HEALTH share the single Rite of Desolation from the Crimson Moon score

HEALTH have released "Rite of Desolation", their contribution to the soundtrack for Crimson Moon, and the dark fantasy game arrived the same day. NME premiered the track on September 1, and it is listed on the release calendar.

Crimson Moon comes from the studio ProbablyMonsters and casts players as a Nephilim, a human-angel hybrid built to defend humanity. The studio's Christopher Wilson composed the score, then brought in outside musicians for the boss fights.

That guest list is heavily weighted toward heavy music. Ice Nine Kills guitarist Ricky Armellino plays on the HEALTH track, and Periphery's Misha Mansoor and the metal YouTuber Jared Dines contributed elsewhere in the score.

Wilson told NME the game is heavily inspired by metal music of all kinds, visible in its art style and narrative as much as its score, and that bringing in players who are also gamers gave the team a shared reference set to work from.

Johnny Health said the band drew on the aesthetic palette of Crimson Moon for the track, and on Souls games and their boss fights. He pointed to older beat-em-ups such as Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe 2 as the source of the deep grooves the band wanted under combat.

The band have written for games before, contributing to Max Payne 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and GTA Online: Arena War. Crimson Moon is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, and the wider scoring project was covered here in members of HEALTH, Periphery and Ice Nine Kills scoring the game. It sits in a busy year for electronic, metal and rock acts writing for games, including a Metallica song landing on Gears of War: E-Day.