THE BEST CALL OF DUTY SOUNDTRACKS OF ALL TIME

When it comes to games music, who’s doing it better than Call of Duty? They’ve brought in everyone fm Hans Zimmer to Trent Reznor to make their soundtracks as immersive and thrilling as possible. But which are the stand-outs fm the series? We’re here to guide you through the killer (sorry) tracks and composers with our dive into the Call of Duty soundtracks, including:

• Call of Duty: Modern War
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019 reboot)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
• Call of Duty: WWII
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies
• Call of Duty Black Ops
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
• Call of Duty Ghosts

Best Call of Duty Soundtracks

Call of Duty debuted in 2003, originally focusing on games set in World War II. Games since then have been set in the Cold War, futuristic worlds and space. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 was the first to introduce a modern setting and proved to be the breakthrough title, creating the Modern Warfare sub-series.

Modern Warfare also received a reboot in 2019, with a sequel released in 2022. The trailer’s soundtrack is J. Balvin’s hard-hitting ‘Wherever I May Roam’, featuring Metallica.

As the longest-running sub-series, Modern Warfare has soundtracks featuring the talents of games experts Stephen Barton and Sarah Schachner, movie maestro Hans Zimmer and composers such as Lorne Balfe.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Set in 2011, Modern Warfare takes place in locations from the UK to the Middle East, Azerbaijan, Russia and Ukraine.

Most of the music for Modern Warfare was composed by Stephen Barton, who’s also contributed to film scores by Harry Gregson-Williams, who composed the game’s main theme. Barton’s also worked on the music for Titanfall and its sequel and co-composed the score for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. The score was nominated for Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media at the International Film Music Critics association.

The 2019 reboot of Modern Warfare has a soundtrack composed by Sarah Schachner, who’s composed for Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and the newest Call of Duty release – Modern Warfare II. She also has music credits on Iron Man 3, and the two Now You See Me films.

Schachner’s score won the Hollywood Music in Media award for Original Score – Video Game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

The music for Call of Duty: MW2 soundtracks multi-national special forces unit Task Force 141 as they hunt Vladimir Makarov, leader of the Russian Ultranationalist party, as well as the US Army rangers defending the Washington DC area from a Russian invasion. The trailer deploys Eminem feat. Nate Dogg’s ‘Till I Collapse’:

Excitingly, Hollywood legend Hans Zimmer composed the main theme for Modern Warfare 2. Zimmer has won Oscars for soundtracks including The Lion King and Dune, and Golden Globe Awards for The Lion King, Gladiator and Dune.

The opening track has all Zimmer’s trademark epic orchestral tension, together with choral elements:

The rest of the soundtrack was composed by Lorne Balfe – probably best known for his work on the BBC’s His Dark Materials. He’s also composed for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, the Skylanders series and worked on FIFA 19 with Hans Zimmer.

FMM’s composer interview went behind the scenes with Lorne, to find out how he got to the emotional core of the music:

Balfe told GameInformer.com that, ‘The music helps tells a story, and with game music, we have to help the gamer get into the character and that world.’ Plus, whilst the process might be the same, composing for games and films is different because of ‘the amount of music. With a film, you might compose from 30 to 70 minutes of music. On some games, I will have to write over five hours of music.’

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

We’re back with Task Force 141, hunting Vladimir Makarov, which proved a massive success. In its first 24 hours on sale in 2011, the game sold 6.5 million copies in the US and UK and grossed $400 million, making it the largest entertainment launch ever at the time.

Composer Bryan Tyler’s main theme is a thing of brooding beauty:

Tyler’s extensive career covers film, TV and video games scores, from Transformers: Prime to seven installments of the Fast & Furious franchise and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. He was nominated for the International Film Music Critics Award for Best Original Score for a Video Game for both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Lego Universe.

