Music - The Library - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

Music

Very little of the music from the Kain series has been officially released. Only two true soundtrack CDs exist - a promotional album which contained a few of the tracks from the two Soul Reaver games, and a European magazine cover disc which featured four pieces from Blood Omen.

The most widely recognized piece of music from the series is "Ozar Midrashim" by Information Society. It is the music used in Raziel's territory in Soul Reaver, and becomes his theme in Defiance. This track is available on two Information Society CDs - Don't Be Afraid and Pure Energy: The Very Best Of. Don't Be Afraid is the more difficult of the two to find, but includes a second disc featuring WAVs of many of the samples used on the album. Both Information Society albums include the same version of "Ozar Midrashim", which opens with a monologue by Kurt Harland that was not included in the in-game mixes.

During my visit to Crystal Dynamics in 2002 (see My Visit to Crystal Dynamics) Kurt Harland was kind enough to burn most of the Soul Reaver 2 music to CD-R for me. This disc is formatted like a soundtrack CD, but was never officially released. The handwriting on the disc in the photo below is mine, not his.

The first video trailer for Defiance featured rock music in the background which many fans tried in vain to obtain. The song ("In The Crossfire") was not from a conventional album, but from a library music CD titled Nu Rock Muthas. It was released by Connect, a corporation that publishes music intended for use by audio/video production companies. The disc credits Bryan New and Craig Joiner with writing the song. As part of a library music CD, "In The Crossfire" can be heard in other non-Kain-related productions.

Other sources of the game soundtracks inclue the Playstation 2 version of Soul Reaver 2 (which contains much of the music of both Soul Reaver titles), and the German Collectors Value DVD (see German Special Editions), which contains most of the Soul Reaver 2 soundtrack in DVD-Audio format. Nearly all of the music from Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, and Blood Omen 2 is available in mp3 format on the Soundtracks page. Most of Defiance's soundtrack can be extracted from the PC version using the instructions in the article Extract the Music from Defiance for the PC.