Edvard Grieg composed In the Hall of the Mountain King in 1875 as incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, depicting a tense scene in a troll king's hall. American heavy metal band Savatage reworked the piece as the title track of their 1987 album Hall of the Mountain King, turning its creeping melody into a full metal arrangement. Online, short excerpts of the guitar work circulate as a ready-made escalation cue, borrowed whenever a video needs instant theatrical danger without using the whole song.