A keen gamer himself (and a huge COD fan), Tyler offered an intriguing insight into the approach to composing to games to IGN.com, highlighting that it’s not a linear process, as it is for movie scores:

‘In a game, the way the music works in any particular level is determined by the gamer. The player ends up being the director, which means I have an infinite amount of directors. I really have to keep in mind that my music is going to be used differently depending on how the player plays the game. If they’re going in one direction or the other, if they’re doing poorly or very well, or if they’re going to different areas that require different types of music at different times; these are all scenarios that I have to really write the music around, because it’s going to change every time the game is played.’

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

The 11th major installment came out in 2014 and had a futuristic setting between 2054 and 2061, following Jack Mitchell, a US Marine and his involvement with Atlas, a private military corporation selling its services to the highest bidder.

Harry Gregson-Williams, who composed the main title theme for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, returned while Audiomachine composed the overall score.

He told the Film Music Institute that, ‘One of the main goals that [studio] Sledgehammer Games looked to accomplish with Advanced Warfare was not to make it sound “futuristic” per se, but more “advanced”, as the title implies. They wanted the sound design and music to always be “grounded” through the use of natural and organic sounds/musical ideas in combination with more futuristic sounds. I think the score contributed these humanistic elements that emphasised the drama and story-telling aspects of the game.’

The trailer features Kevin Spacey’s character, with epic choral elements towards the end.

Call of Duty: WWII

The first title in the series to be set primarily during World War II since Call of Duty: World at War in 2008, WWII came out in 2017.

The trailer includes the operatic part of Ante Meridian’s ‘Glorious’, (feat. Maria Jordania Sable).

Composer Wilbert Roget II told Pushsquare.com that he listened to war film soundtracks to prepare for writing WWII, including Fury, Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. He was also inspired by 20th Century art music such as Claude Vivier’s ‘Zipangu’, Toru Takemitsu’s ‘Requiem for String Orchestra’ and Krzysztof Penderecki’s ‘Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima’. He mainly wanted to avoid World War II ‘sonic stereotypes’ such as heroic trumpets, snare drums and high woodwinds, to enable the telling of ‘a very personal, relatable story.’

Wilbert Roget II was a music editor at LucasArts and was a composer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, together with Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris.

He revealed to Pushsquare.com that for the WWII soundtrack, ‘It was vitally important that we knew exactly where we were on a scale from “period” to contemporary, from blockbuster to personal, and so on. Most of these questions were answered with the main theme, ‘A Brotherhood of Heroes’ – I tried to use as many sonic ideas and experiments as possible within the piece, so that it could serve as a palette for the rest of the score.’

Call of Duty Black Ops Zombies

Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies is the sequel to Call of Duty: World at War – Zombies, released in 2011. The game’s setting originally takes place in a German bunker during World War II, from the viewpoint of a US Marine. SS soldiers who’ve become zombies attempt to infiltrate the bunker, and the players must defend themselves.

For Call of Duty zombies soundtracks, supervisors looked to the post-hardcore, alternative metal of acts like Treyarch Sound, Brian Tuey, James McCawley and Kevin Sherwood. The lead track is ‘Damned’, featuring echoey, creepy piano notes and simple melody lines, together with menacing background growls and clicks.

Call of Duty Black Ops Soundtracks

The original Call of Duty Black Ops soundtrack was composed by Sean Murray and released in November 2010. The seventh title in the Call of Duty series is set in the 1960s, during the Cold War. The game’s campaign follows CIA operative Alex Mason as he attempts to recall combat memories in order to locate a numbers station to transmit broadcasts to sleeper agents.

Tracks by the Rolling Stones (‘Sympathy for the Devil’), Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eminem and Avenged Sevenfold also feature. Lead track ‘Cube One’ has a ‘coded message’ giving numbers at the start and end, to ramp up the Cold War/sleeper agent aspect.

The launch trailer featured snippets from the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’.

The game’s voicecast includes Sam Worthington (Avatar), Ed Harris and Gary Oldman.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Soundtracks

Composer Jack Wall is a veteran of video games soundtracks, having composed them for Splinter Cell and Mass Effect. He’s also known as an engineer for artists including John Cale and Patti Smith.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 soundtrack features over 40 intense orchestral tracks which were recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios.

