There are a lot of great things about Brütal Legend. Jack Black is of course hilarious, the graphics are permeated with rock iconography and the play style is a pleasant mix of action and strategy. What really seals the deal though is its amazing soundtrack.
There are too many good songs to choose from so here are some of my favorites.
- Angel Witch
- Anvil
- Black Sabbath
- Children of the Grave
- Symptom of the Universe
- Brocas Helm
- Budgie
- Crimson Glory
- Dragonforce
- Through the Fire and Flames
- Judas Priest
- The Hellion, Electric Eye
- Manowar
- Motley Crue
- Dr. Feelgood
- Kickstart My Heart
- Nitro
- Ozzy Osbourne
- Scorpions
- Tenacious D
Seems like a long list until you realize that there are 107 songs which when played end to end will shred your soul for up to 8 hours and 40 minutes! I haven’t experienced such an epic soundtrack since the seven disc Grand Theft Auto: Vice City OST.
The problem is… you can’t really buy the Brütal Legend soundtrack.
With a bit of patience, equipment and software you can however, make your own.
How to roll your own Brütal Legend Soundtrack
I’m going to be very specific about my own hardware here but the concept is certainly applicable to a very wide range of setups.
PlayStation 3
Plug in an optical audio cable to your PS3.
Settings >Sound Settings > Audio Output Settings
Choose Optical Digital, use the defaults for Linear PCM and save your settings.
Load Brütal Legend.
Change your sound sliders so everything is muted except for music.
Load your latest save, summon the druid plow and then press up on the direction pad to get to the built-in music player.
Computer
Plug in the optical audio cable from your Ps3.
I’m using an Audigy Platinum eX since it has a nice breakout box with all sorts of connectors.
Change your recording source to Optical In, S/PDIF or some other similar terminology.
The official Creative drivers would only allow me to listen to the optical in so I had to switch to the kX Audio Driver for recording. Bit of a hassle but the kX software does unlock a lot of special abilities. 
Fire up Audacity or your favorite audio editor.
Make sure you recording device is set to the optical port and then change your default sample rate to 48000 Hz.
Hit record and then play whatever song you want to capture on the PS3.
Export your recording to your favorite audio format like FLAC, AAC or MP3.
Bonus Tips
Make sure to unlock all the songs you want to capture before starting this endeavor. The Brutal Legend Item Map by Achievement Hunter makes this task bearable.
Make sure to stay in the druid plow when recording otherwise your audio will become positional to the vehicle.
Recording level too low? Try normalizing to -1.5 dB before you save.
Epilogue
Video game music can be infectious, repetitious, evocative or just plain fun. No matter your reaction, listening to game music can be the best link to your memories of playing them.
Like that one time in Seventh Saga at 3am when I kept dying and that @#$%^ battle music was drilling a hole through my skull and … *EXPLOSION*
