Artist
Brendon Williams
Brendon Williams is one of those game composers whose path makes sense only when you look at the whole picture: jazz composition, progressive metal, orchestration, interactive music and large-scale game production all feeding the same musical language. His credits stretch from Guild Wars 2 and Destiny to League of Legends and World of Warcraft, but the common thread is an instinct for music that has to carry character, place and momentum at the same time.
From jazz harmony and progressive metal to game worlds
Williams built his career at the intersection of conservatory training, guitar-driven progressive music and the highly collaborative craft of interactive scoring.
Before his name began appearing in major game credits, Williams had already developed an unusually broad musical toolkit. He studied jazz composition at Cornish College of the Arts, then completed a master’s degree in film scoring through the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program at Seattle Film Institute. That combination matters: jazz supplied harmonic flexibility, while film scoring pushed him toward orchestration, narrative pacing and music written to serve something larger than itself.
At the same time, he was working in a much louder environment. Williams co-founded the Seattle progressive metal band A Sense of Gravity in 2011 and became one of its guitarists and principal creative figures. The band’s music pulled together technical metal, contemporary jazz harmony, polyrhythms and long-form composition. Its 2016 album Atrament attracted coverage from the progressive and metal press, including Metal Hammer, giving Williams a parallel outlet where complexity was not a production problem to solve but part of the point.
His move into AAA game music gathered momentum with Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire, his first major game-composing assignment, followed by work connected with Call of Duty: WWII and Bungie’s Destiny 2: Forsaken. The Forsaken cue “Keep of Voices,” written with Michael Salvatori and Skye Lewin, earned Williams a 2019 Game Audio Network Guild nomination for Best Original Choral Composition.
Williams later joined Riot Games as a full-time composer and rose to Senior Composer. There he worked in a musical ecosystem that could jump from champion themes to skin-line identities, cinematic songs and stylistic experiments. Riot’s own behind-the-scenes material shows how closely his writing process was tied to character design, narrative, gameplay and visual direction. His work on the Space Groove universe, for example, deliberately mixed disco from several eras with retro science-fiction language, while 2022’s “Everything Goes On” placed him alongside Porter Robinson on one of Star Guardian’s most visible musical releases.
By 2026 Williams had stepped away from his staff role at Riot and returned to freelance composition. The move did not narrow his scope. Recent credits include music for Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate, Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity and the World of Warcraft song “A Place To Call Home,” performed by AURORA. It is a career that has kept expanding outward without losing the technical musicianship that shaped it in Seattle.
Key moments
A route from Seattle’s progressive-metal scene into some of the largest contemporary game-music franchises.
A Sense of Gravity forms in Seattle
Williams co-founded the progressive metal project and developed a guitar-heavy style shaped by jazz harmony, complex rhythm and long-form composition.
Completes graduate study in film scoring
He earned a Master of Music in film scoring through the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program at Seattle Film Institute after undergraduate study in jazz composition at Cornish College of the Arts.
Breakthrough into major game scoring
Williams contributed music to Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire, an assignment he later described as his first AAA game-composing experience, and also accumulated a credit on Call of Duty: WWII.
Destiny 2: Forsaken
His work joined Bungie’s established music team, including the choral cue “Keep of Voices” with Michael Salvatori and Skye Lewin.
G.A.N.G. Award nomination
“Keep of Voices” brought Williams a nomination for Best Original Choral Composition at the Game Audio Network Guild Awards.
Joins Riot Games
Williams moved from freelance work into Riot’s in-house music team, later serving as Senior Composer on League of Legends and related projects.
Star Guardian and K’Sante
He co-wrote and produced “Everything Goes On” with Porter Robinson for Star Guardian and released the League of Legends champion theme “K’Sante, the Pride of Nazumah.”
Returns to Destiny and Guild Wars 2
New soundtrack credits included Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate and Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity.
World of Warcraft and a return to freelance work
Williams announced his departure from Riot after roughly three and a half years as a senior composer. In March, Blizzard released “A Place To Call Home,” performed by AURORA and composed by Williams with AURORA and Laura Intravia.
Essential tracks
Six recordings that trace Williams from Guild Wars and Destiny through League of Legends and his recent World of Warcraft work.
A composer comfortable on both sides of the studio glass
Williams’ catalogue is unusually useful as a snapshot of what modern game composition can demand. He can write orchestral and choral material inside an established franchise, build a champion theme around gameplay and character design, move into pop production, or return to the dense harmonic and rhythmic language of progressive metal. The range is not decorative; it comes from years spent working as a performer, arranger and composer rather than treating those jobs as separate identities.
That breadth also explains why his work tends to sit naturally inside collaborative scores. From Guild Wars 2 and Destiny to Riot’s music team, Williams has repeatedly entered worlds with existing sonic identities and added material that feels specific without sounding detached from the larger score. His more recent freelance work suggests that this adaptability, rather than attachment to a single studio or franchise, is likely to define the next phase of his career.
A Sense of Gravity
Williams’ progressive-metal work is not a footnote to his composing career; it reveals where much of his rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary was sharpened.
Progressive metal as a parallel laboratory
Founded in Seattle in 2011, A Sense of Gravity combined technical metal with jazz harmony, polyrhythmic writing and extended arrangements. Williams played guitar and contributed heavily to the band’s composition. The 2016 album Atrament drew international coverage from outlets including Metal Hammer and became the band’s best-known full-length release.
From Space Groove to Star Guardian
At Riot, Williams’ work often required stylistic transformation rather than a single house sound. Space Groove fused disco, funk, electronic production and retro science-fiction gestures, while Star Guardian’s “Everything Goes On” brought him into a pop collaboration with Porter Robinson.
Choral writing in Destiny
“Keep of Voices” remains an important early landmark: a large-scale vocal cue embedded in Destiny 2: Forsaken that led to Williams’ 2019 G.A.N.G. Award nomination for Best Original Choral Composition.
Official destinations
Verified profiles and artist-controlled destinations for Brendon Williams and his music.
Editorial profile prepared using official Riot Games and Blizzard Entertainment features, Brendon Williams’ verified social profiles, Materia Collective credits, official Spotify and Apple Music listings, A Sense of Gravity’s official catalogue, and specialist game-audio interviews.
Tracks in our playlist
No tracks are available yet.