 score starts off with the “Main Title.” Iconic, memorable, and flawless. Why change the title when everybody knows it as soon as they hear it? The second track is Sigur Ros’ version of the “The Rains of Castamere.” It’s dark and freakin’ eerie. The type of instruments they use for the track is fitting as well, since one instrument sounds like someone is gasping for air. The Icelandic indie band also appeared in the episode and King Joffrey threw things at them. I’m just wondering how many times we’re going to hear the same song on the show. Between that and “Bear and Maiden Fair,” George R R Martin doesn’t have a lot of songs in his books. Time to get some new songs going forward.
The order of the tracks is all over the place, which I guess is fine because it might throw off viewers if they are trying to figure out where things go before the season ends. One of the best score tracks is “Watchers on the Wall,” and that appears fairly early on in the soundtrack. That’s from the Battle at the Wall episode in Episode 9. “Thenns” is bad-ass theme for the cannibal wildings The Thenns. Lots of loud booms and percussion noises and strumming strings for this track.
“Two Swords” started the season off amazingly because it merged the Starks and Lannisters themes together. “Oathkeeper” is a dark track and had many people thinking it was the arrival of a certain character (who doesn’t appear yet). It’s actually the fight between Brienne and The Hound. “You Are No Son Of Mine” is another excellent track that utilizes the haunting Rains of Castamere motif. We’ve been hearing that motif now for 2 or 3 seasons and I still can’t get enough of it. With that said, I think Ramin has exhausted his variations of the theme though unless he uses it very sporadically going forward.
The rest of the score features more tracks from the Wildings, Daenerys and her boring adventures in Meeren (music isn’t boring though), and other parts of the series that aren’t as big of moments as the earlier tracks. The last track “The Children” starts off with the Starks theme and some subtle children singing. It’s similar to last season’s “Mysha” track with lots of singing in it and is a good end credits track. I just wish the season and score ended with a certain character that never came back….Sigh, maybe next season?
Bottom Line: Another fantastic score from Ramin Djawadi
Notable Tracks: Main Title, Watchers on the Wall, Thenns, Two Swords, Oathkeeper, You Are No Son Of Mine, The Children
Overall Rating:
