Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (NiN) has composed the theme song for Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II, with Jack Wall (Mass Effect 2) writing the rest of the music for the game.
Reznor – who famously worked on Quake and Doom 3 with id Software – says the theme song is an “aggressively sounding” piece of guitar, bass and drums-based rock.
“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,” Reznor told USA Today.
“So choosing to arrange it a bit more with guitars and drums and aggressively sounding, that struck a tone with them.”
Reznor also commented on the CoD franchise, noting that he has played all the games in the property, with the except of one or two.
“What I have appreciated about the Call of Duty games is the scale of production. It’s not an indie game. It’s not trying to be an indie game,” said Reznor.
“But I’ve genuinely been pretty consistently blown away by, wow, what an effort has gone into this. I get what they are going for… As a player, I’ve generally focused on multiplayer.”
Besides writing the theme song for CoD: Black Ops II, Reznor scored The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with Atticus Ross and recently finished an album with How To Destroy Angels, a band featuring both Reznor’s wife Mariqueen Maandiq and Ross.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II goes live on November 13.
