With less than two weeks to go before the long-awaited release of The Dark Knight Rises, the epic final chapter in Christopher Nolan‘s Batman trilogy, the film’s Hans Zimmer-composed score – due to be released by WaterTower Music next Tuesday – is now streaming in full online for free thanks to the good folks over at the UK movie magazine and site Empire.

You can listen to the soundtrack here below.

Sounds like Zimmer is bringing the sonic thunder once again with a fantastic score that features many callbacks to his collaborations with James Newton Howard on the scores for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight as well as his score for Nolan’s previous film Inception. The most prevalent motif in the score is Zimmer’s theme for the character of Bane (Tom Hardy), a symphony of brooding and ominous tones building to a climax of complete chaos. The track “The Fire Rises” at times recalls the “Mombaasa” cue from Inception and it’s good to hear Zimmer and Newton’s Batman Begins theme about 2.5 minutes into “Despair.”

The soundtrack to The Dark Knight Rises is now available for pre-order on CD at Amazon and will be released next Tuesday July 17, 2012. The movie debuts in theaters at midnight on Friday July 20, 2012.

Soundtrack

[Source: Empire]