There’s also some Mozart thrown in for good measure (‘Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K550’), and Avenged Sevenfold appear after the end credits for ‘Carry On’.

The main theme was composed by no less a talent than Trent Reznor, previously the Nine Inch Nails frontman and now equally known for his award-winning film scores, including The Social Network. The theme begins sounding sparse and echoey, whilst also having plenty of atmosphere and builds the excitement from there.

In an interview with USA Today, COD superfan Reznor explained his thinking on the theme:

‘What I learned in listening to the full story and the amount of effort that has gone into the back story and the characters and the full preparation, there is a lot of reservation and angst and sense of loss and regret and anger bubbling under the surface.

‘So it didn’t make sense to have a gung ho, patriotic-feeling theme song. It has to feel weighty. There is a lot of remorse and apprehension here.’

The action’s set in two separate eras, the 1970s/80s and 2025, including some zombies, and the trailer has a soundtrack that’s suitably futuristic.

Wall and Reznor received the ASCAP Film and TV Music Awards for Top Video Game in 2012, as well as a nomination from the GoldSpirit Awards.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

Black Ops 3 takes place in 2065, 40 years after the events of Black Ops 2, in a world facing upheaval from climate change and new technologies.

The trailer kicks off in fine, typically explosive style, with The Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint it Black’.

Jack Wall returned to create the soundtrack, along with Treyarch’s Audio Director Brian Tuey. The game also featured an instrumental score entitled ‘Jade Helm’, provided by Avenged Sevenfold, for use in the multiplayer mode.

Wall told Forbes.com that, ‘a big part of putting together the score for this game was grounding its particular vision of the future with “severe” electronic work and an attempt to conjure up sounds the player has never heard before.’

He also revealed that developer Treyarch had built a new audio engine designed to be less reliant on scripted events, and to allow the soundtrack and cinematic elements to trigger based on contextual clues instead:

‘Let’s say you’re in a battle situation, and when you fire the last shot - on the next bar there would be a cross fade into an outro, which takes you down to no music, and that would crossfade seamlessly so that it feels like the same piece of music. Other times we might go into a cinematic right from battle, so we put a hit right on the thing to denote that something is dramatic is happening, and then fade out into the cinematic music. It works really well - their engine is way better than it was in Black Ops 2.’

Call of Duty Ghost Soundtracks

The trailer for Call of Duty: Ghosts has racked up over 39 million views on YouTube since its launch in 2013, so it was obvious that COD fans were desperate for a fresh release. It introduced a new game mode, Extinction, and is mostly told through the eyes of Logan Walker. A fun element was the first non-human playable character in the franchise, a German Shepherd dog called Riley.

Ghosts is set in the near future, following the nuclear destruction of the Middle East – the Ghosts are a force of US Special Operations personnel conducting clandestine missions behind enemy lines.

David Buckley (The Good Wife, Netflix’s The Stranger) provided the game’s original soundtrack, which also featured Eminem’s ‘Survival’ as the credit song.

Game On

If you’re looking for more inspiration, then check out the major Japanese video game composers behind some iconic soundtracks, as well as the standout tracks on the annual NFL Madden soundtracks.

And if you want music to license for games, we have literally thousands of tracks which would be perfect. From pumping rock and metal for action sequences, to motivational hip hop and more chilled tracks for those quieter moments.

The Lorne Balfe Collection

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s composer Lorne Balfe has launched ‘The Lorne Balfe Collection’ through Audio Network. A definitive collection of hybrid orchestral music, this is the real sound of Hollywood, produced and curated for production music use.

Balfe is a world-famous composer whose work has brought everything from Top Gun: Maverick to Dungeons & Dragons, Black Widow to Mission Impossible and Lego Batman to life. He knows his genres inside out and has personally picked a set of albums showcasing action, drama, sci fi, superheroes, spies, fantasy, adventure and thrillers. Get ready to be transported to a limitless number of worlds.