At the end of “The Lord of Lightning” it is revealed that during his killing spree, the titular character created a creature out of the corpse of one of his victims. That creature is a Balrog. While the name might bring to mind the Balrog found in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings books, Stu has dismissed the connection saying to Observer “this ain’t Middle Earth. It might not be the Balrog from Middle Earth, but he is a sort of fire demon.” While the creature was created by the actions of the Lord of Lightning, it instead focuses on the group of onlookers and attacks them. However the Lord interferes and a battle between the two begins. Just like the song before it, “The Balrog” is a fast and heavy onslaught of trippy metal with references to other parts of the band’s discography (notably “People-Vultures”, “Evil Death Roll”, “Trapdoor” and, debatably, “Cold Cadaver'').
The first known performance of “The Balrog” was on 2016-07-08 at the Croxton Park Hotel in Naarm (Melbourne) and the song would see a fair bit of play throughout the rest of the year. Originally the song was disconnected from “The Lord of Lightning”, either played on its own, after the “Mind Fuzz” suite or with “Trapdoor.” These early versions feature different lyrics than the final version. It would later be released on Murder of the Universe on June 23rd, 2017 and it appeared in promotional material for the album.
In Jason Galea and Ben Jones’ music video for “The Lord of Lightning vs Balrog”, uploaded May 30th, 2017, “The Balrog” is given its own section. In it, the band plays in a room with videos of fire and lava projected over them and their instruments. The ending cuts to Leah Senior narrating the story in a forest.
After its release, the song was only played for a brief stretch of time in 2017 during a residency at The Night Cat in Naarm (Melbourne), starting on 2017-03-18 and ending on 2017-03-24. Here the song came out of “Cellophane” after a long stretch of “Gamma Knife” > “People-Vultures” > “The Lord of Lightning” > “Cellophane.” In 2018 the song was played more often, starting with a performance on 2018-08-13. The song was played throughout the end of the year coming out of parts of the “Mind Fuzz” suite; either “Cellophane” or more often than not “I’m Not In Your Mind.” A performance of the song in this form from 2018-08-25 appears in THE NONAGON MOVIE. This partnership continued into 2019 and even (rarely) included the rest of the suite, like on 2019-10-16 before taking a long break. “The Balrog” returned in 2022 after a performance of the entire Mind Fuzz suite on 2022-05-14 and was played two other times in this form. In October the song was put into a medley of “The Lord of Lightning vs Balrog” which saw the song return to its album placement alongside narration from Leah Senior. This only happened two times, and since then it has rarely been played.