What can get heavy metal icons KoЯn out of Hell to create a new song and music video — their first in four years? The answer is the famous video game franchise Diablo!
“Reward the Scars” is a brand-new original song created by the Bakersfield, California, multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning band, who have left their mark on metal by leading the nu metal shift of the 1990’s, inspiring three more generations of artists, and never being anything but themselves — not unlike Diablo itself.
KoЯn brings exactly what we would expect to the mix: downtuned guitars, five-string bass [I still say that’s cheating] that favours syncopation rather than chugging melody, and the type of dark vocal dissonance frontman Jonathan Davis still manages to pump out perfectly at 55.
Blizzard brings world-class animation that summons an actual devil — Mephisto, the “Lord of Hatred” — in a house of worship, and brings Diablo’s world to life through dread, power, resistance, and more than just a little blood.
This stellar and very sonic team-up is in honour of the forthcoming second major expansion for Diablo 4, called Lord of Hatred.
“I’ve played Diablo for years, so getting to step into that world creatively felt natural,” says Davis in a press release. “I’ve always connected to the darkness in the game and the idea of confronting what lives beneath the surface – that’s something KoЯn has explored in our music from the beginning. ‘Reward the Scars’ came out of our own writing sessions as a new KoЯn song, and it became clear pretty quickly that it was a natural fit for Diablo.”
“This collaboration came together naturally — KoЯn and Diablo live in that space of confronting darkness head-on,” adds Kevin Bjelajac, VP of brand & creative marketing at Blizzard, to that same release. “With ‘Lord of Hatred,’ we’re telling a story about consequence, choice, and what it means to embrace — or resist — the pull of evil. ‘Reward the Scars’ captures that spirit perfectly.”
Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred launches on consoles and PC on April 28, 2026.
