The new D&D album rips, and it’s free to play and download
Wizards of the Coast released Spelljammer: Adventures in Space on Tuesday, a three-volume love letter to Dungeons & Dragons’ wackiest setting. It also released a lavish surprise for fans — a full-length album called Spelljams, free to stream and download. We’ve had it on repeat here for a full 24 hours, and every track on it absolutely rips.
Story architect Chris Perkins tapped Chris Funk, lead guitarist of The Decemberists, to curate the album. Together with other members of the campaign’s development team, they spent time with each and every artist to discuss their work and how they might approach things like Wildspace, space clowns, space vampires, and space whales.
“I got to have a meeting with each one,” said Chris Lindsey, product marketing manager at Wizards. “We would really deep dive into what it is to play in a Spelljammer game, and it was really a transformative experience for each one of the artists. It didn’t matter whether they were already huge D&D fans or whether they were totally new to the game [...] You can almost, with some of them, see — as they were starting to pick up on the aspects of the game that they liked — they would start piecing together their songs right there, and then they would be super excited just to get off the call so they could go away and make their music.”
Even if you don’t pick up or play the campaign, there’s something excellent in here for everyone who loves music. The album opens with a moody synth track from Magic Sword, transitions into a theremin-and-thrash-metal song from Osees, before Reggie Watts channels David Hasselhoff doing a William Shatner impression in “Space Is A Place.”
The album will also be available in a vinyl collectors’ edition. The triple gatefold LP
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