Attention former RuneScape preteens: You owe it to yourselves to hear this official metal cover of the RuneScape theme

GamesMMOOld School RuneScapeAttention former RuneScape preteens: You owe it to yourselves to hear this official metal cover of the RuneScape themeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Jagex)

A pixelated imagining of a desktop showing the Old School RuneScape login screen, surrounded by RuneScape and metal iconography.

I like to think I’m above the influence of nostalgia. Did I spend hundreds—maybe thousands—of my preteen hours playing Old School Runescape back when it was just Current School Runescape, painstakingly fishing lobsters so I might one day piece together enough gold for my own set of rune armor? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m an easy mark. Surely, age has sharpened my tastes. Surely, it’d take more than a licensed, professionally-produced metal cover of the RuneScape theme to impress me—

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Ah, nevermind. This shit rules.

Last week, Jagex revealed RuneScape: Battleaxes and Ballads, an officially-licensed metal cover album of Old School RuneScape music. I’m pleased to report, as a journalist and critic, that it’s sick. The RuneScape theme, or “Scape Main” as it’s officially titled, already went unreasonably hard inits original form, considering it was something that I’d only hear while waiting for my chunky Windows XP desktop to let me login in 2005. But the Battleaxes and Ballads metal cover sounds like how the memory of the original theme felt to my 12-year-old self. That’s an achievement.

Produced in partnership with Laced Records, a game soundtrack record label that’s worked on special edition album releases with Bandai Namco, From Software, Capcom, and more, Runescape: Battleaxes and Ballads is also available for preorder asa vinyl LP. Once it ships in October, you’ll be able to listen to Old School RuneScape remixes on an intentionally old school format, because money lets you do all kinds of things. Also, it’s red, because why would you make an LP if it wasn’t going to be a fun color? Like I said before: Age has sharpened my tastes.

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