Game Of Thrones Season 1 Soundtrack Review

Track Listing

Main Title
North of the Wall
Goodbye Brother
The Kingsroad
The King’s Arrival
Love in the Eyes
A Raven from King’s Landing
The Wall
Things I Do for Love
A Golden Crown
Winter Is Coming
A Bird Without Feathers
Await the King’s Justice
You’ll Be Queen One Day
The Assassin’s Dagger
To Vaes Dothrak
Jon’s Honor
Black Of Hair
You Win or You Die
Small Pack of Wolves
Game of Thrones
Kill Them All
The Pointy End
Victory Does Not Make Us Conquerors
When the Sun Rises in the West
King of the North
The Night’s Watch
Fire and Blood
Finale

Following the chronological order they appear in the show, Game Of Thrones’ Season 1 soundtrack showcases a myriad of styles and influences, meshing together various different cultural sounds into one intense instrumental score.

As the show begins to find its core audience, the first season’s soundtrack is admittedly not as strongly composed as some of the later seasons but there’s enough here to make for an exhilarating listen nonetheless. This 66 minute score opens with the iconic theme of the show, which ultimately goes on to be showcased as a recurring motif throughout this album. 

From here, the various instrumental beats take you on a musical journey through the world of Westeros, combining Nordic, Medieval, Indian and Classical influences into an eclectic soundtrack of cultural clashes and instruments. Throughout the soundtrack, the main theme of the show is used over and over again, combining different tempos and keys together to bring a completely different emotional feel to each track. Whilst ‘While Things I Do For Love’ is a lot darker and tension wracked, using harps and string segments to accentuate the emotion, ‘Jon’s Honor’ feels much more epic, using drums and roaring bass to add a big-room feel to proceedings.

The soundtrack itself works really well as a musical journey too. Recurring themes for each of the characters just begin to appear toward the end and work really well to break up the album’s different styles and cultures. Toward the middle of this one,  breaks through the heavily string-orientated themes to begin with, showcasing a range of quick-tempoed, adrenaline soaked segments. ‘Small Pack Of Wolves’ is a great example of this, combining a rising tension with pulsating drums, stabbed through with a dark, minor string chord to finish the track. 

Even this early, the various different motifs begin to shine through and composer Ramin Djawadi has done an excellent job showing the characters beginning to branch out and stand on their own. While the first half of the soundtrack relies heavily on a single theme, toward the middle and end of this soundtrack the different styles begin to move to the beat of their own drum. It’s a wonderful experience to behold too and something that becomes much more important later on in the series. For now though, the first season is the beginning of an era and one that sets an excellent foundation going forward.