4 out of 5

Label: WaterTower Music

Produced by: Ramin Djawadi

That theme. By the time of Game of Thrones’ premiere in 2011, Ramin Djawadi had already been building a good resume in film, on some sub-big movies like Clash of the Titans, or by buddying up with Hans Zimmer on several projects like Iron Man, alongside proving his TV bona fides on Prison Break. But, yeah: that theme. Game of Thrones shot the Ramin Djawadi sound – which, to me, is a more tempered and nuanced take on Zimmer’s dramatics – into the limelight, and established a melody that remains burned in many brains, including my own, even if you were only a casual viewer of the show. Its purpose was to take the listener on a journey, and accompanied by some great title graphics which outlined the show’s battles, that’s exactly what it does.

Djawadi continued that journey through all eight seasons of the show, which, while not remarkable in and of itself – it’s common for a show to carry the same composer for its entire run – I think coincided with the way the gap was fully bridged between TV and movies during that time, which blended into the streaming era’s contribution to the same. That is: what you saw on the small screen would / could be on par with the big screen, if not surpass it on occasion.

GoT had the scope and score of a blockbuster, and Djawadi’s learnings during those years – from other projects; from this project – gave him the sharpest understanding of what the final season “needed,” even if viewers somewhat (perhaps inevitably) fell out of love with the content itself. As such, even at nearly two hours of music, the season 8 score is often stunning; moving. The sweep of the theme is patiently wed throughout tunes that are aggressive or mournful, and the occasionally generic Lord of the Rings-style folksiness that dotted earliest seasons is replaced by music that sounds wholly composed, fitted to every moment, and willing to take chances – when it makes the most sense – that dance a bit outside of the fantasy realm with electronics and distortion. Resulting in a soundtrack that can practically communicate the story at a high level on its own, without having watched the show, and with just a passing awareness of it featuring, say, dragons and whatnot: battles rage with appropriate menace and fanfare; political battles are tense and mean.

Being so embedded in the series, though, Ramin’s music suffers a somewhat similar fate as the final season: it gets pretty damned overwrought. It’s a constant onslaught of everything being so very serious that you can kind of lose the scale of things towards the end; as such, even though the concluding, gentler tracks have value, they feel somewhat wandering and weightless, like the show (and thereby the music) didn’t really know what to do with itself after throwing multiple kitchen sinks at the screen.

Nonetheless, I went into the 30+ track soundtrack with a bit of apprehension, remembering the occasional slog of the show, and found myself swept up and away to Westeros, somewhat nostalgic for this possible final representation of “event” TV, and an absolutely epic score that was earned over the course of an 8-season run.