In the gaming world, a new Call of Duty release is a bonafide event. Since the franchise debuted in 2001, it’s sold a staggering 500 million copies — and it reached that milestone before the launch of its latest smash hit, Black Ops 6, which is reportedly already making 60 per cent more sales than its predecessor, 2023’s Modern Warfare 3.
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In the constellation of Call of Duty titles, Black Ops gets crazy – each entry in the series jumps across time periods, realistic and fantastical settings, and offers fans different play modes. One thing you can always depend on is composer Jack Wall; he’s scored five of the six Black Opsgames and his music has become a glue that helps hold the series’ ambitions together. How does he do it? He starts by figuring out what universe he’s working in.
“When, where, who, what, and why,” fires off Wall when asked what ‘day one’ of scoring looks like. “Every single Black Opsis in a different time period, so we always look at that first.”
In the case of Black Ops 6, the ‘when’ is 1991 – a time of windbreakers, the MC Hammer dance, and the first Gulf War. Musically, the year presented both opportunities and challenges for Wall. “I looked at the charts to see what the most popular music of the day was,” he explains. “For quite a bit of 1991, it was Enter Sandmanby Metallica, but, in terms of music history, it’s just on the cusp between the 80s synth era and the early grunge era.”
Wall’s score strides across those two decades; full of the lush and lyrical orchestrations that defined classic 90’s action flicks, coupled with growling synth lines, and some truly massive drum hits. “Dark and cool, that’s what you want from Black Ops,” states Wall. “But I like to add some humanity to it; when I write my scores I like to inject a melody, a theme, or a sound for you to remember. That’s the challenge.”
“There’s the era that the game is occurring in, but there’s also the story itself,” Wall continues. “That informs a lot of what the score should be. I write the main theme of the single-player campaign, trying to capture the feeling in one piece of music, and then I can sprinkle that theme throughout the score in different ways.”
A centrepiece for every Black Ops game is the multiplayer theme. Built for the chaotic shooting sprees of a battle royale, these are often some of the most pounding and rhythmic pieces on the soundtrack. Raining the Fire is certainly no exception, but Walls also wanted to bring a feeling of musical transition to the track. To anchor the rhythm, he sought something that could sit between a massive Phil Collins-style drum sound and the back-to-basics intensity of Dave Grohl’s work with Nirvana.
“One night I was scrolling Instagram and up pops this guy, Nicolas Bitove, from the band Romes,” recalls Wall. “He’s a brilliant drummer and technologist, he puts his drums through all these effects and I was really inspired by what he was doing. So, I asked him if he’d like to join the band, so to speak.”
Alongside Jimmy Hinson, better known as Big Giant Circles, the crew smashed together orchestral strings, rock guitars, distorted synths, pounding drums, and ethereal vocals to produce one of the most rousing Call of Dutythemes in recent memory. “We were approaching it more as a collaboration this time,” Wall reflects. “More like a band putting music together.”
Wall is certainly no stranger to band dynamics. Prior to his career in game audio, he spent years as an engineer at Synchro Sound Studios in Boston, working with David Byrne, Patti Smith, and Nine Inch Nails, among others. Over the years, his duties expanded to producing and arranging, and he worked alongside The Velvet Underground’s John Cale on everything from feature films to ballet productions.
These days, Wall says he draws on all those different experiences to tackle scores like Black Ops 6: “My first career in engineering and producing music was hugely important to my career as a composer, because everything is about sound to me. It’s not just about composition and counterpoint, harmonic progression and orchestration. All that stuff is important, but it’s about the sound.”
When it comes to capturing sound, there’s one spot on earth that Wall prizes above all others – AIR Studios in London. In comparison to his last Black Ops game, 2020’s Cold War, which saw Wall trying to manage orchestral and choir recordings amidst COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing rules, this time everyone was back in person and enjoying the venue’s storied acoustics.
“We’ve recorded all five of these games with different orchestras,” Wall reflects. “But AIR Studios… I call it the perfect storm of music-making. To me, it’s the best room in the world that I’ve recorded in, and I’ve recorded in many. I love Abbey Road, I love Nashville, but there’s something about AIR Studios; it’s the combination of Geoff Foster, the engineer who just knows that room back and forth, the players themselves, and the atmosphere that the staff create, it’s so warm and inviting and creative. “
In a narrative universe as loosely connected as Black Ops, Walls music feels like a thread guiding players into each new time, place, and tale. Five iterations in and Wall seems to draw palpable energy and inspiration not only from the game itself but from the team of people that make it all possible.
“Tackling this was fun because we all approached it with a fresh perspective and wanted to do something as good as we could,” states Wall. “That was evident from the writers, from the game designers, from the audio department, the music editors, everybody. I think it was just a joy for everybody working on such a cool game.”
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