Awesome Music / Call of Duty

Also includes examples from the Modern Warfare series. For Nazi Zombies specific examples, see this page.

---

Call of Duty 1-3, and spinoffs

• The first game's intro song, which itself is remixed from a Immediate Music song. It pretty much fits the atmosphere of the first game.
• The second half of the Pegasus Bridge campaign is an endurance mission in which a British force must continuously defend a bridge from mounting German forces for over 10 minutes while being pushing back with dwindling men. The increasingly desperate situation is largely devoid of music until the last 3 minutes, when this emotional reprise of the credits theme kicks in just as the British are finally backed with reinforcements as the Germans retreat.
• "Red Square", and its epic remix The Flag Must Fall.
• The old school "Taking Stalingrad" from the first game. Badass epic song, coping with screens from Enemy at the Gates and you as Vasiliy Zaitsev's twin brother, taking on the German machine-guns with just some ammo bullets. WaW and MW2 are probably some of the best games in history but nothing beats the good old fashioned COD1.
• Also, the theme played in the final level and credits.
• The main theme to Call Of Duty 3 that plays when the player is in the menu is unbelievable and sets the heroic tone of a World War II game. Serious contender for the best music for a main menu ever! The song also plays during the final mission, with the climax of the song playing when you complete the final objective and the bombers come in the finish off the task. So epic, you'll want to jump up and cheer along with the soldiers in the game.

Call of Duty: World at War

• Call of Duty: World at War features some truly amazing tracks, such as the powerful "Red Army Theme" (ESPECIALLY the kick-ass version with guitars) and the frantic "Zero Alt."
• Dog Fire is reminiscent of Control Room with its fiddles, but takes a much darker turn.
• Hell's Gate, the theme that plays as the 150th Rifle Division storms the Reichstag, is an epic theme depicting the intense Final Battle to take the German Parliament building.

Modern Warfare

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Some standout themes include:
  • The themes for the USMC in all their levels (especially "Shock and Awe").
  • The OpFor theme, played out in full in "The Coup" is epic evil.
  • "Sins of the Father", which plays when chasing Zakhaev's son through the suburbs and when defending against the Ultranationalists' reinforcements while on the destroyed bridge.
  • "Loyalists", played after you finally stop Zakhaev and his bodyguards, is a somewhat sorrowful track that perfectly fits the Loyalists' rescue scene.
  • Part of what made All Ghillied Up so atmospheric and tense was its score. This low-key but brilliant track sets the mood rather nicely for Pripyat and surrounding environs.
• Just about everything Hans Zimmer did for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is awesome. "Control Room" is a standout track, if only because it's the best use of a fiddle since, well, Fiddler on the Roof!
  • "End Credits", the Army Rangers' leitmotif.
  • "Boneyard FlyBy" and "Whitehouse EndRun" are also top notch tracks from the MW2 soundtrack.
  • "Of Their Own Accord", starting at 1:23 perfectly captures just how equally horrifying and heartbreaking the sight of Washington DC in flames is.
• MW3's soundtrack, courtesy of Brian Tyler (of Transformers: Prime fame), has some excellent tracks as well. "Russian Deliberations" lends an awesome sense of gravitas to the Russian President's entrance, while the Main Theme carries an epic feeling of finality, fitting for the end of the trilogy. Arabian Endgame is the perfect accompaniment to Price's Juggernaut-laden Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Makarov.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has an excellent remix of the Juggernaut theme for multiplayer when you get the killstreak. Oh, and if you don't have the killstreak but hear this theme playing softly and getting louder, you are now in the "Instant Death" Radius. Run.

