Solo Leveling soundtrack out now – Hiroyuki Sawano’s 19-track musical illustration of Jinwoo’s battle

One of the prolific Japanese composer and music producer Hiroyuki Sawano’s most recent anime soundtrack scores was the Solo Leveling soundtrack.

With the first season of the anime series coming to an end on Sunday, the full Solo Leveling soundtrack has now been released by Milan Records — and it is a fitting musical accompaniment to Jinwoo’s battle to excel.

Not as long as other soundtracks from the Winter 2024 season (The Apothecary Diaries has 77 tracks, and the just released Mr. Villain’s Day Off soundtrack 44 tracks), the Solo Leveling soundtrack features just 19 tracks.

Most are typical Hiroyuki Sawano in feel — quite dark, mainly electro-symphonic, and melodramatically powerful — and, of course, superb musical illustrations of the anime’s also dark plot.

That 19-track listing for the Solo Leveling soundtrack album looks like this:

1. DARK ARIA (which also has a music video – watch below)
2. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.1
3. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.2
4. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.3
5. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.4
6. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.5
7. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.6
8. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.7
9. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.8
10. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.9
11. [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.10
12. DunGeoN
13. 13.KSK→GATE
14. Hunter→Monster
15. Am→Km
16. everydayLV.0
17. aikari
18. onlyORE
19. 4eVR

Although I would not say the soundtrack is one of my favorites, as it is such a typically Hiroyuki Sawano composition, it almost feels like I have heard similar music before, there are some standouts.

The more traditionally symphonic [Solo-Leveling]SymphonicSuite-Lv.6 is beautiful, DunGeoN is a fabulously disturbing musical accompaniment to those equally horrific dungeon battle scenes, and everyday LV.O, with its lighter sound, is a refreshing intermission to the other mainly heavier tracks.

The Solo Leveling soundtrack is now streaming on all the main streaming services (you will find it on the Spotify player below) and, as several tracks were released by Sawano as singles a couple of months ago, the album has already garnered a couple of million streams.

The Solo Leveling anime

The Solo Leveling anime itself is directed by Shunsuke Nakashige, with Noboru Kimura in charge of scripts, and Tomoko Sudo designing the characters.

Hirotaka Tokuda is in charge of monster designs, and A-1 Pictures was in charge of anime production.

The Korean webtoon the anime is based on is also being published in English by Yen Press.

The first 11 episodes of Solo Leveling are streaming via Crunchyroll, with the final episode of the season due out on March 31st.