Music: The Forge of Souls

There's so much to love in patch 3.3, but I felt that the music in the new 5-man dungeons should get first dibs on bloggage. I hadn't really played WoW with music enabled until fairly recently, for reasons ranging from the interference with vent during raiding to outright irritation in some zones. But like everything else about the new dungeons/raid, I love the new music! So much, in fact, that I was finally compelled to extract the sound files from the MPQ to listen more thoroughly to them (note: you can find a guide on how to do this here).

Although the Forge of Souls soundtrack is not my favourite, I might as well start right at the beginning. The Bronze Jam that plays during the Bronjahm (Godfather of Souls) encounter surfaces now and then throughout the whole instance. Not surprisingly, the Bronze Jam audio alludes to James Brown (the "Godfather of Soul"). The achievement associated with him is called "I Feel Good," and he drops (among other things) Papa's Brand New Bag.

The Bronze Jam begins with some tuneless blazing electric guitar noises, which gathers momentum and joins forces with some funky keyboards, drums, and saxophone, modulating into a cohesive moment of rhythm and grooviness. It certainly doesn't try to make Bronjahm a frightening figure.

The initial guitar noises from the Bronze Jam are inserted now and then in the music that plays throughout the Forge of Souls, and is heard against an ethereal and delicate line accompanied by a very rhythmic punctuation. The funky keyboards also wander in and out of the zone music.

The Forge of Souls wraps up with the three-faced Devourer of Souls (whose voice and model makes me think of insane clowns). I could have sworn some carnivalesque music played during the encounter the first time I ran it, but must have been mistaken. So in a nutshell, the music of the Forge of Souls is dominated by Bronjahm's groovy influence. It's not so bad a place with the Godfather of Souls in charge.