The Agony Amiga theme and its unexpected link to Dimmu Borgir

Released on the Amiga in 1992, Agony is best known as a fantasy-themed horizontal shooter. But one part of the game ended up with a story that reached far beyond the Amiga scene. Its piano title music later turned up in a track by Norwegian metal band Dimmu Borgir. The music appeared without the original composition being properly credited or cleared. Once the connection became known, the track was left off a later re-recording of the band’s album. It’s one of those strange cases where game music quietly crossed into another part of the entertainment industry and stayed there for years before people connected the dots.

A quiet opening to a very busy game

Agony is a shooter, but its title screen doesn’t sound like one. Instead of throwing the player straight into loud, aggressive music, the game opens with a slow piano piece. It’s simple, clear and easy to remember. That matters, because once the action starts, Agony becomes a much busier experience filled with enemies, movement and fantasy artwork.

The title music gets room to breathe. That also makes the melody easy to recognise outside the game. It isn’t buried in a level or hidden underneath sound effects. You hear it before you start playing. Years later, that would become important.

The same melody appears on Stormblåst

Dimmu Borgir released Stormblåst in 1996, four years after Agony appeared on the Amiga. One of the tracks, Sorgens Kammer, is built around a piano melody taken from Agony’s title music.

The track wasn’t presented as a cover. It didn’t credit the original game composition, either. The music entered the band’s material through keyboard player Stian Aarstad, while the rest of the band reportedly believed it was his own work.

For listeners who knew Agony, though, the connection was hard to miss. The melody was already sitting right there on an Amiga title screen from 1992. That made the timeline fairly straightforward. Agony came first. Stormblåst came later. The same musical idea appeared on both.

The track disappeared from the re-recorded album

The story became clearer when Dimmu Borgir returned to Stormblåst years later. In 2005, the band recorded the album again as Stormblåst MMV. This wasn’t just a remaster. The material was re-recorded with a newer production and a different version of the band.

But the original Sorgens Kammer didn’t come back. Instead, the album included Sorgens Kammer – Del II, which is a different composition despite the similar title. That change matters.

By the time the album was revisited, the origin of the earlier piano piece was known. The Agony-based track from the 1996 release wasn’t reproduced for the new version. So the chain is easy to follow. A melody appeared in an Amiga game in 1992, turned up on a metal album in 1996, and then vanished when that album was recorded again in 2005.

Why people recognised it

The way Agony uses its music probably helped people spot the connection. The piano theme isn’t background decoration. It’s right at the front of the title sequence, with very little competing for your attention. You hear the tune clearly.

That gives it a strong identity, even if you only played the game occasionally. When the same melody appears somewhere completely different, such as on a Norwegian black metal album, it’s much easier to recognise.

Computer game music was often treated differently from mainstream recorded music in the early 1990s, especially by people outside the games industry. But a composition doesn’t stop being identifiable music just because it comes from a floppy disk instead of a CD. Agony is a good example of that.

A strange extra chapter in Agony’s history

None of this changes the game itself. Agony is still a 1992 Amiga shooter, and its title music remains part of that original release. But the Dimmu Borgir connection gave the piano theme an unusual second life.

It moved from an Amiga title screen to a commercial metal album, stayed there for years, and was later removed when the album was recorded again. That’s a pretty unusual route for a piece of computer game music. And if you’ve heard both versions, the connection isn’t subtle. Once you know where the melody came from, it’s very difficult not to hear Agony every time Sorgens Kammer starts playing.

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