Update (February 4): This track has now become available globally on major streaming services, and YouTube.
Part of the official soundtrack for Gran Turismo 7 has emerged a little ahead of schedule via streaming sites based in South-East Asia, with a brand new cover of the classic theme song, Moon Over The Castle.
Moon is an iconic part of Gran Turismo history, having originally been composed by Masahiro Andoh of Japanese group T-Square as the title theme for the first game back in 1997.
Since then it’s featured in every main Gran Turismo title, including GT Sport, where it’s served as a main theme in one form or another. Kazunori Yamauchi himself is very familiar with the song, as evidenced by his piano rendition of it during the 2020 GT World Tour Sydney.
More recently we’ve heard MOTC during the official launch date announcement for Gran Turismo 7, this time played on a church organ, rather firmly suggesting that GT7 won’t be an exception to the rule.
That seems to have been confirmed by the appearance of Moon Over The Castle on the streaming service Joox as part of the official “Find Your Line” soundtrack for GT7. This will be the album that players who order the 25th Anniversary Edition will receive as a bonus.
However, it’s not Andoh’s original version, but a cover, by UK-based band Bring Me The Horizon. The group, which hails from Sheffield, has recorded its own take on the track, fusing Andoh’s themes with its own alt-metal style. Interestingly, BMTH has also recently appeared in namesake game Forza Horizon 5, with the original track Teardrops.
You can listen to BMTH’s version of Moon Over The Castle yourself at Joox, although you will need to be located in one of the countries it officially serves — or at least as far as the website itself is concerned. That’s unfortunately limited to Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand at the moment.
Update (February 4): It’s now available on major streaming services and on the band’s official YouTube page:
As for how it’ll fit into Gran Turismo 7, that remains to be seen. It could be the title track, or merely part of the music offering, or maybe something to fit into the mysterious “Music Rally” mode which we’ll hopefully find out more about during the special State of Play event on Wednesday February 2.