Black Ops Series

• Whether you like Black Ops or not, you've got to admit that some of its music is damn good. For example, the spawn themes are really good at pumping you up for a game! This, or maybe this, and and for sure this all stand out. The full factions themes are as good.
  • The Kowloon level "Numbers" had this as good background music, especially from 8:17 onwards.
  • Escaping Vorkuta, and The Pentagon Theme.
  • There's a certain campaign mission where you pilot a boat down a Vietnamese river at night, shooting a combination of rockets and gunfire at the Vietcong on the shoreline. Treyarch could've just put in orchestral music in the background to reflect the action of the level, but what do they play instead? The freaking Rolling Stones.
  • A later section of "Redemption" had the secret underwater base become partially flooded, forcing you to alternately swim and fight the rest of the way through the level. The music for this segment, strangely absent from the official soundtrack lineup, is this exquisitely hypnotic and calming composition.
  • And Eminem (yes, Eminem!) feat. Pink with "Won't Back Down". A-mazing and awesome.
• Jack Wall truly outdoes himself with Black Ops II's soundtrack. In the very first mission, your ears are greeted with the epic brass and percussion of "Savimbi's Pride", and the game just keeps coming at you with equally awesome tracks from there. Standouts include "Suicide Ride" (from "Old Wounds"), the "theme of Raul Menendez", "Dockside" (from the end of "Karma"), "Dogfight" (from the F/A-38 sequence in "Cordis Die"), and the epic finisher that is "Hero's Theme" (played as Menendez is carted off to jail at the very end of the campaign). And of course, the main theme, composed by Trent Reznor, is exceptional as well, doing a great job of setting the mood for a bleak, violent future war.
  • The multiplayer menu theme, "Adrenaline", is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, pumping you up for your next online match... or probably when you're kicked out of the game and back into the lobby because of a disconnection or a migration of hosts. Bonus points for it also playing during Karma where Section and Salazar make their way to the location of Karma (Chloe Lynch)!
  • While the "Raul Menendez Theme" is good, it's "Cordis Die" that tends to serve as Menendez's Leitmotif.
  • The Judgement Day score. It gets more awesome at 2:36. It really gives the impression that one way or another, Cordis Die ends TODAY.
  • "The Invasion of Panama", which plays during the latter portion of "Time and Fate" and again in "Suffer With Me", in which you, well, invade Panama.
  • "Pakistan Run" plays during a truly epic (if sometimes frustrating) escape sequence where Section and his teammates need to escape from enemy forces in captured Pakistani jeeps with a drone they've hacked running support for them, culminating in the drone's destruction which sets off a chain reaction that causes an entire section of the city around them to collapse in spectacular fashion, including a break in a gas main which can result in Harper either getting scarred on his face or narrowly avoiding the same. This track was so good that it received a reprise called "Haiti Assault" that wasn't released on the official soundtrack in the very last mission, playing throughout the final push to capture/kill Menendez. Fitting with the change in setting, the instrumental music is retained but the vocals are changed from a woman singing in Urdu to a man singing in Haitian Creole.
  • It's a shame that "War Machine" only ever plays in-game during Second Chance mission in Strikeforce mode, because it would fit perfectly as boss music, starting off with a few minutes of "standard" music which would fit into the earlier part of a level as you approach the climactic finish, then about a ninety seconds in it suddenly changes into a much more intense track. You could just imagine a Giant Mook showing up who could kill you in one hit and now you have to duck in and out of cover as you hit his weakpoints. It almost makes you wonder if this was supposed to be boss music, probably for the potential fight with DeFalco.
  • Avenged Sevenfold's "Carry On" is a perfect song to end the game, especially if you managed to get the Golden Ending.
• As for Call of Duty: Black Ops III... "I LIVE". An absolutely fantastic, epic, and goosebump giving orchestral cover of "I Live", that plays during... pretty much any moment of epicness in either the campaign or zombies, especially the latter. With male Latin singing booming during the climax, the song gives the feeling of "We can't screw up now. This is our time to shine." Whether it be fighting against Corvus in the campaign or averting the Apocalypse in Shadows of Evil, this song will give you goosebumps nonetheless.
• What happens when you take Black Ops II's "Adrenaline" and give it a 1980's spin to suit the setting and atmosphere of Cold War''? Rising Tide happens. In fact, it's so good that M3RKMUS1C uses it as his outro for his 2021 videos!

---